Trickle-down theory once again proven wrong

[scott2000]

The governments seem to have already decided to skip ahead over nuclear.

I was talking with my buddy the other day about his thoughts on nuclear. He was on a nuclear sub and it was neat hearing him talk about it. The technology for the sub was so old (50s?)by the time the sub was actually commissioned and it's still going.... He was thinking the technology could only be better by now....

Said it would be cool if there were mini nuclear plants in areas and thought it would be easier to manage....

I guess being in close quarters with the stuff made him fond of it.....

...

 

[JohnRoberts]

I was talking with my buddy the other day about his thoughts on nuclear. He was on a nuclear sub and it was neat hearing him talk about it. The technology for the sub was so old (50s?)by the time the sub was actually commissioned and it's still going.... He was thinking the technology could only be better by now....

Said it would be cool if there were mini nuclear plants in areas and thought it would be easier to manage....

I guess being in close quarters with the stuff made him fond of it.....

...

One aspect of the latter generation nuclear technology is ability to execute smaller local power plants, but this still has to overcome the NIMBY effect that has only been exacerbated by "scare us" media. So more small nuke plants means infringing on "more" back yards, not a positive for marshaling political sentiment.

Yes, the technology today is heads and shoulders better than most of what is in place today. But it all comes down to public sentiment and nuclear is losing that contest. 

JR

 

[fazer]

Said it would be cool if there were mini nuclear plants in areas and thought it would be easier to manage....

I live close by the GSA in Lakewood Colorado.  I know a few contractors that have talked about a small reactor buried deep in the complex for backup power.  This was the old Remington Ran factory site in WW2 and a test bomb site on green mountain.  I have wondered about these reactors used on military bases and such or if this is just urban lore.  The GSA for those who don’t know are the people that oversee purchasing of goods and materials for the government.

 

[JohnRoberts]

I live close by the GSA in Lakewood Colorado.  I know a few contractors that have talked about a small reactor buried deep in the complex for backup power.  This was the old Remington Ran factory site in WW2 and a test bomb site on green mountain.  I have wondered about these reactors used on military bases and such or if this is just urban lore.  The GSA for those who don’t know are the people that oversee purchasing of goods and materials for the government.

If you can put a nuclear reactor in a submarine (an old submarine) you can certainly make smaller reactors for use by utilities. There are tens of nuclear powered satellites in orbit, mostly launched by the USSR. Since what goes up must come down we will see them again.  :

Besides the obvious economy of scale enjoyed by larger power plants, more smaller nuclear power plants just create more opportunities for NIMBY (not in my back yard) political pushback, not to mention duplication of administrative overhead (like environmental impact studies, etc).

JR

 

[Matador]

Is it really fair to characterize any opposition to nuclear power plants as 'NIMBY induced by media scare tactics'?

I mean, history has shown us that when things go bad at a nuclear power plant, they go *really bad*.  As in cannot-go-inside-containment-vessel-for-thousands-of-years bad.  Say what you want about NG and other means of power production, they don't carry the same acute downsides.

In fact, if you factor the cleanup costs into the cost of the plant, then the power from Fukushima alone would need to be over $4 per kWh over 10 years just to break even, not including the cost of the plant itself.  That's over 30 times more expensive than the average power cost in the USA alone.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Is it really fair to characterize any opposition to nuclear power plants as 'NIMBY induced by media scare tactics'?

I am OK with that

I mean, history has shown us that when things go bad at a nuclear power plant, they go *really bad*.

we only hear about the ones that go really bad...

As in cannot-go-inside-containment-vessel-for-thousands-of-years bad.  Say what you want about NG and other means of power production, they don't carry the same acute downsides.

it is all a calculation with multiple variables. France seems pretty invested in Nuclear power, even while dealing with some low information voter negative sentiment after Fukushima. They have since reversed those accelerated decommissioning plans (for practical reasons).

In fact, if you factor the cleanup costs into the cost of the plant, then the power from Fukushima alone would need to be over $4 per kWh over 10 years just to break even, not including the cost of the plant itself.  That's over 30 times more expensive than the average power cost in the USA alone.

Yup... we need to avoid all future Fukushima's by not repeating those same mistakes and by using better modern technology.

I repeat, and I am not a fan of government regulation, BUT there is a place for government regulation of nuclear power because the consequences of a screw up there is pretty severe. Modern technology nuclear processes are harder to screw up (self quenching, etc).

