Free market environmentalism by Walter Block Part 5

[darcybombdiggy]

Excellent & interesting opinons. I agree with much of what he says. But it seems the only consideration is for humans. What about everything else? And how will all of this free enterprise be monitored? Our track record on self monitoring is not good.....Banks? Look at the oil & fishing industries. Even with regulation consumer demand and corporate activity has taken heavy tolls on the planet. Imagine without. Ask why is it that oil companies are big advocates of less government regulation.......

[ncurran1987]

This was absolutely brilliant

[Stormwern]

The last example was a little puzzling: A non-profit, non-competitive entity whose funding does not relate to its preformance. How does that differ from his description of a government institution?

[takadi]

I was confused on that part as well, but my guess is that he differentiates that from a government institution in that its funding doesn't come from taxes and is therefore a purely voluntary establishment

[Estevinyo]

privately owned from voluntary pools of capital, not "publicly" owned

[evangrogers]

@Stormwern it could be a charity that doesn't rely on forcing people to give it money

[Stormwern]

Institutions rely on the "charity" of the government budget. There may be different mechanisms on the giving end, but it makes no difference to the receiver.

[evangrogers]

I think i'm a bit confused -you're asking how is a "non-profit, non-competitive entity whose funding does not relate to its performance" any different from the government?

The answer is undeniably that government can only get its money through theft, where as ANY private enterprise (that doesn't suck off the gov't's teat) gets its money voluntarily.

[dumky]

@Stormwern

The main difference is that non-profit companies are still subject to the price system and therefore profits and losses. A non-profit company cannot just bleed money/resources indefinitely and wastefully. Also, it is subject to competition.

So, if the service it provides is not good enough for the amount of funds it receives, the share of resources that it controls will shrink, to the benefit of competitors who are doing a better job.

[Anon1696]

@Stormwern Being able to opt out of the program is the difference, as Takadi has stated in other words.

[bimmjim]

If we humans don't choose a sustainable level to live at, then a sustainable level(not to our liking) will be imposed on us by the environment. The economy is just a little game that we made up. The environment is a much more powerful and real thing.

Klick on my hot link to see some photos of reality.

[rayyf69]

No Economic efficiency is a very real thing. Life forms live within economic limitations to their actions. If they overreach they suffer "fitness" losses. They are then eventually purged from the ecosystem. This is the basis of behavioral ecology and optimality analysis which is taught in higher level ecology and animal behavior courses. If action is not economic eventually death or starvation will be the outcome.

[bimmjim]

Hey rayyf69: I think capitalism is a good basic framwork for our economies because it contains negative feedback loops; but the ecosystem used feed back long before humans came along. One could even say that life invented feed back loops. So I'm not disagreeing with you except that I put ecosystem before economic system.

[rayyf69]

Def ecosystem: An ecosystem is a natural unit consisting of all plants, animals and micro-organisms (biotic factors) in an area functioning together with all of the non-living physical (abiotic) factors of the environment.

If these factors operate in economically inefficient ways they are destroyed, life ends. Marxian polylogism has failed to be applied without mass starvation and death. This is the promise if jumping the gun and adopting ethics before applying lessons of economics

[Stormwern]

@rayyf69 Marxian polylogism doesn't work in nature, but we do have farms, very much artificial ecosystems. Top down control applied responsibly can produce vastly greater results (for our purposes) than purely natural processes can on their own.

[rayyf69]

1 @stormwern Marxian polylogism doesn't work in nature because it doesn't work in reality. Polylogism emerges from different interest groups pursuing their utility in a political framework.Top down control is not responsible for very easy to understand reasons that are epistemological; knowledge is not centralized. Top down control assumes that 1. A few gifted individuals possess socially valuable knowledge and 2. These individuals can be extracted out of the population via the -

[rayyf69]

2 miracle of aggregation democracy. Neither of these things is true. Valuable knowledge is decentralized; often very mundane people have vital information that can benefit the social order.Centralizing decision making is, I believe, an artifact of superstition. Weve yet to wipe away the residue of the divine rule of kings or gifted humans.

[rayyf69]

3 We become seduced by great orators and assume that since they speak well they must be experts at trillions of other things so we grant them sovereignty that allows them to extend their alleged expertise to a lot of decision making. This is a destructive assumption. The market economy is humanitys abandonment of superstition and movement toward a more objective or pragmatic methodology. The sooner we apply it to all decision making the better we will be.

