Libertarians and Climate Change

[Beerina]

It's not really what your maths is for no. Consider that, using a 2% interest rate, one cent rendered unto Caesar in Jesus’s day would have accrued interest of about $1.5 quadrillion today (thirty times as much money as is in the world). And go on to ludicrous propositions such as: because a doctor's surgery overspent by $1 on antiseptic wipes one year, then two centuries later a thousand people needlessly lay dead. It's more an attempt to mislead and confuse. Not interested thanks

I am not making that claim. I am claiming that restricting profits will slow things down, and slowing things down kills.

Ironically, your examples show the extreme power of compounding a small percentage.

Had we slowed technology in the mid 1800s, we might, maybe, have 1950-level tech today.

Had the Greeks (or Romans, for that matter) taken the last half-step to full science, we might have been "on the moon 2000 years ago", as one SF-writer put it.

So yes, imagine how many lives would have been saved had that happened. Tens of billions in the intervening 2000 years. We probably wouldn't even be here, with humanity having more or less transcended into more or less immortality long since.

Necessary but not sufficient. Plenty of subsistence farmers in Kenya who are, say, 50km from the nearest city, don't really need to worry about anyone abridging their property rights. They do need to worry about a crop yield which is not enough to feed themselves, and is declining due to no investment to maintain the land, and getting malaria, and AIDS killing the most physically productive villagers etc etc. It really doesn't make too much difference if you send them a memo reassuring them you have implemented the non-agression principle within a 10km radius of where they live.

You pick as a counter-example, a bunch of poor people who are living on a farm, and who might indeed have problems selling their stuff at market?

Last time I checked, farmers weren't the core of advancing technology, but rather the specialists that highly productive farming allows, i.e. city dwellers.

 

[Francesca R]

Ironically, your examples show the extreme power of compounding a small percentage.

You've got it, yes. They show that "for want of a nail [ . . . ] the kingdom was lost" thought experiments are flawed. Do you know why? Because they leave out counterfactual consequences that are not known and cannot be known.

The predictions you attach to them---about millions dying from some imagined lowering of the growth rate of (medical) capital stock--are as silly as the prophecies of doom from overpopulation that Paul Ehrlich lost a bet to Julian Simon over.

Odd that, since you seem to like citing Simon.

You pick as a counter-example, a bunch of poor people who are living on a farm, and who might indeed have problems selling their stuff at market?

Primarily to illustrate that: "OK we've secured your property rights and here's a court to enforce your contracts--Away you go!!" prescriptions for prosperity are not always sufficient. Yet they are--so far--just about the only things you are enthusiastic about.

 

[Chaos]

No. You made your bed, you sleep in it. Nobody put a gun to your head and made you live there. Likewise, your insurance rates versus hurricanes ought to be higher than mine, if you lived in the Gulf Coast, as your risks are higher. Mine for blizzards, were I to live in the mountains, ought to be higher than yours in the same case.

Risk: it's a part of your life.

DR

So when my kid kicks a soccer ball through your window, I just say, "well, nobody forced you to build a house there, sucks to be you." Right?

 

[GreyICE]

So when my kid kicks a soccer ball through your window, I just say, "well, nobody forced you to build a house there, sucks to be you." Right?

Generalizing it, if you choose to live in areas where lots of soccer balls go through your windows, don't be surprised when insurance companies rate hike you.

 

[leftysergeant]

The five world-class economists – including three recipients of the Nobel Prize – are specialists in analyzing costs and benefits. This is about getting the biggest bang for the buck for money spent on solutions to global warming. So yes, they are an expert panel.

Bean counters have no role in the science. Once the scientists figure out how to fix it, it is up to the bean counters to figure out how to pay for it.

Weighing ecconomic concerns and dismissing science is what got us into this mess in the first place.

 

[drkitten]

Bean counters have no role in the science. Once the scientists figure out how to fix it, it is up to the bean counters to figure out how to pay for it.[

Not quite. The bean counters also have to determine out whether or not it's worth paying for the first place, and that's not a question within the scientists' expertise.

 

[leftysergeant]

"Suddenly" is a curious time frame.

In some El Nino years, the salmon have to move farther north to find forage. Sometimes the numbers returning are dangerously low.

If we lose one year's entire run of pink slamon, we are just S.O.L. The species is gone. That's pretty sudden, don't you think?

