Natural Capitalism 282
| Natural Capitalism | |
| author | Paul Hawken, Amory Lovens, L. Hunter Lovens |
| pages | 416 |
| publisher | Rocky Mountain Institute |
| rating | 9 |
| reviewer | Kevin Whilden |
| ISBN | 0316353167 |
| summary | Treatise on saving the Earth through enlightened capitalism |
Introduction to the book
Natural Capitalism is as important to the environmental movement as Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar is to the Open Source Software. Natural Capitalism describes a new philosophy of doing business that runs counter to the very-well-established capitalist establishment. The book that summarizes and integrates complex concepts into an easy to read, coherent, and convincing whole, with the ultimate effect of raising consciousness and discussion to an entirely new level. Those are strong words, but the book really is that good. As a bonus, there are many similarities between the state of natural capitalism today and the state of Linux and OSS two years ago. Natural capitalism is fighting for acceptance in the marketplace, much like Linux did, and environmentalists and would-be natural capitalists would do very well to study how the OSS movement "won" its marketplace victory.Natural capitalism is an alternative to so-called "conventional capitalism." They both share many aspects, and natural capitalism is nothing at all like Socialism or Communism. Natural capitalism is designed to fix some of the most significant problems with conventional capitalism. These problems are created because conventional capitalism takes a short-sighted approach to the environment and the value of the health and happiness of people that live within it. In other words, CC favors short-term profits at the expense of the environment and people's lives, while NC makes the contrary claim that short and long term profits can be equal if not greater when a higher value is placed on the environment and happy workers. Does anyone lose in the latter scenario?
The book itself describes various aspects of natural capitalism that must all work together to simultaneously protect the planet Earth and ensure that the global economy will not collapse. Capitalism and environmentalism are not mutually exclusive ideals, and the sooner everyone realizes this, the sooner we can all get to work on actively stopping global warming, ecosystem collapse, air and water pollution, and other environmental problems. Discussing the nature, magnitude, and urgency of these problems is the realm of many other books, scientific articles, non-profit action alerts, government and agencies -- Natural Capitalism (the book) discusses these problems only enough to talk about the revolutionary solutions that natural capitalism (the theory) provides. If you want to learn more about the problems, then you should check out my Web site Your Planet Earth, which is a slash-based site devoted to discussing environmental issues with a scientific perspective.
Part of the real attraction of natural capitalism is that some companies have implemented its principles with great success, so it is proven to work (much like OSS and Linux in the early stages). But the other half of the attraction is that it provides an essential piece of the solution to the world's environmental problems: market-based incentives to protect the environment. Our current economy will be crippled, if not destroyed, if we continue to ignore our present environmental destruction. This is because our current economic and social systems are based on obtaining resources from the natural world (e.g. food, air. water), and they cannot exist independently it.
Here are the four underlying principles of natural capitalism that can be developed into an environmentally friendly and profitable economic system.
The four tenets of natural capitalism
- Radical Resource Productivity
Just as the Industrial Revolution allowed one man to do the work of twenty with the help of modern machinery, so can we continue to improve processes and machinery that produce more work from less energy and resulting in less waste. This is not new concept, but the book describes a way to do this in an environmentally friendly way. What is more, it talks about how to achieve revolutionary gains in productivity vs. merely evolutionary gains using the so-called "whole-systems" approach to solving problems. An example of this is a building where the building was designed around the plumbing as opposed to the conventional practice of designing the plumbing around the building. This resulted in much smaller pumps and 90% lower energy use. This order of magnitude increase in efficiency constitutes a revolutionary gain in resource productivity. The book describes examples of how this was achieved in many ways, illustrating the contention that in natural capitalism, one gain always begets another.
Another cool concept of natural capitalism is that radical achieving resource productivity results in the counter-intuitive result of creating more highly paying skilled jobs. Jobs are not lost because manufacturing processes become more efficient. Rather jobs are created by trying to figure out ways to make these radical resource gains. Instead of raising the bottom line a little bit by slashing jobs, the principles of natural capitalism raise the bottom line dramatically by hiring people to make whole systems more efficient.
- Biomimicry
We still have a lot to learn from how nature produces advanced materials and solves problems with waste. For example, not even our most advanced chemistry or engineering processes, which typically use extremely high temperatures (1000+ C) and produce much toxic waste, can even come close to creating materials as strong and light as spider silk, or as tough as abalone shells. Spiders produce their silk at roughly room temperature, out of materials that are no more toxic than the juice of crickets and bugs; while abalones make their shells in 50F sea water. We would do well to set our industrial goals to mimic the spider and other natural processes.
Another important aspect of biomimicry is termed "closing the loop". This means creating circular recycling streams of materials in our society, because in nature, nothing is wasted, and everything is recycled. In nature, there are no toxic by-products that require superfund cleanup and no overflowing landfills that leach carcinogenic pollutants into our drinking water. Natural processes exist in a circular fashion such that the waste from one processes is the input to another process. Companies that develop these and other biomimicry techniques will produce better products from cheaper and more readily available materials, with fewer or no toxic by-products that would otherwise cost money to clean up. The book is filled with practical examples of how this works.
- Service and Flow economy
In the service and flow economy, the ownership of goods and services is reversed such that the company that produces a good owns that good throughout its entire lifetime. For example, when you buy carpeting for an office, you wouldn't own the physical carpet fibers, but you would own a contract that requires the carpet company to provide the service of carpeting in your office. After all, all you care about is having carpet to walk on and look at, and you would really rather not be responsible for repairing, replacing, or recycling it. The beauty of this service relationship is that the company that provides you with the carpet service has incentive to give you a longer lasting, higher quality product, because it costs them money every time they have to bring in a bunch of workers to replace it. The carpet company has incentive to innovate in its product design to follow the previous two principles of natural capitalism, because the problem of disposing of used carpet is its own problem. This principle can be extended in many ways, including recently designed "industrial ecology" business parks, designed to form a closed-loop mini-ecology: one business' waste output is another business' raw material input, just like in nature.
- Invest in Natural Capital
From the book:
"Natural capital can be viewed as the sum total of the ecological systems that support life, different from human-made capital in that natural capital cannot be produced by human activity. It is easy to overlook because natural capital is the pond in which we swim, and, like fish, we are not aware we're in the water. Natural capital comes about not by singular miracles, but as the product of yeoman work carried out by thousands upon thousands of species in complex interactions. These interactions between plants and animals, in conjunction with the natural rhythms of weather, water, and tides, provide the basis for the cycle of life, a cycle that is ancient, complex, and highly interconnected. When one of its components - say, the carbon cycle - is disrupted, it in turn affects the oceans, soils, rainfall, heat, wind, disease, and tundras to name but some of the other components. Today, every part of the earth is influenced by human activity, and the consequences are unknowable. As biologist E. O. Wilson has commented, the multitudinous diversity of obscure species don't need us. Can we say with certainty the same about them?"The above is a number of excerpts from chapter 6, pasted together seamlessly, because their words define natural capitalism better than anything I might describe. Implicit in their description is that humans are systematically destroying the many ecosystems of the earth, either to make a quick few bucks, and/or because we foolishly do not realize the destructive nature of our actions. Yet we are 100% dependent on the natural services that the earth provides, such as fresh oxygen from plant respiration, clean water produced from healthy watersheds, and food from the earth. These things are not trivial -- try to imagine life without them.
Yet in our messed up economy, the natural world remains valueless until it is chopped down, dug up, mined, drilled, dammed, paved, developed, and/or otherwise destroyed.
The services that natural capital provides are priceless, yet scientists have indeed tried to quantify their value. In a landmark paper, they calculated the value of biological services flowing directly into society from the stock of natural capital as $36 trillion in 1999 dollars (Costanza et. Al. "The Value of the World's Ecosystem Services and Natural Capital", 1997, Nature 387:253-260). Compare this with the gross world product of $39 trillion, and you get an idea of just how much of our economy exists because of the services nature provides.
Other neat ideas from the book
The book has some very interesting ideas on how our society can place a much higher value on natural capital that will eliminate waste and destruction of our ecosystems. One of these ideas is totally eliminating personal income tax, and instead taxing the use or waste of natural resource; the book does a great job of justifying that decidedly radical concept. The basic idea is that things have changed drastically since the early stages of the industrial revolution when labor was scarce and natural capital was abundant. Way back then, it made sense to tax what was scarce. Now however, labor is incredibly abundant (6 billion and counting), and natural capital is the resource that is becoming increasingly scarce. Considering that natural capital is ultimately priceless, we should tax those people and corporations that destroy it. This provides strong incentive to conserve and protect natural capital, which is what we all ultimately want and need. Currently, the U.S. gives away its natural capital for a song and dance (e.g. Mining Act of 1872, US Forest Service, etc ...) to corporations which then rape and pillage the environment to make a fortune for their shareholders.
Conclusion
This is a landmark book that summarizes and integrates many different theories about how to practically achieve an environmentally friendly economy. It describes the theory and practice of natural capitalism, including what it is, why we need it, and why and how it works. There are countless interesting ideas put forth in this book, with many chapters devoted to the " what, why, and how" questions in specific areas of our economy. These areas include automobiles, efficient building design, the pulp and paper industry, the farm industry, fresh water supply, and climate change. Best of all, it never loses focus on how to implement the changes proposed. People are not very receptive to "doom and gloom" predictions of impending catastrophe unless there are tangible solutions to prevent it. Natural Capitalism has so many real-world examples of its principles in action that it's hard to disbelieve the primary message: protecting the environment is damn good for business. As you read the book, you may end up shaking your head, as I did, wondering why this concept has taken so long to develop. You may also realize that these principles present an incredible business opportunity for those who are smart enough to become the early adopters.You can learn more about who these people are on the book's homepage, www.naturalcapitalism.org.