JR

 

[dmp]

Off topic, but:

Nuclear power needs a heat sink, which is why they are located on ocean coasts or large interior lakes.
Obviously subs or large ships have a huge heat sink available as they are in the ocean.

Putting them in 'NIMBY' folks backyards is not a realistic possibility until the technology is downsized closer to a "back to the future" level.

The major safety issue with nuclear power is due to a couple things: 1) they cannot be dialed down quickly if they lose the heat sink  i.e. the nuclear reaction is generating a lot of heat constantly 2) by needing to be located on a large body of water, they are  exposed to black swan events like tsunamis 3) they need heavy, expensive infrastructure to move the heat away from the core, to generators, and then to the heat sink -  plus shielding for the radiation at the core.

 

[dmp]

Capitalism, the wisdom of crowds and markets, is demonstrably superior to command economies. Whats more, on an ethical or philosophical level, people should be free to spend their own money as they see fit; every dollar spent by the public corporately is one dollar less spent by individuals in aggregate individual capacity. Just on principle, I think that the combination of the moral hazard and the known efficiencies of markets strongly outweigh any perceived advantages of increased central planning.  Where to draw the line is always the question, though.

The problem with the binary team approach (Capitalism vs Socialism) is that both have serious flaws. 
Command (socialist) economies have tended to allocate poorly and become corrupt.
Capitalist economies tend to be destructive of the environment and shift wealth to a small minority (and become corrupt as the wealthy assume more and more power). 

Most economies have tried for a middle ground of well-regulated Capitalism.  There are strong arguments that Capitalism is significantly under-regulated currently, and the regulation has been captured by the wealthy and powerful. Evidence: the continued shift in tax structure to benefit the highly wealthy, the deregulation of environmental protections, the disparity in justice for the very wealthy vs the common person, etc...

I think the flaws in Capitalism are more important to be aware of since the developed world has swung so far that direction.  Why do Capitalist systems harm the environment? Because it is an optimization system with money as the sole objective.  Externalities like environmental damage do not impact the profit of individual companies. Wealth also brings a disparity of power which has historically hurt the less wealthy and powerful.

The only constraint on Capitalist systems is populist power (peacefully: through government, unpeacefully: through revolution).

Why do Capitalist systems shift wealth to a small minority? It is the nature of the system. As certain individuals gain wealth, they also gain power, they have the ability to gain  more wealth and power. They can influence the government. The cycle continues

As an example of how the scenerio has changed in the last 30 years in the USA, as the money goes through the economy, the highly profitable companies siphon off those profits to the owners of capital, and the wealth that is being generated by society piles up with the minority of people who own the capital.

The taxes paid on this money escapes taxes. Many corporations now pay no taxes, and the 'capital gains' on the income that flow to the Capital owners either has a reduced rate (20%) or can be avoided completely through inheritance.  If you have a stock that you've held for decades (say AT&T) and you pass it to your children, as long as it is less than $20 million, your children get the basis reset to today's price - i.e. no taxes were ever or will ever be paid on the capital gains. 

The trickle down theory in my interpretation is that as the Capital owners accumulate more and more wealth, they will start more businesses, compete for workers, and pay higher wages. Government policies to encourage this (tax cuts for rich people) would increase the trickle down effect.
But this is complete garbage. Obviously wrong if you look at any number of statistics from the past 30 years (like wages). It is a big lie that was used to extract wealth from the 90% of people that work for a living and transfer it to the very wealthy.

Tell your friends: renewables will continue to grow. Solar is legit. The future is bright! We'll still need thermal or nuclear power for the foreseeable future because of the need for terawatt hour level storage for seasonal demands, but 100 megawatt hour level storage is a reality today. This is awesome and really cool.

We don't need the USG to tax us and then give the money back as infrastructure spending for this to happen. It will happen because the technology will eventually simply be superior. Just like we transitioned from horses to cars, or motorola razrs to iphones -- or, in direct comparison, from coal fired power to gas turbine generators. The market will use the best technology available, and that's really great.