 

[leftysergeant]

Not quite. The bean counters also have to determine out whether or not it's worth paying for the first place, and that's not a question within the scientists' expertise.

If it works, it is worth paying for.

 

[drkitten]

If it works, it is worth paying for.

Not necessarily. A proposed method that would if successful "work" by reducing the world economy back to hunter-gatherers would not be worth paying for. We'd be better off taking our chances with a rising sea and hoping that the backroom boys develop a better solution fifty years from now.

 

[Chaos]

Generalizing it, if you choose to live in areas where lots of soccer balls go through your windows, don't be surprised when insurance companies rate hike you.

That still doesn´t mean the parents of the kid who shot the soccer ball don´t have to pay for a replacement window pane.

 

[Darth Rotor]

So when my kid kicks a soccer ball through your window, I just say, "well, nobody forced you to build a house there, sucks to be you." Right?

You seem to confuse cause and effect here. Your kid chose to kick the soccer ball. Come help me fix the window. The usual problem with scaling eludes you, apparently.

Go back to my point about hurricanes and blizzards, and try again, eh?

DR

 

[Neally]

If it works, it is worth paying for.

Every hear of cost/benefit analysis? That's what the economic consensus conference was about. Take a hypothetical pot of money and figure out the best way to spend it on the technologies to address GW that the engineers and other scientists had come up with. Some of that allocation included further studies on the feasibility of yet to be proven proposed solutions.

 

[Darth Rotor]

In some El Nino years, the salmon have to move farther north to find forage. Sometimes the numbers returning are dangerously low.

If we lose one year's entire run of pink slamon, we are just S.O.L. The species is gone. That's pretty sudden, don't you think?

Let me see: they are extinct? Is that where you are headed?

Tipping points happen for a lot of reasons, see cod, which has happened, and Bluefin Tuna, which hasn't, yet, but probably will. Neither of them are the consequence of climate change.

DR

 

[kevinquinnyo]

Yes but you apparently don't understand it, which you then reveal:

Without scarcity (or rather--without a requirement to account for scarcity) there is no market. It fails to exist. The price of carbon emission is zero and the ability to pollute is highly abundant, checked only by tort redress for civil violation of liberty. Notwithstanding your enthusiasm for the latter, the evidence is that it is inadequate--transaction hurdles are massive and enforcement is weak.

It's not actually scarcity, it's a shortage. A shortage of "being able to pollute," just like there would be a shortage of "bread" if there was a cap on bread production.

What I'm saying is that the government did not create the market, but rather made the price more representative of the cost, thus more efficient. At least in theory, that's what cap and trade sets out to accomplish.

An example of a market that the government did create, is the tax attorney market.

As I have mentioned (post 39), libertarians ought to find it satisfactory. However many of them would rather neglect the existence of the external cost, or use the paucity of tort action (which is because of transaction costs) as some kind of evidence that it can't be that serious, or argue that the removal of liberty to pollute is too mean. But others have been arguing right back to Ronald Coase's theorem that all you need to do is affix property rights to a large enough proportion of the earth's mass and the problem will go away. Carbon trading is a step in that direction, and in theory at least it corrects for market failure in much the same way as fixing a hole in the bottom of a swimming pool corrects for swimming pool failure.

Honestly, if you were able to affix property rights to everything without awkward spatial/physical problems and the like, it would likely eliminate [the problem of] external costs.

Do you disagree with that?

 

[Chaos]

You seem to confuse cause and effect here. Your kid chose to kick the soccer ball. Come help me fix the window. The usual problem with scaling eludes you, apparently.

Go back to my point about hurricanes and blizzards, and try again, eh?

DR

And you seem to confuse cause and effect in the climate change thing. The coastal land is sinking because *you* pollute, not because I live there.

Now, back to the simple principle of "you break it, you pay for it", okay?

 

[Francesca R]

It's not actually scarcity, it's a shortage. A shortage of "being able to pollute," just like there would be a shortage of "bread" if there was a cap on bread production.

I think you'd like to lodge a definition that "with government action" results in "shortage" and "without" means "[natural] scarcity". I reject that taxonomy since I argue that the government action (in cases like environmental pollution) seeks to correct for a number of obstacles the market cannot overcome in its absence. Thus the apparent scarcity in the absence of government action is incorrect (and therefore the associated rights are incorrectly priced, or not priced at all).

Various strictures about the government not getting it right are true, but merely weaken, and do not negate the argument that the government action is still superior to its absence.

