Free market environmentalism by Walter Block Part 3

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

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Environmentalism
• environment
• Walter
• Block
• Ron
• Paul
• libertarianism
• free
• market
• global
• warming
• pollution
• green

[bimmjim]

This video was made before the recent economic collapse. It is now obvious that our current economic model cannot last. This model will continue to cause decreasing standards of living all over the world.

[takadi]

I do not understand how you can conflate the system Walter Block is advocating with our current system.

[Estevinyo]

yes; corporatism, central banking, inflationism, "mixed economy" welfarism and endless spending will decrease our standard of living and cannot last.

[Akatam0t0ma]

@takadi:

Karl Marx gave him a revelation in a dream, and said that it is so, so who are you to doubt Karl Marx's infinite wisdom, you racist social darwinist capitalist pig?

[JETZcorp]

I think an insurance company would make a killing on nuclear power. Considering that the worst nuclear disaster in American history led to zero cases of death and illness, I don't see why the insurance company would have to pay all that much. Meanwhile, XYZ Nuclear Insurance would be collecting payments from plants that are going along just fine. Given that 40,000 people die on the roads each year, I would think car insurance would have far more potential for going bust.

[glacialmind101]

Group selection is actually a bit of a taboo assertion in modern biology (one reason being that the group has no genome). Really only discrete units such as genes and memes can evolve. The fact that the most altruistic groups (social insects) are formed from the most genetically homogenous individuals supports this assertion. Likewise in the Prisoner's Dilema, cooperation can be seen as selfish in respect that it garners a greater benefit for each individual.

[bimmjim]

Humans are a gregarious animal and therefore evolve as a group. It is the genome of the group that is most important. According to evolution theory, most interactions between individual humans should be cooperative rather than competitive. See The Prisoner Game from the mathematics of game theory and apply it to the evolution of gregarious animals.

[madscirat]

Darwinian natural selection and economics are the exact same algorythm operating on different systems. People don't like Darwinism being brandished about bc/ some really nasty folks have used it in the past to justify inhuman acts, but that by itself doesn't negate the comparison.

Also why on youtube do people use some variant of the "i have studied" argument.I have studied it also, I just dont think that fact has any bearing on an argument, tho perhaps this is because I also studied logic.

[bimmjim]

Lobbying is just advertising. If we elect better politicians, they would outlaw lobbying. It has happened. Look for better examples around the world. I agree with capitalism because it has feed back loops but I wish economists would stop using their missunderstanding of evolution to justify their economic theories. I have studied real biology and your allussion to Darwinian natural selection is inappropriate.

[madscirat]

Regulation is not unbiased, let me explain. Polluting industry -->lobbiest --> politician ---> Regulatory Law -->pollution. If you doubt the power of industry to influence law see the current health care legislation. My point is if you want unbiased regulation then, the only unbiased regulator is the free market, just as the only unbiased regulator in nature is Darwinian natural selection. And the great thing about both these forms of regulation is that they employ zero lawyers : )

[Stormwern]

The reason some services are made municipal is that they are impossible to run with a profit in certain areas. In very sparsely populated areas the cost of collection would be enormous, and it is also easier there to throw garbage in the woods somewhere without getting caught. What do you think would happen?

Nuclear power can't be ensured because any insurance company would instantly go bankrupt if there was a serious incident.

[bimmjim]

What we have now is capitalism with regulation. I think that capitalism with regulation is the best system we have yet invented however Block's ideas on regulation are absurd because he has no knowledge of science. I am educated in engineering and I did some regulating in industry. I experienced the reality of regulating. You can click the links on my page.