I agree - solar has gotten very cheap . I'm not sure how fast the economy will transition, but the transition to natural gas was pretty fast. 
Though I also work in energy (engines) and a lot of the technology development in energy has been seeded by government funding & university research.  I think it is a mistake to neglect this part of the story. And it is a mistake to blindly believe the free market can innovate better technology with the 'invisible hand'.  The incremental improvements of technology are no doubt achieved by individual action, but often innovations have had some significant amount of government funded research. Look at DARPA, SBIR, SBTT etc...  that leverage the power of individual companies by seeding work the private companies (or VC) simply don't see as profitable. There is no doubt from the historical record that we'd be worse off without this government funded innovation over the past 50 years. 

It's interesting that in all this talk about energy it hasn't been mentioned that utilities in the USA are regulated monopolies - basically planned economies. Although there are problems (CA for instance) in general it has been incredibly successful at providing cheap reliable energy to customers.  Look at the inflation adjusted cost of electricity in the USA for the past 50 years and compare it to other consumer goods.

The reason utilities are regulated monopolies is because the infrastructure is so expensive. Have three utilities compete for the same business in the same city and you'd have three times the cost of infrastructure for 1/3 the expected customers.
It's funny once you read about the regulation of utilities in the US to see the pro-Capitalists avoid talking about them .

It also is very interesting to read about network ownership and permitted monopolies. The railroads from a century ago and the modern network platforms, facebook, etc...

 

[JohnRoberts]

Off topic, but:

Nuclear power needs a heat sink, which is why they are located on ocean coasts or large interior lakes.
Obviously subs or large ships have a huge heat sink available as they are in the ocean.

I recall reading years ago about France having problems killing fish in a (large?) river they were using to cool one of their nuclear power plants. It was making the river too hot for the fish...  This may have been during a drought so river flow was insufficient, but your point is taken.

Putting them in 'NIMBY' folks backyards is not a realistic possibility until the technology is downsized closer to a "back to the future" level.

The major safety issue with nuclear power is due to a couple things: 1) they cannot be dialed down quickly if they lose the heat sink  i.e. the nuclear reaction is generating a lot of heat constantly

I am not a nuclear expert but I seem to recall discussion about self-quenching nuclear reactors so they should be able to shut down fairly quickly/safely.

2) by needing to be located on a large body of water, they are  exposed to black swan events like tsunamis 3) they need heavy, expensive infrastructure to move the heat away from the core, to generators, and then to the heat sink -  plus shielding for the radiation at the core.

I expect the current political resistance is too high to overcome. I still think modern nuclear would made a fair bridge technology for maybe the rest of this century, but I won't be around so tag you are it.

JR

 

[dogears]

It's interesting that in all this talk about energy it hasn't been mentioned that utilities in the USA are regulated monopolies - basically planned economies. Although there are problems (CA for instance) in general it has been incredibly successful at providing cheap reliable energy to customers.  Look at the inflation adjusted cost of electricity in the USA for the past 50 years and compare it to other consumer goods.

Eh, kinda. Public utilities suck, offer crappy public service, and are inefficient. I think there is an argument to be made for public control of transmission, much like roads and water - having two options is not in the best interest.

But deregulated generation and retail is hands down more reliable, better, etc. And most places in the US are not monopolies as you're describing and haven't been for decades. The transmission is usually a regulated utility (fixed margin and so on) but everything else is market forces.

 

[dogears]

The problem with the binary team approach (Capitalism vs Socialism) is that both have serious flaws. 
Command (socialist) economies have tended to allocate poorly and become corrupt.
Capitalist economies tend to be destructive of the environment and shift wealth to a small minority (and become corrupt as the wealthy assume more and more power). 

Most economies have tried for a middle ground of well-regulated Capitalism.  There are strong arguments that Capitalism is significantly under-regulated currently, and the regulation has been captured by the wealthy and powerful. Evidence: the continued shift in tax structure to benefit the highly wealthy, the deregulation of environmental protections, the disparity in justice for the very wealthy vs the common person, etc...

I think the flaws in Capitalism are more important to be aware of since the developed world has swung so far that direction.  Why do Capitalist systems harm the environment? Because it is an optimization system with money as the sole objective.  Externalities like environmental damage do not impact the profit of individual companies. Wealth also brings a disparity of power which has historically hurt the less wealthy and powerful.

The only constraint on Capitalist systems is populist power (peacefully: through government, unpeacefully: through revolution).