Wierd (Score:2)
The ideas we're seeing here aren't really new (when taken as a whole). Love your environment and all will be well. The problem is that this has nothing to do with capitalism. The governement should be regulating pollution causing industries with an ever increasingly strong grip, however, that has nothing to do with basic economics. This book seems to be trying to develop a symmetry between apples and oranges(pardon the cliche). Oh well. If this is how the "green party" and its cohorts are trying to break into the main stream, they'll have to find something a little more clever next time.
I'm not trying to say that i hate the environment. Not by any means, i'm actually more of a radical in that sense...but i equate this book to a situation where you're drinking a coffee on the street and some guys yells "We can drink coffee *AND* be in perfect harmony with mother earth!" - you'd be thinking the same thing i'm thinking about this review ("what the fuck?!?!")
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
Best quote (Score:2)
"Imagine for a moment a world where cities have become peaceful and serene because cars and buses are whisper quiet, vehicles exhaust only water vapor, and parks and greenways have replaced unneeded urban freeways."
Imagine getting that past congress. Or the multi-national oil conglomerates.
Re:CmdrTaco is evil (Score:2)
Capitalism (Score:3)
The problem is that even intelligent and concerned consumers cannot really understand the full implications of the products they buy...
IMNSHO, this makes the "free market" a foolish and destructive goal, since constrained markets can be adjusted to take into account social and environmental factors more practically.
Also note that once you start advocating eco-taxation, you're not really advocating a free market any more...
Re:Capitalism (Score:1)
More to the point: capitalism makes the assumption that people are intelligent and rational. Having worked tech support for three years, I can say with authority that they are not.
Re:Not possible! (Score:3)
Not at all. In fact, pure capitalism is both a very radical and enivornmental friendly concept. Don't forget that the free in "free market" is the same free as in "free software."
Several problems generally occur in the implementation, though, that work counter to the free market.
First, market participants learn that in a truly free market their profits are severely limited by competition. As a result, bad apples often try to subvert the system and establish monopolies or cartels.
Second, the free market rests on the supposition that market participants are rational agents. In reality, of course, rationality is only an approximation of human (and corporate) behaviour. One result is that short term gains are often over-emphasized, while long term gains are over-discounted.
Uninformed market participants are often not properly able gauge the value of long term assets such as the enivornment. There is nothing incompatible between the free market and environemntalism. Your demand for clean air is just like any other good, in a truly free capitalist system the market will work to meet the demand for a clean enivornment
Biomimicry? WTF? (Score:1)
___
Re:Wierd (Score:1)
Well, um, the thing is this... through the nineties, energy companies across the US have reported lower operating costs as a result of implementing cleaner technology in power plants. It is possible to create more efficient technology with lower environmental impact.
But I think the best way to make the environment cleaner is to place a financial premium on clean technology. This could be done by analyzing the environmental cost of certain kinds of pollutants, and taxing companies at a commensurate rate -- less waste, lower e-tax. This creates revenue which could be applied to State or Federal environmental efforts and a disincentive for corporate America to s##t where they eat.
Re:Best quote (Score:1)
the weak point is money (Score:1)
There is nothing incompatible between the free market and environemntalism.
My sentiments exactly. I think the problem is that most people still do not see that the connection as to why capitalism (in its current form) destroys the environment is that the very nature of money demands this.
Think about it. Corporations strive to make money. Their resources are natural and finite. Money is created by government agencies and is of unlimited supply. As long as the objective is to make money and the potential supply of money is infinite, there can be no equilibrium with the environment.
Placing taxes on wasting natural resources is a good step in this direction, IMHO, but in the long run, the very nature of money as we know it (fiat money) has to change in order to prosper while protecting the environment.
Re:Capitalism (Score:1)
In general, individuals are intelligent. The intelligence of a group, on the other hand, is inversely proportional to the size of the group.
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
It's popular to assume that only a totally and absolutely untouched market is somehow "free", but in fact, we expect all sorts of limitations. Laws against killing people for money restrict the free market too, but it turns out no one minds them.
I suspect that, if we do manage to live happily in our environment, it will be because we put a reasonable value on doing so and let the only effective system we know of figure out the hard parts.
Don't let the knee-jerk reaction to the idea of a free market keep you from seeing the potential wins.
Not again (Score:2)
This has been debated ad-naueseam in intro policsci classes around the world. Yes, theoretically feasible balanced models are possible and yes, they have been implemented on a small scale by a handful of privately held companies. But when you face a conference room full of angry investors who've seen their wealth diminished by your inability to beat Wall Street's profit expectations this quarter, ideas such as long term, social responsibility and eco-capitalism suddenly seem to lose much of their luster.
Corporations do not destroy the environment, oppress workers or curtail civil liberties because they are inherently evil or because the world's top management is devoted to the suffering of others. They do it because it's the most profitable, expedient way of conducting business in the existing market and it has been so for ages. In other words, noone is going to change a time-proven formula for generating profits unless forced to by government coercion. And we all know how far-fetched the idea of structural government intervention into business matters has become since the early 1980s.
Forget about eco-capitalism. Pick up a book on programming and learn how to make money and put yourself in a position where you can make some choices in your lifestyle instead.
You're full of FUD (Score:1)
Once this is established, then the challenge for the capitalistic market is to remain profitable while increasing eco-friendliness via the radical resource productivity, biomimicry, and the like. There are companies, like Interface [interfaceinc.com] that are already doing exactly this with beautifully innovative solutions to the problem of office carpeting. As a consumer and an environmentalist, you have to power to reward those companies. And to make them even more profitable and desirable.
Capitalism and environmentalism can have healthy happy marriage if capitalism places a higher value on the natural environment being healthy and free of pollutants. We can do this through a combination of market forces, consumer demand, and government incentives. First though, we need to believe that the systems works (i.e. not spout FUD). In 1998, how much of the free market believed that Linux would never be able to compete with MS?
word hash (Score:2)
Capital, as used in economics, is money intended to be used and multiplied by investment. This money is owned by someone; ownership is the fundamental principle of capitalism. But the phrase "natural capital," as used by the author, apparently has nothing to do with the traditional meaning of "capital," nor do it have any relation to the processes of capitalism.
So what we have here boils down to word hash. There are a great number of readers to whom, for a variety of mostly either nonsensical or self-serving reasons, the word "capitalism" is beautiful and alluring. No doubt the author may want to imbue his pro-environment ideas, which seem to be wholesome or at least innocuous, with that allure. But to label these ideas as some form of "capitalism" is just obfuscatory nonsense.
This review has got me curious, and I'd like to read this book anyway. I suspect, however, that it misses the main point, and I'm cynical enough to believe this is no accident. For the central issue in political analysis for the last two centuries is the class war, and it will be for the foreseeable future. Any discussion of politics or economics which does not focus on the central importance of class war - and here I'm specifically referring to virtually the entire range of libertarian political theory - is at best logically defective, at worse deliberate, outright fraud.
That's the same class war that has been ruthlessly waged for at least two centuries now between the investing class and the rest of us. The contemporary news and entertainment media, wholly controlled, of course, by the investing class, go to enormous lengths to try to convince us down here in the lower class that no such thing is taking place. The investing class talk about it, privately amongst themselves, quite freely; if you'd like to spy on your betters, read the economic analyses in section C of any day's Wall Street Journal, and learn for yourself precisely what that malicious old Randite Alan Greenspan means by "inflation." But meanwhile the rest of us are supposed to believe that the class war simply does not exist.
"Natural capitalism"? I don't buy it. Go try to sell your word hash to some other sucker.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Capitalism, Shapmitalism. (Score:1)
Now that the merger is complete, a feature-rich transition phase conveniently negotiates methods of empowerment. In order to obtain full natural capitalism, we must take a close look at radical resource productivity to understand what they mean, and thus allowing widely-distributed solutions. We absolutely have to develop a metaphorical fishing pond to demonstrate this. Natural Capitalism takes the issue off-line, so the ecologists must productize that which is digital, and it follows that the partnerships with other capitalists will fall into place.
'Cept there is no such thing... (Score:2)
OTOH, capitalism is not incompatable with environmentalism--even the American Indians had forms of monetary exchange which was used to regulate intertribal exchange of goods and allowed specialization of services performed. It's just a matter of properly integrating the cost of the environment into the capitalist framework rather than treating the environment as a "free and infinite" resource.
Tragedy of the commons (Score:3)
The problem is that most environmental resources (clean air, uncharted mines, clean water...) don't belong to anybody in particular. So, a corporation has no incentive to not to waste these resources: indeed, if they don't waste them, their competitors will, and will have a slightly more efficient process. Why waste your own resources (money) when you can waste your neighbour's, or the community's for free? An individuum would still have his sense of morality to prevent him from behaving like a pig, but for a corporation, morality is spelled fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder.
The only solution to the problem is to bill the corporations for the wasted common resources, i.e. tax environment-unfriendly outfits. That way, impact on the environment becomes part of the cost-benefit calculations, and may sway those soul-less corps into the right direction.
Unfortunately, these taxes might be considered as a backdoor to socialism too :(
Re:Not possible! (Score:2)
In any rate, humans are hardly rational. If capitalists considered the long term effects of their actions, we wouldn't even be in this situation.
example:
If you exploit your laborers, their health, both mentally and physically, will decay, and they'll die. Thus exploiting labor produces a long-term loss of labor, but a short-term benefit of wealth.
So? Look at the Industrial Revolution for England and the U.S.
For that matter, look at the movement of business from states with organized labor, to states without it.
Then look at the movement of business from the U.S. to Mexico and China.
When given the choice of capital or labor, corporations again and again choose capital. Instead of providing a quality working environment for labor, with decent pay, they relocate wherever they can find cheap, easily exploited labor.
When given a pseudo-free, very much a free market (thank goodness we don't have a real free market
Re:Wierd (Score:2)
A few years ago, the Southern California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) implemented something called "pollution credits." The idea went something like this: as there is a real environmental impact on polluting, and as there is a real cost to people as the air in Southern California is a finite resource, we will tax the air. That is, we will tax the right to pollute by selling "pollution credits." Someone can then buy the right to pollute a certain amount. This money will then be used to pay for enforcement for people who pollute without having bought pollution credits first.