[elrondzik]

@Stormwern: There is not such thing like "responsible top down control". You cannot responsibly take care about something which does not belong to you. This is a myth.

In your example, the control has other goals: not the good of consumers/environment but to produce greater results. Results are subject of your "responsible" care. Adding to that all ideology starting from class antagonism - you will end up taking care about yourself only. This is the "responsible" top-down control in practice.

[Stormwern]

@elorondzik Sorry, I don't debate with anarchists, it tends to never get anywhere. Taxation has been around for 5000 years, get used to it.

[elrondzik]

Anarchist? Nice excuse but how did you come up with that idea?

[McOath]

it's not greed? He's saying the incentive is to not pay as much in the case of a crash and there for make more money in the long run, That's exactly greed.

[rayyf69]

Greed is the excessive or rapacious desire and pursuit of money, wealth, power, food.

So a person who tries to preserve their capital is greedy as opposed to waste it on broken window fallacies.? What is the utility to me of destroying an asset and loosing my money ?

[McOath]

It's not about what's best for you. It's about what's best for everyone involved, if no one else will be hurt you should be free to do as you please.

Sorry I can't really argue I've long since forgotten the context of this discussion.

[rayyf69]

well we can never have what's best for everyone. Consider north korean Communism. If they were to move to a capitalist economy kim jong il would most likely be negatively effected. Capitalism does the most good for teh most amount of people. It's when the State interferes that negative outcomes occur. Yet the state rarely gets teh blame for these events. The market regulates greed and self interest. The government makes excessive greed, destructive greed rewarding.

[McOath]

alright so may I pigeon hole you as a standard libretarian/anarcho capitalist? I absolutely agree the state is to blame for many many ills and should be abandoned, but I am by no means convinced capitalism is "what does the most good for the most people." I'd like someday to be given an historical example of the perfect free market promoted by libretarians. Otherwise I expect theoretical criticisms such as ''the falling rate of profit" will hold true regardless of state actions.

[rayyf69]

yes your right falling rate of profit would be a problem, if demand was not infinite, which it is. The state interferes with that ability of the market to absorb excess labor by increasing teh costs of hiring labor. The result: unemployment. A Marxist may argue that it would be better to have 90% of the labor force involved in food production, but the fact that 5 % is is not , i think a bad thing. That extra 85% labor force can be involved in other things like, Transit, housing, luxury.

[McOath]

Demand is hardly infinite, take any example of a free finite commodity such as oxygen, do people consume it to the point of exhaustion no. If demand were infinite as you claim there'd be no waste in the market because everything supplied would be consumed except in cases of artificially high or low prices which we all know are not solely results of government interference, they often are the market attempting to deal with changes in demand. It would make no sense if an infintie factor changed

[rayyf69]

Marginal theory of utility

[rayyf69]

when i say demand is infinite that doesn't mean that i want all the air on the planet , because each additional unit of air looses value to me(marginal theory of utility). What i mean is that i will demand Water, when that demand is met i will demand food, then shelter, then leisure, then social interaction etc etc to the point where my demands become somewhat extravagant eg. expensive artwork, a 2nd yacht to transport my cars. space tourism. This is Maslow's Hierarchy of needs.

[rayyf69]

Would it be preferable for 90% of the labor of a country to be involved in food production ? if so that leaves 10% for other forms of production. This is inefficient; Industrialization has enhanced efficiency, fewer peeps r employed in some productive venue. That permits the exploration of higher levels of the hierarchy. Now this may be considered bad by an individual who thinks space tourism or expensive art is vice or a waste, but that is a subjective evaluation which has no objective worth.

[rayyf69]

4 Also i forgot to mention which is even more important. People that live in a state of poverty and struggle to obtain food or shelter seek this before they seek a clean environment. The richer a society is the more the value what are called "normal goods" like the environment or ecosystem, pristine wilderness. So a system that attacks efficiency also attacks the realization of value of these goods.

[norcofreerider604]

Well said, the best way to protect the environment is to respect private property.

[greenbean1984]

brilliant, this guy is such a good speaker.

is there any more of this footage?

[takadi]

The mises site has an archive of free market oriented videos

[ashane77]

Just got done watching all 5 parts...excellent, thanks for posting them. Unfortunately, most of the public is only exposed to socialistic/fascistic notions of how markets should function. Govt-run school monopolies indoctrinating children to desire more govt? Big suprise, huh?

[bimmjim]

Please google "CASSE" to learn more about economics and how we must change this economic system.

[whatifitsnot]

Very informative, makes a lotta sense. Thanks