Why do Capitalist systems shift wealth to a small minority? It is the nature of the system. As certain individuals gain wealth, they also gain power, they have the ability to gain  more wealth and power. They can influence the government. The cycle continues

I was mulling this over last night and I think you've made some significant errors in your analysis. If corruption is a flaw in each system, then the flaw isn't endemic to either system, don't you think?

And second I don't think you've clearly understood or expressed the difference between capitalism and socialism: who owns the means of production. It's safer to talk about command economies vs market economies.

Command economies allocate poorly AND they become corrupt because they shift wealth to a small minority - the people who are charged with the allocating. In other words, there's no check on the central planners.

What's ironic here is that regulation is synonymous with planning. You say we need well-regulated capitalism, but then you say that the regulation are captured by the wealthy. OK - so we need central planning but we need good central planning, not corrupt. Every  argument you've laid out against capitalism isn't actually a critique of market economies, they are arguments against command economies.

The flaws you're describing aren't problems with capitalism, they're problems with people and political systems. You're badly mixing economic and political topics here, and it's making your conclusions all kinds of fouled up.

 

[dmp]

I was mulling this over last night and I think you've made some significant errors in your analysis. If corruption is a flaw in each system, then the flaw isn't endemic to either system, don't you think?

I agree, corruption is a flaw in the human race  ;D .  A propensity to corruption is endemic to people, not political or economic systems. We perhaps don't recognize our character is based on less civilized times where greed may have led to survival - now greed leads to moral compromises: corruption, etc. There's a tradeoff between individualism and social / tribalism in humans that came about over many generations of evolution. But anyway...

Command economies allocate poorly AND they become corrupt because they shift wealth to a small minority - the people who are charged with the allocating. In other words, there's no check on the central planners.

Like I said, I think it is more important to discuss and understand the issues with Capitalism since it is so prevalent in the developed world and the shift to undermine regulation and favor the wealthy through the tax code has been going on for 30 years. 

The best way to make some progress on expanding your understanding beyond the simplified cartoons you read on the web would be things like Commanding Heights (either the miniseries or the book), Freedom and Capitalism (Friedman), Road to Serfdom (Hayek), Zero to One (Thiel)
These are all right wing economic viewpoints of Capitalism. I would suggest reading some left wing viewpoints as well, but you might as well start with a more nuanced understanding of Capitalism from a right wing perspective.

What's ironic here is that regulation is synonymous with planning.

Do some reading - you'll learn that no well informed person believes Capitalism is viable without no government regulation. The US Capitalist economy has been regulated for it's whole existence, to greater and lesser extents. The right wing economists argue that regulation should be minimal and should not try to pick winners. Hayek in particular saw the danger of regulatory capture leading to central authority as a paramount concern. But there are key areas that require the government to regulate a level playing field for the vigorous competition of Capitalism to lead to prosperity.

Major examples:
anti-trust regulation
Read about anti-trust history in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
Basically, the benefit to society with a Capitalist system hinges on vigorous competition between companies. If all the competitors in a certain industry decide to cooperate in raising prices and stifle competition (i.e. form a trust), they can be more profitable but at the expense of the consumer.

Monopolies
When a company has a monopoly it has pricing power and can be highly profitable. The goal of starting a company is to have a wide moat / pricing power / network monopoly --  otherwise competition will eat your lunch.
An example of an industry that has vigorous competition and has been successful for the consumer is the airlines after they were deregulated. Profit margins are low, but consumers get cheap flights.
An example of a company with a network monopoly is Facebook. They own the platform and consequently, FB has a profit margin of about 40%.
In the 1990's warren buffet semi-famously talked about the profit margin of the SP500 (then ~6%) and said it would never be higher than this on average. It has now been running at 12%.
Why is this significant? Because competition has declined and the vigorous free market benefit to consumers has declined.
The book I listed above Zero to one talks about this in a easy to comprehend way.
The influence of business & wealth has been de-fanging the strength of government to do this as well - now monopolies are not illegal unless it can be shown they harm the consumer. Regulating bodies have had their ability undermined and leaders replaced with cronies from the businesses they are supposed to be regulating.

pollution & environment
Companies in vigorous competition will exploit resources and pollute the environment.  Why wouldn't they since it increases profits?
The tailpipe pollution regulations that have been in effect for 30 years are a great example. Without regulating the tailpipe emissions levels (CO, Soot, NOx, etc...) car and truck makers would never have been able to justify the major investments (millions and millions of $) to develop the technology and put it on cars and trucks (the aftertreatment devices on cars and trucks are very expensive). If the cost weren't spread out to every buyer,  it just would not have happened.
In economics, the tragedy of the commons, describes how individuals acting in their own best interest will over exploit, pollute common resources.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
There is no solution to this in unregulated free market systems.  The government needs to make and enforce rules.
To say that any regulation of Capitalism makes it synonymous with planning (i.e. Socialist) is ridiculous, since all Capitalist economies have had some significant level of regulation.