Over time, we can reduce pollution by squeezing the pollution credits: that is, we will simply auction off about 10% less pollution credits every few years. That way, companies now have a financial incentive to either pay a higher price to pollute, or to buy stack scrubbers and other filtering and recycling devices to reduce their emissions output from their factories.
This is a concrete example of the philosophy discussed in this book: it is a concrete example of placing a value on the air we breath in Southern California, and is a perfect example of how we can use economic incentives to reduce pollution output by forcing companies to either pony up for an increasingly expensive and smaller pool of pollution credits, or to clean up their act.
So what did the Greens do? Did they love this solution, and embrase it as an example of capitalist theory being used to save the environment.
Not exactly.
"How can you sell the right to pollute the air?!? How can you auction off our lungs like so many acres of toxic waste dumps? What kind of stupid assanine idiotic people are you, rather than telling people to stop polluting, you sell them the right to pollute?"
The reception was loud and clear. And quite negative.
Fortunately, the SCAQMD followed through with pollution credits. And in large part because of this, dispite a population that has more than doubled in the last 30 years, our air is cleaner than it has been in a long time.
I don't trust most environmentalists with economic matters--most of them are closet socialists who have to be periodically reminded that American Indians used money long before Columbus landed in the Carribean, and who have to be reminded that the "crying Indian" in those commercials in the 70's was actually Italian, not Indian. The only folks I do trust is the Nature Conservency--because when they go out to protect land, they buy it.
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
Unless the person who wrote this expects us to mass migrate into well structured centralized planned urban districts in order to make better use of mass transit. (I'm trying to imagine being forced by a "green" government edict out of my house and into an apartment block so that I'm closer to the subway system.)
The Long Term Perspective (Score:2)
I think that what is going to force us to break out of this short term view is the simple fact the people (at least in developed countries) are living longer and longer. Someone born today can expect to live well into their nineties or more. I think that is something most of us can't simply comprehend. Think about it, you're thirty or so now; perhaps medical advances soon forthcoming (genome project, etc.) will let you expect to live until you are 85.You're not even half-way there yet! You're kids will grow up and live in good health and have fifty or sixty year careers!! Meanwhile, you'll be *retiring* when they are about 40 or so.
Now tell me that last months news is "old news." Now tell me that Compaq's stock taking a tumble recently upsets you. The only you'll care about is if the company is around long even that you can quintuple your money and have something to say for your investment.
When we start taking the long term perspective, lots of things change quite a bit. Global warming becomes a concern to all. Running out of fossil fuels becomes an issue ("Well, I remember kids when cars used to run on distilled dinosaurs, way back in the 20th century!" "OOOh, aaah" they say). You also start to give a damn about how the federal governement operates.
Just my rant, but people here need to realize that they are going to live three or four times their current age.
For an interesting take on this, read (Score:3)
Re:Capitalism (Score:3)
By your definition, there is no such thing as a free market, as our market is already constrained, both in terms of taxation of different products (including different tax rates depending on the source of the product, the type of product, and who the product is being sold to), and in terms of regulatory bodies which regulate everything from the quality of the products sold to what products I can sell.
An example of the tax rates: If I buy a solar heater for my house, I get a tax break in California which significantly reduces my income taxes. If I buy a car from Japan, I pay import taxes which I wouldn't pay if I bought a car from Detroit. If I try to sell wine to France, I pay an export tax, as well as France's import taxes, because France doesn't want California wine, only French wine.
Other regulations include low energy consumption regulations (so that's why all our computers are "Energy Star" compliant...), safety regulations (Hmmmmm... this baby toy was just recalled. And I just can't seem to buy a car today without airbags, even though airbags add about a thousand to the cost of the car.) And for the life of me I just can't seem to buy a slave on the open market any more, which is odd--they were sold openly just before the US Civil War. The last time I asked, my local grocery store doesn't carry marajuana.
A "free market" refers to the fact that within the constraints of various government regulations, you are free set up a company, manufacture products, sell products, and buy products as you see fit: the "free" refers to the freedom to act, again, within certain constraints. This is as opposed to socialism, where your right to set up a company is taken away from you, or communism, where your right to set up a company, manufacture products and sell products are all taken away from you. (A central body tells you what you can make and what price you can sell it at.)
Sometimes I don't think people know what socialism and communism is, at a practical level. That is, they think the theory of "equal distribution" is a good concept, but I don't think they realize that the practical upshot of this is that your right to act (again, within certain governmental constraints) is taken away from you, and your right to make products people may want and sell them at a price which maximizes your profits given the constraints of the market is replaced by a central body who doles out to you what it sees fit.
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
While your comment may be sarcastic, there is a point to this: many environmental groups within the United States are also "primitivists" and "socialists." (Primitivists: the primitive man [i.e. native americans] are more spiritually evolved as they are more "in tune" with nature. Socialists: in order to make sure the distribution of wealth is "fair", we need to centralize the process of wealth distribution. And in thie process, we will have enough control to make sure that the environment is protected.)
However, this does not mean environmentalism is inherently socialist. Only that many of the groups are.
One counterexample, which I support (both with mindshare and with money): the Nature Conservency. You want to save 1,000 acres in Montana? Don't pass a new law: buy the land instead!
Re:Not possible! (Score:2)
This approach may be good for the environment, huh?
Let me rebutt the article and Signal_11's post at the same time:
Let's open-source the chainsaw!
Good world-wide economic growth, bad environmental impact!
-AP
Consumerism vs Capitalism (Score:2)
What amuses me most is the notion of Utility Function. Basically the idea is the following: every living organism (humans in our case) must try and assume the happiest position in their lives. In order to be happy, the organims (human) must consume as much products that make him/her happy as possible. Utility function measures your happines in units called 'utils'. Utility function states that one can not buy more happiness (products) than his/her budget allows. In order to become happy, one must consume optimal bundles of product, so that ones personal exchange rate for each product corresponds to the market exchange rate and one must spend EVERY single penny buying products (happiness) in order to get to the highest 'Inidifference Curve' - level of happiness.
When I first heard about it, I could not believe my ears, WTF was my prof. saying? Was he saying that happiness is measured in the amount of stuff one has? Well, Yes. The prof. said that this model is simplified and that there is something in capitalist economics called the "Bliss Point". At this point ones utility can not be boosted any more. Basically, imagine a person who has only a bed and food. His happiness (measured in utils of products consumed) is at maximum. Now take away his bed, the utility of this person goes down, he/she is unhappy. Take his/her food away and he/she will die - utility is less than zero.
Our prof. calls this economics of modern capitalism, I call it consumerism. I think that consumerism is the beast that forces economic growth through consuming every single resource. Consuming resources allows multiplication of organisms and this in its turn brings more consumption. Basically this is Utility Function of the entire Economics: consume everything you have at the appropriate exchange rate (corresponding to the market) and you will have maximum utility (happiness, money).
You know, it is going to be VERY hard to move from this notion of Consumerism to the notion Natural Capitalism, this requires a revolution!
Re:Not again (Score:2)
That's why governmental regulation is required in order to shift the market balance to make saving the environment an economically desirable goal. In that way, when a company must face it's shareholders with the bad news that new environmental measures caused a poor quarter, at least they can point to the rest of the market and say "but we're not the only one showing poor results this quarter--this is a result of an industry-wide governmental regulatory shift."
One example: Southern California Air Qualty Management District's implementation of pollution credits, where a company may only polute if it purchases the right to do so from an increasingly smaller and smaller pool of pollution credits, which are auctioned off each fiscal year. Then, companies in Southern California, instead of saying "we just lost a barrel-full of money adding stack scrubbers we didn't need so we could save the air you don't breath because you're in New York, not California", they can say "we just invested in stack scrubbers in order to reduce our reliance on an increasingly costly and scarce pollution credit pool, thus increasing our long-term viability and profitability in the SCAQMD regulatory environment."
Haiku (Score:3)
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle
Where is Reinvest?
"Service and flow" (Score:2)
This model is appealing to companies in the tech industry simply due to the low cost of replicating their product. I fail to see the incentive in a material goods economy such as carpet sales. Why would a company want to shackle itself to the quality of your much-abused rugs? How could they possibly benefit?
Additionally, slashdotters are well aware that the licensing model has its own costs to the consumer in terms of freedom. The book's theory sounds a bit like armchair philosophy to me.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Economic growth != physical growth. (Score:2)
It must be tiring to work so hard at being so wrong.
-russ
You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
Yes they can. They look at the price of one thing, and compare it to the price of another. AS LONG as everyone's property rights are recognized, and air and water pollution is paid for by those producing it, then all the social and environmental factors can be considered just by comparing prices.
You should read Leonard Read's "I, Pencil" [fee.org].
-russ
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
If you assume the opposite, then you can't make ANY predictions. At least if you assume people are rational, you'll be right half the time.
-russ
Re:Tragedy of the commons (Score:2)
in fact, the government owns almost all of the forests, lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water today in the united states, but lets corporations use them for one reason or another (hint, hint)
assigning these resources owners would give us a true capitalistic system, in which none of the things signal 11 mentioned would happen.
corporations could not use every last drop of water or cut down every tree, because they would not have any left. instead, they would be required to plan to keep themselves alive, and we would see some systems that are already in effect become more common (eg growing saplings and planting them as new trees where old trees have been cut down).
corporations, and people, will not try to take care of land if they do not own it and have no incentive to do so. no one will pollute their own property to disgusting levels if they know they will have nothing in the future.
one need only look at the rivers in england, where they are privately owned (and in much better shape), and compare them to what we see in the states with public ownership (anybody can use, nobody cares)
finding a solution for fish in the ocean would be more difficult, since you cannot assign private ownership of large bodies of water. maybe small sections of water could be given exclusive fishing rights to certain companies? there are already some oyster/clam fishing operations that grow these sea creatures in captivity then release them to keep the counts up.
socialism and capitalism each have their own detriments to the environment. imo, either one would do a better job then the current system (real capitalism being better than socialism) however, today we see the worst effects of both, and it's disgusting),
- just daveo's 2 cents
Eco-friendly capitalism (Score:2)
One of the nice things about that boring, normal capitalism is that the non-externalized costs of production get minimized much more effectively by the efforts of competing producers than by the plans of your average "revolutionary" thinker. Water vapor car exhaust sounds nice, until you actually try and design the fuel cells and hydrogen storage systems to make it work.