Honestly, if you were able to affix property rights to everything without awkward spatial/physical problems and the like, it would likely eliminate [the problem of] external costs.

Do you disagree with that?

That's Coase's theorem, and there are a number of problems with it so yes, I disagree, though it is probably beyond the scope of this topic.

 

[Beerina]

You've got it, yes. They show that "for want of a nail [ . . . ] the kingdom was lost" thought experiments are flawed. Do you know why? Because they leave out counterfactual consequences that are not known and cannot be known.

The predictions you attach to them---about millions dying from some imagined lowering of the growth rate of (medical) capital stock--are as silly as the prophecies of doom from overpopulation that Paul Ehrlich lost a bet to Julian Simon over.

Odd that, since you seem to like citing Simon.

Primarily to illustrate that: "OK we've secured your property rights and here's a court to enforce your contracts--Away you go!!" prescriptions for prosperity are not always sufficient. Yet they are--so far--just about the only things you are enthusiastic about.

So you are not just suggesting, but relying on some unpredictable event happening, with socialized medicine, that leapfrogs socialized medical technology ahead of the otherwise regular and high progress of capitalism?


First of all, please do that with your own life, not with mine, thanks.

Secondly, this belief is opposed to all human history that shows a heavy-handed government to be a drag on development. And certainly a massive drag on things, like medicine, cars, computers, video games, and Internet routing equipment, that have massive demand in the consumer marketplace.


So what in god's name brings you to the conclusion that this will, for the very first time, turn out the way you hope it will in your mental model of reality, as opposed to all experience and tested, solid scientific theories.



Seriously. From my point of view, I've jammed you into a corner. I cannot comprehend anymore the objections.

I acknowledge that people have a massive emotional investment in their position, and that they believe this type of thing to be helpful. But it's not, precisely because of the counter-intuitive issues.

You seem to be just blanked denying this effect will, or does (as Europe is underway for quite awhile) occur. When challenged, I even offered evidence, which I quickly dug up, showing a correlation between (possibly regulated via sales) profits of drug companies and the rate they introduce new drugs.

There was even a big difference between whether a particular French drug company sold into the unrestricted US or not, as compared to another French company that only sold into profit-regulated Europe. The former produced more new drugs.

Were that to be otherwise, economists worldwide would be stunned! This kind of thing isn't even debated anymore.

I recall earlier posts of yours in another thread claiming government would make up the difference, perhaps in conjunction with relying on the "good hearts" or whatever of doctors and so on doing research purely for whatever reasons. But not at the behest of profit.


So which is it? By the way, your flashing avatar induces seizures in me. You should get rid of the flashing so we can see your cute face.

 

[Francesca R]

So you are not just suggesting, but relying on some unpredictable event happening

Funny that. Looks to me like you're prophesizing concentrated effluence as a foundation for your whimsy, viz:

you're killing millions needlessly every year. [ . . . ] This kind of thing cannot be overestimated. [ . . . ] This kills far more than it saves.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!!!! (Help!) . . . (Thunderclap)

Well please do that with your own notepad and graph paper, not anything that matters to society, thanks

(You do sound a little Malthusian, you know. Ehrlichian, whatever. Conditioning?)

 

[leftysergeant]

The five world-class economists – including three recipients of the Nobel Prize – are specialists in analyzing costs and benefits.

They are support staff, at best. None of them are experts in climate science.

This is about getting the biggest bang for the buck for money spent on solutions to global warming. So yes, they are an expert panel.

So they enter the picture only when the scientists are sure what will work and not. They are of importance only when deciding between two equally effective measures. If the most costly is the most effective, well, that is the way we have to go.

Human lives and entire non-human species are not a commodity.

 

[leftysergeant]

Secondly, this belief is opposed to all human history that shows a heavy-handed government to be a drag on development. And certainly a massive drag on things, like medicine, cars, computers, video games, and Internet routing equipment, that have massive demand in the consumer marketplace.

Last time I read anything on the subject, I recall reading that government kind of INVENTED the internet.

I recall earlier posts of yours in another thread claiming government would make up the difference, perhaps in conjunction with relying on the "good hearts" or whatever of doctors and so on doing research purely for whatever reasons. But not at the behest of profit.

\
Profit is still there, no matter who pays the bills. The scientists are still there. Maybe not the gargantuan profits that the capitalists want, but it beats working for a living. This is, of course, just another derail.