Free market environmentalism by Walter Block Part 5

Walter Block at the Fraser Institute explaining the relationship between free market economics and environmentalism.

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• environment
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• Block
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• Paul
• libertarianism
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• warming
• pollution
• green

[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

[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?

[Estevinyo]

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

[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.......

[Anon1696]

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

[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.

[ncurran1987]

This was absolutely brilliant

[elrondzik]

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

[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]

@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.

[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.

[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]

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 -