You say we need well-regulated capitalism, but then you say that the regulation are captured by the wealthy. OK - so we need central planning but we need good central planning, not corrupt. Every  argument you've laid out against capitalism isn't actually a critique of market economies, they are arguments against command economies.

The way to have a well regulated free market that is sustainable:
- a well informed public / free press.
- elect leaders that are NOT corrupt, ignorant, compromised a&&holes.
- Do not allow corporations & wealthy, influential persons to capture / control the government

Significant reforms are needs to accomplish this.

You can picture what we need like the three co-equal branches of government under the Constitution --  we need the power of the government and business to be in balance. The third co-equal 'branch' should be labor.  Unfortunately, the balance is badly broken in the US now.  The power of business&Capital is way out of balance with Labor and government capture is significant.  Corporate profit margins have risen, labor's share of income has declined, populism has risen, etc...

It's amazing what has been squandered in the US by the efforts of partisan media, think tanks / advertising groups, and corrupt selfish politicians.  And a complacent populous through the '80s and '90s.

The flaws you're describing aren't problems with capitalism, they're problems with people and political systems. You're badly mixing economic and political topics here, and it's making your conclusions all kinds of fouled up.

All I can recommend is you read some real real books on the subject. Politics is hard to avoid. Economics is fundamentally affected by government, and government is politics.
Read across the political spectrum if you want a well rounded view.

 

[dogears]

Haha. Your argument amounts to - you’re ignorant.

I’ve read Hayek and Friedman, and von Mises, along with Marx, as well as much of Plato, a good deal of Aristotle including Politics, Herodotus, Locke, Neville, and a good deal more besides.

Anti-trust and trust busting’s efficacy is a big myth. No monopoly has ever existed without enjoying significant government protection.

I am well aware of the tragedy of the commons, but this applies every bit as much to governmental systems as it does to economic ones - perhaps even more sharply. It is, you might say, the great flaw in democracy.

The US Constitution already has three co-equal branches. Asking for labor is silly: we already have direct representation in the government, and more than the original design since the 17th amendment.

Bleh. Anyway the problem is you keep looking at a and calling it b. Every problem you’re describing from airlines to reduction in regulation are created by intervention obfuscating the market pricing signal. That’s only possible through government intervention, but you curiously prescribe more of the disease as the cure.  And the problems that have allowed this disease, if you would call it that, is the consolidation of power through manipulation of a system which has no check on Lenin’s questions; who? Whom? As in, who rules whom?  There always will be one or the other, and the only good answer that we have is who rules are those who have civic virtue, and whom are people who either can understand that wisdom or have no power or ability to revolt.

In a pure democracy the manipulative rule the people. We’ve known this as mankind since Herodotus, Plato - this is no revelation.. We are re-learning this, and will in the 21st century. It is and will be a boring dystopia. We were so afraid of Orwell we walked into Huxley without even noticing.

 

[dmp]

Haha. Your argument amounts to - you’re ignorant.

It certainly isn't convincing that you need to make a personal attack to respond.  ;D
You are free to believe in whatever you want but no one here is interested in the incivility.
Go find somewhere else for that

 

[JohnRoberts]

Haha. Your argument amounts to - you’re ignorant.

Be nice...  He is not ignorant but has different influences. It is OK to say his arguments are wrong and why, calling him ignorant is indistinguishable from personal attack.

I’ve read Hayek and Friedman, and von Mises, along with Marx, as well as much of Plato, a good deal of Aristotle including Politics, Herodotus, Locke, Neville, and a good deal more besides.

you are not alone... but this isn't a contest.

There are modern economists and social scientists pressing the income inequality button pretty hard. Life must be pretty damn good if income envy is our biggest problem, but it is a politically successful screed (and has been for centuries). 