And I just wanted to slap someone after watching Ralph Nader whine on television this morning about how "the poor American farmer is working from sunup to sundown to survive against the evil agricultural conglomerates who sell food too cheaply." What the hell is he smoking? The green party is supposed to be an advocate of the poor, common man, and their presidential candidate wants to see higher food prices? What next, is housing too cheap also?
What we need for eco-friendly capitalism isn't book authors telling corporations to panic about how much fossil fuel or landfill space they're using. We have enough of each to last us a hundred years, by which time we'll have more exotic options available.
What we need is a way of bringing currently externalized environmental costs back to the corporations and individuals who create them, to give them incentive to reduce those environmental costs where it is practical to do so.
I saw another post entitled "Tragedy of the Commons", so some people here already know what I'm talking about. If an unfiltered factory smokestack dumps crap into the air, it may cause hundreds of dollars of health problems, environmental damage, and quality of life reduction for each of a million people. However, only a hundred of those million people may actually work for the factory. $100 million of total environmental cost, $10 thousand of which is actually felt by the polluters. If a smokestack filter costs $1 million to install, then for society as a whole you certainly want to install filters, but the factory has no financial incentive to.
Currently, our system doesn't give corporations financial incentives to reduce pollution, we give them legal incentives, in the form of "You will install that filter before you start operating this factory" type instructions. That's a fine, workable solution, but it's not a capitalistic solution, it's a command economy solution. We control the exhaust of our vehicles, the effluents of our manufacturing, and the natural resources that we mine and log in the same way: through permits and regulations. The idea, of course, is to put environmentally important decisions in the hands of lawmakers who should be concerned for the environment and economy of society as a whole rather than for the costs and revenues of one particular corporation.
And it works, mostly, as well as you can expect an inexpert government to decide where the country should draw the line between economic prosperity and environmental health. There are excesses here and there on both sides of that line, and there are bitter political arguments between people who disagree on where that line should be placed, but there's not going to be any revolutionary improvement within the governmental decision-making framework.
In a utopian capitalist world, of course, the government wouldn't decide how environmentally friendly a manufacturing process had to be, any more than it decides how much that process should produce or how much the product should sell for. How would the free market economy make decisions about natural resources and environmental harm without falling into the "tragedy of the commons" trap (I prefer the "prisoner's dilemma" analogy myself) that makes life worse for everyone? By applying externalized costs to their producers. Instead of putting a limit on the amount of air pollution a factory can generate, you charge them some fee per unit mass of each pollutant component. If they've got filter after high-tech filter trapping every gram of sulfur dioxide, you still charge them by the kilo for the escaping CO2.
The point is that you then put into managers' hands the decisions about what environmentally unfriendly processes are worthwhile, and what processes aren't valuable enough to be worth the environmental costs inherent in their use. Would mass transit in places like Houston and LA be in it's current lousy state, and would so many overcompensating city dwellers be buying gas-guzzling SUVs to drive to work, if gasoline there was taxed according to how much damage it does?
I'm not really suggesting this as a way for America (or other countries) to go, however. First of all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and our current mass of environmental regulation is only sprained at worst. Secondly, moving environmental regulation from a command to a capitalist decision-making model wouldn't be as nearly as productive as, say, capitalist price regulation is. You'd still need government to decide what the costs of pollution were, and you'd still need audits to measure the environmental costs generated by a company. Unlike labor, equipment costs, and revenue, it's a little tough for your corporate accountants to put a fair dollar figure to environmental costs without a government inspector standing over their shoulders.
Perhaps most importantly, since there is no perfect way to let the "invisible hand of the market" handle the environment as well, you'd still see the same furious debates between the people who think that the atmosphere is a limitless sinkhole and those who think that CO2 is poisoning Mother Earth, and you'd still see lengthy pointless rants from people like me with a slight vested interest in the outcome.
(Score: -1, Longwinded)
Re:Not possible! (Score:2)
Rather humorous quote, that. As RMS put it, it's "free as in freedom, not free as in beer". I find it hard to imagine my GPL-licensed programs could exploit me, but I think you'd be laughed at to your face if you claimed nobody exploits anyone under capitalism.
Polish proverb - under capitalism, man exploits man, under communism, the opposite is true. ;) Not terribly relevant to the issue at hand, but a cute quote nonetheless.. if only because it's true.
Re:If you want environmental reform (Score:2)
I will pay you $1 per year for the next hundred years, or I will pay you $5 right now.
-russ
The inertial of capitalism (Score:3)
Enter the last hundred years where real damage has been perpetrated on the environment, particularly the last thirty years. Capitalism has so much inertia that we as a society do not quite know how to stem it. Add to that the science of the environment which is often unsure enough of it's postulates to be able to gain ground on capitalism. We can measure profit on a balance sheet, but it seems scientists cannot convince us about things like ozone depletion and deforestation through studies.
On the whole, we do a pretty lousy job of jibing capitalism with environmentalism, and judging by at least the American popular ideology, it will take severe environmental crises to change that reality. From day one, we have been a nation of minutemen who need to be struck in the face before we realize we are in a fight.
-L
Re:Wierd (Score:2)
Same thing happens in Canada, who has to face the Kyoto greenhouse-gas reduction accords. Canada, in fact, pollutes far more than the US per capita (it's normal: the population in Canada is much less dense than in the US, and the public transportation system has been gutted far more than in the US, thanks to stupid federal policies that favour air transportation). So, the federal government is looking at ways to reduce air pollution.
But Québec (24% of canadian population) wants the right to pollute more, because 99% of it's electricity comes from non-polluting (well... on the short-term, it is not polluting, but on the long term, there are non negligible effects. And it's hard to beat a power dam when it comes to greenhouse gas, air pollution and thermal pollution) hydroelectric power, unlike other areas in Canada that are heavily dependent on oil, coal and gas for their electric power.
So there are some people who ALREADY pollute less than the rest, but they want to pollute MORE!!!
--
Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
No need for central planning to do that. The good old market forces and capitalist greet will gladly force you into a cheaper appartment when the energetic waste caused by suburban sprawl will finally fully be billed to those who adopt that lifestyle...
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Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]
Re:You're full of FUD (Score:2)
Capitalism's worst flaw is that it externalizes its problems. The environment is an all but too well-known example of this. Why properly dispose of waste products when you can dump them in international waters? Even if you are caught the fines amount to less than the proper disposal would have cost! This is happening even in the US' version of capitalism!
As a consumer and an environmentalist, you have to power to reward those companies.
Oh, so I should be happy with a volvo when my neighbor can use the cost offset of not buying enviro-friendly products to go buy a porsche? Great solution there! You might convince me of that, but not the 300 million other people who live on this slab of earth we call the United States.
Capitalism and environmentalism can have healthy happy marriage if capitalism places a higher value on the natural environment being healthy and free of pollutants.
I think you mean the consumer. And no, because people follow the path of least resistance. The problem is not convincing the individual - with enough education that is possible. It is convincing society at large, people who are more than willing to ignore truths to have material and personal gain. It's a big, anonymous system out there - who's gonna complain if I buy styrofoam cups instead of wax ones? Nobody. Zero social incentive. Plenty of monentary incentive though.
First though, we need to believe that the systems works (i.e. not spout FUD).
I'm sorry, but as an engineer any system that doesn't work on its own merits is not worth consideration. I'm not about to start believing in supernatural beings and praying for my next chip design. I treat ideas the same as I would anything else: by looking at the empirical evidence. Right now, there are very strong indications that the environmentalists are losing the war against capitalism. I rather doubt this book will change the balance much. To use your own dialect: the free market has spoken.
In 1998, how much of the free market believed that Linux would never be able to compete with MS?
The free market doesn't think. The people who are in it do (well, this may be an overstatement, but bear with me). And the vast majority of those people used Microsoft products. The vast majority still do. So if free market = consumers, then their position still hasn't changed. "Linux, what's that? Nah, won't catch me using it."
I reaffirm my position that capitalism and environmentalism are at odds with each other fundamentally. You can't reconcile them and still claim to be a member of both.
Re:word hash (Score:2)
Glad you asked. Here's the Greenspan definition. Higher prices for houses do not constitute inflation. Nor higher prices for cars, gasoline, medical bills, college tuition, pretty much anything that an ordinary citizen buys, none of these things constitute inflation. Vastly higher salaries, sky-high ones, for CEOs of big corporations do not constitute inflation in the least, heaven forbid you should even imagine such a thing. What then is inflation? How can we tell when it shows up? Easy! It's when the unemployment rate drops by two tenths of a percent, or when the guys at the fiftieth percentile of incomes get an aggregate raise in pay of, say, 0.7% - now that's inflation. And, in the service of that class which lives off dividends, inflation as thus defined must be stopped, stamped out, smashed flat, right now, this very instant, even if in the process we demolish the entire American economy- this being the scorched-earth tactic of fighting the class war. Far better we fire up a new recession than that the guy at the fiftieth percentile should ever, ever get a raise.