Anti-trust and trust busting’s efficacy is a big myth. No monopoly has ever existed without enjoying significant government protection.

crony capitalism is real and has been around longer than this modern version of capitalism, old craftsman guilds were monopolistic government protections of higher status citizens.

I am well aware of the tragedy of the commons, but this applies every bit as much to governmental systems as it does to economic ones - perhaps even more sharply. It is, you might say, the great flaw in democracy.

old and well inspected...  as the old saying goes "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." (Winston Churchill)

The US Constitution already has three co-equal branches. Asking for labor is silly: we already have direct representation in the government, and more than the original design since the 17th amendment.

Workers of the world unite, yadda yadda...  don't forget we are already into another presidential election cycle with primary democrats trying to out-lean further left than the next candidate. Hard to imagine getting left of Bernie, but with that many candidates it is hard to get noticed if you don't try.

Bleh. Anyway the problem is you keep looking at a and calling it b. Every problem you’re describing from airlines to reduction in regulation are created by intervention obfuscating the market pricing signal. That’s only possible through government intervention, but you curiously prescribe more of the disease as the cure.  And the problems that have allowed this disease, if you would call it that, is the consolidation of power through manipulation of a system which has no check on Lenin’s questions; who? Whom? As in, who rules whom?  There always will be one or the other, and the only good answer that we have is who rules are those who have civic virtue, and whom are people who either can understand that wisdom or have no power or ability to revolt.

In a pure democracy the manipulative rule the people. We’ve known this as mankind since Herodotus, Plato - this is no revelation.. We are re-learning this, and will in the 21st century. It is and will be a boring dystopia. We were so afraid of Orwell we walked into Huxley without even noticing.

I am glad that I am not the only one defending our government here. It is a remarkable creation considering how much the world has changed since then, and only wish we could get back on that page (constitution)... lots of modern politicians testing the margins.  The amount of money the government is spending is absolutely corrosive, and the new crop wants to significantly expand government, increasing the temptation for humans working in government to act human.

JR

 

[Matador]

Be nice...  He is not ignorant but has different influences. It is OK to say his arguments are wrong and why, calling him ignorant is indistinguishable from personal attack.

To be fair, I think he was saying, "Your argument amounts to - dogears, you're ignorant".  I did have to read it twice too.

I'm not sure why the argument has to be between a Leninist State and a Capitalist Dystopia:  everything exists on a continuum,  and the real debate is where we are and where we should be.

 

[JohnRoberts]

To be fair, I think he was saying, "Your argument amounts to - dogears, you're ignorant".  I did have to read it twice too.

I'm not sure why the argument has to be between a Leninist State and a Capitalist Dystopia:  everything exists on a continuum,  and the real debate is where we are and where we should be.

I read it wrong too...  as did DMP apparently... 

Either way few at this level of engagement on this forum are ignorant, while we are far from universal agreement over classic arguments still ongoing that are older than all of us (even older than me).

It is a fairly common flaw in self-inspection to rationalize that everyone would reach the exact same conclusions (opinions) that we have if exposed to the same often repeated arguments. That is clearly not reality.

I appreciate the thoughtful discussions that we have here (most of the time, from most of the members).

Carry on.

JR 

 

[dogears]

Yah, sorry for the confusion. I was saying that his argument was "read more because you [dogears] are ignorant."  Not that he was ignorant. Not intended as a personal attack at all.

I'm not sure why the argument has to be between a Leninist State and a Capitalist Dystopia:  everything exists on a continuum,  and the real debate is where we are and where we should be.

What I was trying to get at is that neither capitalism nor socialism are inherently good or evil.  You have centralized and decentralized market systems on one axis, and the range of selection systems for the ruling class on the other. It's not hard to envision a statist monarchy or a capitalist one; a  statist democracy or a capitalist one. Who plans and who rules are linked by necessity but that the rulers must plan at all is not a given.

The "problem" with socialism is it isn't universally voluntarily, so you have it at odds with individual freedoms. When it's done voluntarily - which probably describes 99% of human history in tribalism etc. - there's nothing inherently "bad" about it. Family units work under this same ideal, but only because the children and elderly don't get a vote. 

The reason the argument comes down to dystopia in whatever flavor is because in the western world a single worldview has more or less "won" for the time being. That worldview presumes / assumes many things about mankind, about governmental systems, about morality, and so forth. And, in my opinion, what that system - call it postmodern Westernism perhaps - guarantees is a boring dystopia. It's as if everyone is arguing how fast to go, but the direction is assumed.