This is, as I said, openly discussed just about every day in the WSJ. One example: every month, regular like clockwork, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases new figures on the American unemployment rate. This monthly event is very important breaking news to the investing class. The day before the BLS is due to publish their stuff, you will invariably find a panicky article in the WSJ where the author is sweating over the possibility that the rate has gone down last month. In order to forestall a wave of investor suicides, however, the author invariably reassures his readers that if disaster strikes and the unemployment rate goes down, Economic Despot Greenspan will yank his magic lever - the prime rate - to ensure that those workies who have the nerve to want to earn a living will be swiftly thrust back into the ranks of the jobless.
Then the next day, after the monthly unemployment rate is published, read the post-report commentary. There are three possibilities: the unemployment rate falls, or rises, or remains the same. Suppose it is the first - if more of us have jobs, then they either freak out and stock prices tumble, and the columnists calmly explain that this spasm of investor panic is directly due to the dreadful decrease in unemployment, or else if Wall Street doesn't bomb off, then commentators are bemused and conclude that speculators must believe there must be some countervailing force to hold working class wages down. When the unemployment rate rises, those same columnists can barely contain their glee, as more working-class people out of jobs translates directly into fatter dividends for the idle rich; the stock market surges and this is attributed to the happy news on the unemployment front. Yes, the econ columnists in the WSJ are quite naked about it: lower unemployment = bad news for the stock market, higher unemployment = happy days on Wall Street. There's your class war. Too bad the majority of the suckers in my class can't be bothered to pay any attention to it.
As for what keeps me out of the investing class, what a question! You know, I've got a petty little 401K fund, plus I own a few shares of stock in the company for which I work. Does that make me bourgeois, an investor, a capitalist? Absurd! Slingers of word hash would try to sell you that nonsense definition, liars would have you believe it; don't. My handful of stock shares do not make me a capitalist, nor do the more sizable investments owned by the striving UMC yuppies in their nasty little prefab gated communities up the road from my house, with their SUVs and their $120,000/year incomes. By any sensible definition, one should not be considered a capitalist unless the greatest part or all of one's income comes from investments. Neither I nor the co-opted haut-wage-slave with his $120K are truly members of the investing class; the fact is, cut off our wage incomes and we're both only a few short months away from the poorhouse.
Get real. To live entirely off investments in the style to which that class is accustomed, one must first have accumulated a mass of capital amounting to, at minimum, several million dollars. Now where do you suggest I acquire my millions of dollars, my "seed money," so that I too may give up productive work and relax into a luxurious new life of careless, effortless capitalist exploitation? There's your ceiling, not glass but green paper.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
Ever see "Dead Poets' Society"? Remember the scene where they were trying to find the best poem by quantifying "depth" and "beauty" and taking their product? That's exactly like trying to quantify pollution in dollars.
Re:You're full of FUD (Score:3)
This is not an attribute of the market itself, but of the legal structure in which it exists. Many free-market advocates are fans of strict liability which would internalize those externalities. The process is not hard -- just remove the tragedy of the commons incentives through privitization.
Oh, so I should be happy with a volvo when my neighbor can use the cost offset of not buying enviro-friendly products to go buy a porsche? Great solution there! You might convince me of that, but not the 300 million other people who live on this slab of earth we call the United States.
If the externalized costs of resource wasting are internalized within the market, then there *is* no cost offset by buying non-enviro-friendly products. In fact, they would become more expensive relative to the value placed on the potentially wasted resources.
I think you mean the consumer. And no, because people follow the path of least resistance. The problem is not convincing the individual - with enough education that is possible. It is convincing society at large, people who are more than willing to ignore truths to have material and personal gain. It's a big, anonymous system out there - who's gonna complain if I buy styrofoam cups instead of wax ones? Nobody. Zero social incentive. Plenty of monentary incentive though.
You're half-right. It's a *systemic* change that is required. Not because of anonymity, but because of liability and accountability. No other mechanism devised by man has yet provided as effective a means of resource allocation than the market. But it is defined by the legal structure in which it exists. And as long as we have the US Department of the Interior allocating rather than individuals and corporations with vested interest in the property, we'll have more of the same.
Right now, there are very strong indications that the environmentalists are losing the war against capitalism. I rather doubt this book will change the balance much. To use your own dialect: the free market has spoken.
They are fighting the wrong battle. To the extent that the market is the problem, it is also the solution, by allowing the internalizing of those externalities.
I reaffirm my position that capitalism and environmentalism are at odds with each other fundamentally. You can't reconcile them and still claim to be a member of both.
Perhaps, but only because the defenders and detractors of each don't understand the argument.
see http://environmental.networkroom.com/
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
Yes, I know this isn't obvious, but if it was obvious, there wouldn't be a Nobel prize for economics.
-russ
Re:Economic growth != physical growth. (Score:2)
And you know this because you studied the problem? Or because you thought for ten seconds and came to the obvious conclusion? If every economic conclusion was obvious, it wouldn't be interesting and it wouldn't be a science.
I believe that the statement that we are losing resources faster than we are gaining them is for the most part true.
And the most basic discover of economics is that when things become scarce their price rises. And yet, the price of resources has been dropping.
We will run out of oil eventually.
Nobody cares about oil. We only care about the services oil provides. And oil is not the only substance that can produce those services.
If we continue to deforest at the rate we are we will put the CO2 balance out of kilter in the atmosphere.
Do you realize that over most of the last century, the US has had continuous growth in the amount of land dedicated to forests?
A pity you can't debate with someone without resorting to personal slams.
Don't say things which are obviously wrong, or not obviously right, or provably wrong with a little bit of research and I won't slam you. Sheesh!
I decided it was more productive to try to educate people
Telling people things that are wrong is not helpful. Telling people things that you KNOW are wrong is even less helpful.
-russ
Re:Not possible! (Score:2)
Translation: "The free market is a fantasy. There can be no such thing as a free market in a real world with real people. Free markets only exist in the minds of economists."
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
And as long as there are wealth and power disparities, actors who can violate these conditions in order to increase their profits will do so. Which will lead to more wealth for them, which gives them more power to do the same thing more extensively, which leads to more wealth, which ...
Really, people who go on with all this body of capitalist economic theorizing I feel live in a fantasy world. Even if you could get the world to the conditions needed for textbook pure capitalism to work like it is supposed to (rational agents, very low externalities, free flow of information, etc.), that would be a very unstable situation, which would be bound to vanish randomly at any moment.
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
Yeah, yeah. Heard that chestnut about a million times. The point is that there is no objective way of measuring that price.
Yes, I know this isn't obvious, but if it was obvious, there wouldn't be a Nobel prize for economics.
There is a Nobel prize in economics simply because a guy who invented dynamite decreed there to be one. He could have just as easily decreed there to be prize in phrenology.
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
Textbook Capitalism assumes that "economic actors" are "rational" in the game-theoretic sense-- i.e. that they make the optimal use of the information they have available when making their economic decision. Another assumption is that the existing information needed to make the rational decisions will be available to the actor. Of course, in the real world, this is not quite so.
But I think a more fundamental flaw is that it is possible for actors to act in such a way that diminishes either the rationality or information available to other actors-- and that in fact, it is rational for actors to do this. For example, advertising. Thus, the conditions needed for Textbook Capitalism are self-undermining.
Re:There is no such thing as class war (Score:2)
Actually, while I am no great proponent of the class-war paradigm, I find the above statement completely wrong. Who cares if people change sides? The rich still try to get richer at the expense of the poor, and the poor still try to elevate themselves into a higher income bracket. That's what's referred to as a class war.
What effect does this have on a society? It simply comes down to a Rawlsian ideal of justice. Would you rather come into this world in a society everyone was reasonably well off, or would you rather come into a society in which there are small number of super-rich, and a large number of people living in abject poverty?
Does it make a big difference if there is a little mobility? I think you overestimate the ability of the average person to "change sides," as it were.
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Slavery & Capital: Mineral, Plant, Animal & Human (Score:3)
Some really deep ecologists would object to my maximizing the value of certain grasses -- say by domesticating them and initiating the neolithic period -- or perhaps an enemy of mine would so object.
Some animal rights activists would object to my "playing god" by hybridizing and then intensively inbreeding various wild animal species to generate domestic breeds which are useful to humans -- or perhaps an enemy of mine would so object.
Quite a few human rights activists would object to my "playing god" by breeding humans, training them in valuable skills and selling them to the highest bidder (perhaps under contract to not use them for their own breeding programs so I can retain my genetic property) -- or perhaps an enemy of mine would so object.
I can maximize economic value in all of these things but the question remains, have I maximized moral value?
And, BTW, whose business is it to tell me what is moral and what is immoral?
Some theocrat or politician who can manipulate words and people's actions into meaninglessness? Someone who can kick the shit out of me? Someone who can talk others into kicking the shit out of me? Someone who exudes the right pheromones to trigger child-like imprint vulnerability in my limbic system as they talk to me? Someone who gets an intense injection of lutinizing hormone when a centralized technology for communication comes up for grabs, like, say, movies, radio and television?
These are questions even the Dalai Lama has trouble with -- and don't forget the first Dalai Lama was an heir of Genghis Khan -- sort of like the Popes are, in a sense, heirs of Ceasar.
Morality has its limits and those limits relate directly to genetic self interest. I don't want some bozo with a conflict of genetic self interest telling me what is right from wrong. I don't care if it is about loving my neighbor as myself, being a worker hero, avoiding racism, sexism and homophobia or turning Dolly in to mutton. Take your universalist religions and preach them to your next of kin. Dressing them up as "capitalism" is ineffective except to the extent that it becomes all the more noxious when you do so.
Of course, if you can make a convincing case to me that "we are the world" -- I might start listening -- but to be convincing, you'll need to make that "whole earth" perspective real. That means putting me and everyone else you want to influence out into space where the global perspective becomes our natural perspective. Then all this talk of "universal brotherhood" starts to make sense.
So, until you start pulling your weight in getting us all there, zip it.
The Environment is a Property-Rights Issue (Score:2)
The environment is a property-rights issue. In a capitalist system, each owner/lessor/etc of property has a right to not have that asset devalued by others against their will. If someone ran into your house and released a could of poinsonous gas, you could shorgun them right then and there, and rightly claim self-defense. How is it different when, a mile down the road, a poisonous gas gets released and then floats into your living room? Would it be different if, from a mile away, someone sent a mortar shell into your living room that then released a poisonous gas?
Capitalist countries have MUCH cleaner environments than non-free countries. ANd it's because, under the capitalist system, people have rights and the means with which to defend themselves, and/or collect recompense after the event. People often lament the 'litiguousness' of the U.S. Believe it or not, that is in the main a good thing. Sure, there's crackpot get-rich-quick lawsuits, but most are for real reasons.
Here, we can protest. We can not buy products. We can ruin the stock price of companies that harm us, assuiming we have the will. In forced-industrialized countries like China and Russia, industry can do whatever it wants because it is also the government. And it often does. There is a 10-mile radius of fibrous waste around one industrial site in Russia (starts with a 'K'... forget the name right now). It takes a LONG TIME to cause that much damage! And it went unchecked. In a capitalist system, the government is reponsible for protecting the rights of all parties in contracts and enforcing basic human rights. Capitalism doesn't work without a government.
To put it simply, in a capitalist system, the government is in charge of keeping a watch on business. In Socialist (corparatist/communist/fascist/choose your own synonym for 'collecitvist') countries, government IS business. Which do you think will work out better?
A lot of people complain that the U.S. is becoming or has become a corporate state, and then lay the blame for that at the feet of capitalism, when it doesn't belong there. There is no socialist party in the U.S. any longer because its entire platform was enacted into law. Socialism blurs the line between government and business.
Take, for instance, the currently fashionable idea of 'investing' social security taxes in the stock market. If the people advocating that came right out and said they wanted to nationalise U.S. businesses -- bring them under direct government control -- the citizens would balk. But by "investing the funds for our retirement" for us, it's okay. THe end result is the same though: government ownsership of business. If they just nationalize, it's simply a faster way of doing it than by taxing the citizens and businesses, and then using the money to buy the stock of those businesses. Either way, the government will eventually end up with a controlling share of U.S. businesses.
With the government then concerned about profitability, in order to fill its tax coffers to be able to pay for its programs, how much oversight do you think they will be providing?
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
Not really. Any society comprised of more than a handfull of people necessitates some degree of control by a very few over the very many. Even if that control is theoretically vested in a "people" as it is in our republican form of government, there are those who will have the guns, the jails, and the power to make law in order for our society to continue to operate more or less in a reasonable way.
Security necessitates giving up some degree of freedom.
The question in my mind is not if a very few should have control over the many, but how much control should we give those few, and exactly what sort of things should they control. That is, in my mind, this is an issue of policy, nothing more.
Even in a society where there is no formal government, where people voluntarily decide to give up their right to form a corporation in an effort to create a socialist economic system, what will that society do to a few who wish to stay where they are, but create a private corporation rather than yield that right to the greater society around them? Will this libertarian society treat them as criminals as it would a sociopath who decides to kill others rather than play fair within the norms of that society? Will that society ask them to leave because they decide to keep resources to themselves rather than share them? Will the people around them try to "re-educate" them, by holding an "intervention?"
And who will make that call? That is, who will decide that for the good of that society, the ideals of libertarian socialism must be adheared to, rather than allowing a few "loose cannons" form their own private concern?
You're right--I am concerned with the idea of control by the few over the many. I'm also concerned with the control of the many over the few. But I think mostly it's that my idea of freedom is my ability to be left alone.
Re:The inertial of capitalism (Score:2)
Re:Wierd (Score:2)
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
Yes! A perfect example! (Score:2)
Re:'Cept there is no such thing... (Score:2)
Maybe, maybe not. If we place real value on the planet's ecology, and we figure out how to enforce that value through governmental regulation, it may be possible to alter the risk/reward curve to make it favorable to save the planet rather than to use it up as if it were an endless resource to be exploited.
Economic systems that place little or no value on the environment tend to abuse the environment more. The perfect example of this is communist countries, where the government and society placed no value on anything--and thus destroyed the environment and broke people down at fantastic speed.
The difference is that a free-market economy (which is far from what we have in the U.S.) places natural checks and balances on greed, and does a great job of keeping it from getting out of hand.
This is incorrect, and here's why. In an infinite market with infinite resources and infinite competition, your statement would be correct. That's because no matter how large any individual player gets, they cannot dominate the market and thus change the rules as to how the competition are played.
However, markets, resources and people are not infinite: they're finite. This means that when you have a player become larger and larger, they tend to control more and more of the finite market and resources that are out there. And this allows them to change the rules of the game. (That is, by achieving monopolistic status, a company can then leverage it's monopoly in order to force tying of products to allow it to dominate other markets. It allow allows the monopoly to engage in practices such as shutting people out by forcing standards in that industry, using market tying in order to raise the cost to others to do business, and otherwise shut competition out.)
In a totally unregulated market, this sort of tying, locking out and otherwise stifling competition would allow companies to create inefficiencies in the market place that allow them to profit more. This was the case with the railroads of the late 19th century, and the case of Shell Oil at the turn of this century, as well as of Microsoft today.
Re:'Cept there is no such thing... (Score:2)
I'll not here that's because it costs money to clean up the environment, and only the rich countries can afford it. If you're a poor starving family living in the jungles of the Amazon, clear cutting a farm seems more important than preserving biodiversity. (Note: the majority of Amazonian clear cutting is occuring not because of large corporations raping the forest, but because of small poor families clear-cutting farm land from the forests.)
These "robber barons" were the people who masterminded the greatest technological leaps of the last century (railroad building and steel making) and the greatest economic feats (modern finance.) They turned the US from a backwater agricultural county to a great industrial power.
I have nothing against the "robber barons" of the last century--they did what they did because the regulatory environment, high unemployment in the Civil War devistated eastern states, and the desire to establish dynasties a'la the 19th century European nations created the perfect environment for them to thrive. Frankly, even if we had anti-trust laws and other devices to protect free market competition in place way back then, the Carnegies and Stanfords of the world would have still rose to incredible power--simply because the economic push westward would have overwhelmed the judicial system.
However, the excesses of the last century also pointed out some shortcomings of the that system--including worker's revolts, ludditism, and the rise of economic theories of wealth such as Marxism which gave rise to all sorts of excesses and miseries of this century.
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
Are you suggesting that regulation, legal tricks and other mechanisms to steal people's land rights is preferable to buying the land from them?
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
Except... The desire to have your own backyard, free of sharing a common wall with your neighbors will always be valued over the efficiencies of being able to be shuttled to where you work in a cattlecar^H^H^H^H^H^H subway train. So if we assume market forces will force people into a cheaper appartment, will this really happen? Or will society concentrate on building only appartment complexes, leaving the stock of older homes and single-family bungalos alone?
And if this happens, have what we really done is improve the environment, but at the cost of making the rich richer (because the rich were the ones lucky enough to buy into a house before people stopped building houses) and the poor poorer?
I'm not suggesting that centralized planning is a great idea or a bad idea. However, I believe the consequence of this sort of action will generally be to make the gulf between the rich and the poor that much larger--if only because the rich are the ones to be able to live in more desirable conditions, even if they aren't actually wealthier on paper. (Such was the case in Communist countries, were wealth was not measured in money, but was measured in the size of your Daucha, or if you were given a chauffered limo.)
That's the problem with economics: often it's tied into politics, and often twiddling with the economic balance of power has unexpected and undesirable consequences. One of the reasons why some in academia favor socialism is because they believe it's a great bruit-force way to prevent the ill consequences of inadvertently shifing the balance of power--such as favoring building large appartment complexes may cause a widen gulf between the rich and the poor.
Re:Wierd (Score:2)
Actually, there are non-profits here who pool their money to buy polution credits in order to remove them from the market. And from what I hear, the AQMD allows this.
Just out of curiosity, what percentage of your industry moved to an area where it costs them nothing to pollute the air?
Supprisingly little, even though Mexico is only 200 miles south of here, and the passage of NAFTA permits them to do so pretty easily. The reason for it is that the Los Angeles shipping ports are one of the largest ocean shipping ports in the world--and it's cheaper to put in a few stack scrubbers than it is to figure out a way to transport goods over land a few hundred miles.
It's no different than a law saying "YOU MAY NOT EMIT MORE THAN THIS," other than it finances itself from its own tax.
It actually is different, because the polution credits may be bought and sold amongst companies who originally purchased them from the AQMD at auction. Further, it places a dollar cost for polution, which makes it easier to compute the break-even costs than simply passing a law. That is, if you pass a law, generally you pay nothing until you violate the law. But with the AQMD system, you know to the dime how much it's going to cost you to emit a pound of pollutants into the atmosphere--and so it allows you to quantify the cost of adding a stack scrubber verses buying another polution credit.
Air $0.25 (Score:2)
This reminded me of a cartoon from years ago showing an air vending machine. The idea was quite funny at the time and seemed very unlikely.
Now, I note that there are 'oxygen bars' in Ca. that seem to be catching on. It seems that there really is a small but noticable depletion of oxygen in LA. How far must it go before pollution is reduced?
Re:The Long Term Perspective (Score:2)
The simple answer to this is that you use governmental regulation to create a playing field that favors the environment. This is no different than other functions of the government in an eoncomic system.
That is, in a free marketplace (free defined as the freedom to choose amongst acts which are permitted by the rules of that marketplace), the purpose of governmental regulation is to create and protect "public concerns" which are otherwise not possible strictly within the marketplace. For example, governments generally build infrastructure such as roads and flat-rate mail delivery systems because these are things that cannot be done efficiently by private corporations. (Corporations who provide mail delivery, for example, may choose to neglect poor rural areas because it costs more to deliver mail there, and so it would make more sense economically speaking to stop delivering mail there, or at least to give a price surcharge.)
The government's role in a free market, then, is to provide infrastructure construction, environmental protection, and other "public goods" which cannot be achieved in the private sector.
To me, the question has never been "should the government protect the environment"--because the government is the only group or organization who can and should. The question has always been how, in a way which does not either (a) crush the free market (through socialism, for example, or through poor regulatory choices), and (b) is unfair to otherwise innocent individuals or is caprecious or unpredictable. Asking corporations to be environmentally aware is asking them to go against their fundamental mandate to preserve the profits and cash growth of it's stockholders (who are as often as not people like you and me who hope one day to retire on our 401K and IRA plans).
To me, then, this seems to be a regulatory issue, nothing more. What we need to do is create new regulatory environments that work within the free market place, rather than imposes arbitrary controls outside the free market place.
Corporations think short-term not because the people there aren't worried about where they are going to be in the next 20 or 30 years. Corporations think short-term because that's how our economic reporting systems work: profits are reported quarterly, taxes are reported yearly. Investment cycles tend to run short-term because every year about 1/40th of the people who own those investments are retiring, and they don't want to be forced to wait another 5 years because their investment instruments are locked out from them.
And personally I think this is the way it should be. That is, I don't think we should change reporting or investment rules to a 5 year or 10 year cycle in order to force corporations to think past the next quarter, because there are people out there who want access to their investments now, and who want to get their dividends paid now, not 10 years from now when they may have died of old age.
The government is the player in the economic market who is required to think long-term, who thinks about performing acts for the social and public good.
Just my rant, but people here need to realize that they are going to live three or four times their current age.
I hope so: I would like to live to between 105 and 140...
Maybe he should make a sequel. (Score:2)
Of course, the problem is that it is not the case that everyone's property rights are recognized, or that our definitions of property rights doesn't really cover the environment as a whole. This is like saying that as long as everyone's property rights are recognized, all the bad blood and wasted consumer and 3rd party resources are paid for by those producing spam.
Besides, it's this fixation with money that causes people to place hard quantified values on the worth of human life, health, and happiness. When a consumer buys a Twinkie, they aren't truly understanding the full implications of the manufacturing process that went into that little snack nor are they understanding the full implications of the wrapper, left behind for next few centuries. (That is, assuming that it is left open to the air to decompose rather than buried in a landfill for eternity.) The assertion that people left to their own devices will create a utopia ignores the effects of greed, cutthroat competition, and other baser human emotions.
Perhaps Leonard Read should write a sequel about what thousands of untold hands working without restrictions can do. He should title it "I, Ethnic Cleansing."
Re:utility is just preferences (Score:2)
What's interesting about this is that even in the limited world of a two-dimensional problem with money on one axis, and something on the other, when experiments were conducted using real students who could win real money in the experiment, plotting the results of the experiment looked like you took the graph with a line drawing of the optimal solution, put it on the firing range at 100 yards, handed some blind guy a shotgun, and have him fire a blast at the graph. That is, the experimental results only loosely clumped around the optimal result.
Granted, this is in part because you're dealing with college kids who frankly don't care that much if they win $20 or $50 for an evening's experiment. But it also largely has to do with the fact that the optimal solution (where you'll maximize your cash, for example) is often difficult to figure out.
And that's on two axis. Try scaling up to the multiple dimensional problem of the real world, and scaling up to players with varying philosophies as to how much beer and how much pizza makes them happy...
Re:Tragedy of the commons (Score:2)
corporations could not use every last drop of water or cut down every tree, because they would not have any left. instead, they would be required to plan to keep themselves alive, and we would see some systems that are already in effect become more common (eg growing saplings and planting them as new trees where old trees have been cut down).
Unfortunately, the problem with simply granting ownership and hoping that the solutions will appear is that it neglects the two facts that:
Consider: Forest Company uses up the timber on its plot of land in a non-sustainable manner. They proceed over to their neighbor and offer a large sum of money gained from not worrying about environmental costs. The owner sells, since if he doesn't, his neighbor might and he'll gain nothing. Forest Company then repeats this process.
Of course, eventually, the owners of the land not already purchased by Forest Company realize just how much their land is worth, and Forest Company finds it's now cheaper to try sustainable methods than to purchase new land.
Unfortunately, by this time the forest ecology doesn't have enough land/diversity to properly sustain itself.. so now *everybody* loses.
This may not happen, as the early owners may happen to realize their property's true worth - but this is hardly guarunteed.
And besides this, assigning private ownership to a chunk of land (or ocean) does not guaruntee that poaching will not occur. There have already been a number of unfriendly incidents based on some countries fishing other countries' waters.
Kwil
Re:Air $0.25 (Score:2)
Actually, the O2 bars in LA sell O2 not because there is a noticable depletion of O2 in LA due to polution, but because breathing pure O2 is a stimulant. Several of these O2 bars were founded by various Hollywood stars who are trying to give their restaurants an edge in an area where restaurant competition is extremely cut-throat.
Pollution in Los Angeles is lower than it has been in years, by the way.
And no, I haven't been to an O2 bar--too spacey and new-agey for my taste.
Re:If you want environmental reform (Score:2)
And guess what? Any real-world company will take the $5 and run. Why? Because they are concerned about the next quarters' profit. Capitalism is a broken system. Just because Soviet Communism was even more broken doesn't change this fact.
Re:The Environment is a Property-Rights Issue (Score:2)
Re:The Environment is a Property-Rights Issue (Score:2)
You are ignoring his point. Propose and explain exactly how one or even a significant majority of consumers can force G.E. to spend money to remove PCBs for water supplies. Don't buy their products? Then where are they going to get the capital to fund such a cleanup?
The fact is either the government has to force them to clean it up, the government has to clean it up, or a wealthy individual or group has to voluntarily throw money into cleaning it up with no chance of recovering a profit from it -- what's the free market motivation, then?
Democracy is a dictatorship with more than one foot on your neck.
If you somehow consider democracy to "less free" than capitalism (not that I'm seeing how "soft" is less pleasant than "blue"), what do you propose? Anarchy?
What [the USSR or China] practiced is socialism, without the "power is exercised by the whole community" bit.
In other words, facism, not socialism. Socialism, as Marx defined it, inherently involves democracy because the community controls it. Facism is totalitarian control with government controlled industry. The people have no input. The problem with talking about socialism or communisim versus capitalism is that there have been no pure socialist or communist societies. In practice, the Soviets were less socialist than France or modern day Japan -- which both have large Socialist parties, incidentally.
In a true free market economy, as he pointed out, corporations are feudal states. While their customers can more from state to state (most of the time), if all the lords are behaving badly, there's nowhere to turn. Consumers do not get a vote unles they're rich enough to own significant stock in the company. However, if they own significant stock, they may let their financial concerns override their ethical concerns due to the profit brought by the company's illicit behavior. Witness Microsoft.
It's not like they have a free market over there [in China].
Yeah, after all, the state/people owns and controls all the Microsoft, GM, etc. plants and subsidaries over there. It's not like union groups are in an uproar because American corporations are going to be giving jobs to the Chinese that used to be done by Americans. After all, the state owns everything over there.
Face reality. While China is more controlling of the market, it's just as much a hybrid market as that of most of the "free world."
I've also read a lot of other things. I've even thought about things myself, and talked them over with others who have different viewpoints. Which is why I have an informed opinion. Maybe you should try it?
If you've been just a thorough in your research and polite and thoughful in your discussions as you have been here, it's no wonder you're spouting off uninformed.
As another poster pointed out, maybe you should do some more research. The conspiracy theories of government investment via the Social Security fund show just how little you knew about the actual issue.
Re:The Environment is a Property-Rights Issue (Score:2)
The real solution to the "Social Security Crisis" is to close the program. Don't allow any more enrollees.
Re:Tragedy of the commons (Score:2)
> corporations could not use every last drop of water
> or cut down every tree...
So what you're saying is that Georgia-Pacific and Weyerhauser don't clearcut the forest sites to which they have access? It's like reading someone who says "Theory proves that that brick wall can't possibly be in my path," whereupon he proceeds to walk straight into and face out upon said brick wall.
Face the facts: the economic imperatives of capitalism require all business owners to exploit every bit of the environment they can to the maximum degree possible. The only thing that can stop profiteering corporations from devastating the entire globe is government action, that is to say, socialism. I'll say it again: socialism, socialism, socialism!
Maybe, probably, you and the general voting public these days will find that awful word so offensive that you'd prefer instead to strangle on the pollution created by unrestrained capitalism. Well, there's really nothing I can do to change the public's minds about that. So my guess is that, current trends continuing unabated, it looks like all of us, the entire human race, are doomed.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:Wierd (Score:2)
I completely disagree. An economic system which does not regulate pollution only makes sense if "clean environment" is an effectively limitless resource. For example if the world is very sparsely populated or doesn't have much polluting power. This was true 200 years ago. But now the world is more densely populated and we have a hugely increased ability to use up "clean environment" fast. So now "clean environment" should be regarded as a finite resource and people should pay for it and damaging bits of environment that you don't own should count as vandalising someone else's property.
Economically the argument is sound. Politically it's a dead loss cos the US is getting big short-term gains out of trashing the world's environment in an unregulated manner. (I say this not out of spite but because the average
American's car is horrendously inefficient and polluting, but the damage it causes spreads across the globe so the US doesn't feel the full force of it).
Re:The Environment is a Property-Rights Issue (Score:2)
As an exercise for the reader, point to "the people".
Re:The inertial of capitalism (Score:2)
<bite>
Yep, US cars consume on average about twice as much petrol per mile as the average European's car. The US economy produces more tonnes of rubbish per tonne of stuff than any other developed economy. US multinationals are responsible for more deaths due to pollution than the rest of the world's. [This last one is because you have more multinationals, not cos they're lots worse; however that gives the US government more power to do something about the problem and it isn't.]
Its domestic environment, maybe. Certainly not other people's localities or the global environment as a whole. Capitalism is way of balancing people's conflicting aims. Without some sense of things counting as other people's property, it doesn't work. There's no sense in which the US law regards the global environment as partly the property of foreigners, so things like CO2 emissions won't get cut.
</bite>
SOCIALISM FROM BELOW - haha! (Score:2)
Yeah, the crisis is, "How do we spend it all?" And I never said I hadn't heard the term. I said it was an oxymoron. And you have the gall to question my "learnedness," when you don't even read my posts carefully before replying. You've "qouted" all kinds of things I've not actually said.
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
... leads to more and more competition. As long as you pretend that wealth acts as a class, conspiring against other classes, you won't appreciate that poor people can USE the power of wealthy people against other wealthy people.
I understand the problem. You don't understand the solution.
-russ
Re:Maybe he should make a sequel. (Score:2)
You are exactly correct! That is why landfilling Twinkie wrappers should not be subsidized. That is why littering laws should exist. That is why plastics burning laws should exist. So that the full cost of the Twinkie is included in the price.
-russ
Re:Economic growth != physical growth. (Score:2)
That's exactly what economics does. It says that if the demand increases and the supply does not, that the price will rise.
I just got back from the gas station - prices are up to $1.70 over here,
Markets fluctuate. If you want to know about long-term trends, you have to look at long-term prices.
I'm talking about *real* prices, adjusted for inflation. Only a knave or a fool compares unadjusted prices. You can either believe the government's CPI, or you can compare the cost of commodities against wages.
most forests aren't in the US?
How did you come to that conclusion? Obviously not from the cited URL, which only talks about tropical forests. In any case, the obvious conclusion from the reforestation of America cannot be that economic growth leads to deforestation.
I did my research. Can you apologize?
Of course not. You didn't do research. You went answer-grabbing, and lo and behold, you grabbed at the wrong answers.
-russ
Incorporation (Score:2)
Then you can watch new problems crop up tenfold to take their place, as the rate of small business creation goes down the tubes. Running any business involves the risk that someday, your creditors (or your victorious plaintiffs) are going to take away everything you've invested and worked at. If running a business also required risking your home, your retirement savings, and your kids' college money, entrenched large businesses would be a lot more secure from those pesky startups.
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
If pollution is homicide, as many environmentalists (rightly) claim ... then Communism is murder with malice aforethought.
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
I find it rather amusing that the poster argues that most "intelligent and concerned consumers cannot really understand the full implications of the products they buy" yet we assume that there is some government/regulatory agency who can understand and act upon these implications for us.
No one, not even hard core academic economists, would deny that we might be better off if we had an appropriate social planner - someone who embodied the knowledge and wisdom of society as well as moral/ethical fortitude - make our decisions for us. In the academic literature, it's called the "Social Planner Solution." Heck, this idea predates as far back as at least Plato.
But the issue is: does such a Social Planner exist? Is there some group of people to whom we would trust such decision making? So what this boils down to is not so much an economics question, as a question on government.
If such a group exist, let's vote them in as benign disctators and long live a environmentally friendly, people friendly society! But if you tell me it's democracy, then let's go back to my first point ... if even intelligent consumers can't tell ... then how should we assume the mobocracy can! Remember, greed influences as much politicians as businessmen ...
Before beating up the market, tell me a specific mechanism that is better ... not just some theoretical black box. Both the environment and the economy are engineering problems, not pure science/theory.
Nobel(was Re:You should read I, Pencil.) (Score:2)
Re:The inertial of capitalism (Score:2)
an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
Although the U.S. is not purely capitalistic (IMHO there is no possibility of a pure economic or political system), it still is economically driven on capitalism. There are those who seek a more concise definition, but I humbly suggests the above still fits to a large degree.
-L
Re:The inertial of capitalism (Score:2)
My point was not necessarily that the U.S. is the worst offender (although it is in some respects), but that making a buck has a long lead on saving the world in our society (in particular).
-L
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
There's competition for import tariffs and other anti-free-market government favors as well. But that's only because people tolerate such nonsense.
with many kinds of collusion-- actors _will_ do things that benefit their competitors and hurt the poor,
You're not talking about collusion, you're talking about externalities. And besides which, every class of product (e.g. milk) has its substitutes (e.g. water, or soda). Every monopoly has its competition, even if the competition is from a substituting product.
the powerful ACTUALLY USE their combined might against poor people.
I know that they do. I have a credible plan to stop them -- one that has worked in the past. What is your plan?
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
No offense, but bullpucky. Even the most radical environmental groups I'm aware of (not just Greenpeace, but Earth First! and Sea Shepherd) have no stand on economics. They'll fight against what they see as misuse of the environment for economic reasons. I have yet to see an environmental group match your definition of "primitivist," and I can't think of a single group which has publicly advocated communism. (What you described as "socialism" matches communism; socialist countries do not have central control over all distribution of wealth, which would imply no sanctioned private employment, little to no personal property, and so on. That may describe Cuba, which is communist, but it doesn't at all describe France, which is socialist.)
I support the Nature Conservancy, too. But you don't have to be a communist to support the concept of national parks and wilderness refuges. Supporting things that benefit the country as a whole, even if you don't personally expect benefit from them, just strikes me as part of good citizenship.
Bobos (Score:2)
http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/talk/cover/00032
Re:Maybe he should make a sequel. (Score:2)
-russ
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
And Coase got a Nobel prize for figuring that out. Or more precisely, for figuring out that transaction costs, not the initial assignment of liability, are what interfere with an efficient solution to the problem of pollution.
-russ
RTFM: Making Corporatism eat itself (Score:2)
The ideas we're seeing here aren't really new (when taken as a whole). Love your environment and all will be well. The problem is that this has nothing to do with capitalism.
The best thing I can say is RTFM! Either grab a copy of this book (or it's predecessor Factor Four) and actually read what it has to say. Not trying to provoke a flame war here, but the post above is FUD pure and simple.
The books are about as far from a rehash of Nader or the cynical love-in described above as one can get. The whole premise of the group at RMI seems to be that for years the government has waved a stick and made empty threats to companies that harm the environment. Now RMI has come along and offered nice juicy carrots in their descriptions of short term benefits that any group of stockholders would have to love. By the way, while you're increasing your profits by 30% this year, you're also saving the planet.
As an example of how hard-headed and practical some of their advice is, here's a paraphrase from one of RMI's consumer oriented books on saving energy in your own home. "First, climb into your attic and plug any hole large enough for a cat to crawl through." A surprising number of the things they point out in Natural Capitalism seem just as obvious once you've read them.
Probably the best thing about the book though is that because it's written in terms of "here are a bunch of things you can do to increase your profits that, as a side effect, save the planet" the right people are reading it. I've personally got extra copies on order now that I'm planning on passing out to our corporate officers. If a few more of you did the same thing at your companies, I bet you'd be surprised at how happy management is to read the book.
If you're going to grab a copy, check out Hamilton Books [hamiltonbook.com]. The hardcover edition has just been remaindered and they have it available for $7.95 (about half what amazon wants for it).
Re:Get off your high horse (Score:2)
Yes. You can go off and set up the People's Republic of The South Forty (or however much land you could legitimately obtain) and regulate the industries there to your heart's content.
Of course, they would be free to leave, which I expect is exactly what would happen.
/.
Re:Best quote (Score:2)
Re:Capitalism (Score:2)
But land is a resource. Location is a resource. And so is mindshare. So by not evicting those outsiders who insist on living where they do but not playing well with the rest of this theoretical society, that society is still sharing some resources with these people.
So, does this society choose to stop sharing by evicting their neighbors who decide not to play well with others? Or do they continue to implicitly share some valuable resources because of a distaste of enforcing any rules in order to assure the continuation of their society?
Re:You should read I, Pencil. (Score:2)
free market, then that's a very strong claim that the existence of
market failure shows to be untrue. It would be better to say that,
provided that environmental and other side-effects are properly
compensated, and so long as markets are not prevented from moving
towards equilibrium positions (which they can be stopped from doing by
macroeconomic effects or by failure of market signals to make
themselves, without government interference), that prices reflect all
of the costs that environmentalists are concerned about.
I don't believe that even this weaker statement is true. A better
argument for free markets is that its alternatives do a worse job of
reflecting environmental costs in business decisions. But that is a
long way from saying that free markets generate optimal allocations of
resources.
Re:Wierd (Score:2)
Recycling is held up as a major solution to saving the planet. And while recycling works very well with aluminum and glass recycling, it doesn't work very well with paper (which is often bleached with toxic chemicals), or with scrap metal (which if not handled correctly may contaminate the air and ground water with heavy metals).
Personally I would like to see a market created for unbleached recycled paper pulp products, such as for the inner cardboard boxes and box liners for software (as an example) or computers. But that's just my wishful thinking...
Re:The Environment is a Property-Rights Issue (Score:2)
Geez. Calm down. Take some prozac or whatever they prescribed for you.
Rather than require people to negate their own existance "for others" -- whichever and whoever others -- I believe that people should guard their own values first. For instance, I place a higher value on the lives of my children than the life of any random stranger. Therefore I would not hesitate to protect my children before anyone else. If God asked me to sacrifice my children, I would tell him to get bent, because I value them most of all. I am selfish.
Re:the experiments worked, dude. (Score:2)
Actually there are some exciting results coming out of Caltech's economics studies in the last few years on the macroeconomic front. On the microeconomic front, though, that's mostly game theory--and that's what I was refering to, mostly.
One interesting result I recall seeing in a seminar I dropped into a few years ago was a study of the market. And basically they were saying at the time that the stock market boils down to chaos theory--that it's extremely chaotic, owing to the speculative nature of the market.
However, my original comment was in responce to an explanation of utility functions, which are basically the class of optimal solutions to N-player games--the very stuff the Caltech folks realized recently is all fubared.
(Forgive me if I screwed up some of my explanations of this stuff--it's been years since I took an economics class or did anything related to game theory.)