 

[dmp]

In a reasonable discussion on a topic, making a statement of belief and citing a reference that backs it up is how you make it productive - it is not equivalent to telling the person you disagree with that "they're ignorant"

Anti-trust and trust busting’s efficacy is a big myth. No monopoly has ever existed without enjoying significant government protection.

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Are these wrong (and the cited references)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

Is there any reference for the above or explaining how a free market system without government regulation is not an environmental disaster?

 

[dogears]

The entire gist of your first post was "go read some real books and then you will have a better opinion". You gave me advice on how to expand my understanding beyond simplified cartoons on the web, suggesting I needed a "more nuanced view." You said "do some reading" for me to learn what every "well informed" person believes.

(Aside: This is something between appeal to crowd and appeal to authority - even better, because you can decide who is well informed by the circular logic of "people who agree with me are well informed".  For what it's worth, I never suggested laissez-faire capitalism to the extreme so add a bit of straw man to the list.)

You finished up by reiterating that "all you can say" - your only point, the summation of your post - is "read some real books on the subject" and "read across the political spectrum if you want a well rounded view."

By implication, at this point I'm not well read, my understanding is limited to simplified internet cartoons, I lack nuance, I am not a well-informed person, I need to read some real books, and I lack a well-rounded view.  As I said, I wasn't calling you ignorant, I was pointing out that your post to me was based on your assumption of my ignorance.

And you're going to lecture me about a reasonable discussion? lol ok.

Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

Sure. The CEO of my company likes to say, "strategy is done before breakfast," meaning making the strategy is easy, but you need the rest of the day to execute. In other words, simply because a group of people conspire to raise prices doesn't mean they will be successful in doing so.

I don't know about saying an entire wikipedia article is wrong. Can you be a bit more specific? But no, I'll go with von Mises, Rothbard, Fisher, Becker etc and stick with my claim that the classical view of a natural monopoly is theoretical only, and absolutely has never existed without government intervention or protection.

Here's a view about the myth of the classical natural monopoly.
https://mises.org/library/myth-natural-monopoly

The modern view of natural monopoly is not actually based on competition or the number of competitors but on prices - specifically, when adding another competitor will result in higher prices to the consumer. I don't know that this exists anywhere in practice, but I'm willing to believe that it is true for certain things (roads, power transmission, etc). Here's a well-rounded article on the subject, if you care to delve.
https://economics.mit.edu/files/1180

As the article above asks - and I think this is the key question "Are imperfect unregulated markets better or worse than imperfectly regulated markets in practice?"

Or this one, which notes that this is a nuanced subject - and there doesn't seem to be broad agreement on the best way or even the fundamental reason to regulated what are presumed to be natural monopolies.
https://www.un.org/esa/esa99dp8.pdf

Is there any reference for the above or explaining how a free market system without government regulation is not an environmental disaster?

Again, you look at a and talk about b. Let's remove the labels here to make our lives a bit easier, since we are tending to talk past each other based on disparate use of terms.

Let's assume you and I are each totally free economic actors. Does this immediately make you destroy the environment? It doesn't me. Even if there were an opportunity to make a lot of money dumping hazardous waste or something I wouldn't do it. I suspect you wouldn't either. Now, let's add an additional constraint: let's assume you and I are also rational economic actors, and our sole focus is profit motive. Suddenly we both are likely to do anything, moral or ethical or whatever, to make a profit.

The reason you criticize capitalism is because you say that the profit motive drives undesired behaviors. This presumes rationality, or at least that the...uh... let's call it the "aggregate vector" of motives are rational.

But, as we've already shown, individuals are first not solely profit motivated, and are secondly decidedly not economically rational. So I don't believe that we can know that the aggregate vector of a free market is solely decided by profit motive, particularly at the expense of environmental concerns.

What's more, since we know that the aggregate vector is nothing more than a kind of theoretical summation of individual motives, what is to say that the same vector derived from different means - voting, versus buying and selling - would product a different result? This is a kind of wishful irrationality I honestly can't understand. Why would the same group of people rape and pillage the earth for profit when left to their own devices, but voluntarily constrain themselves through voting? The obvious answer is they would not.

So, the reality is we need a subset of people making decisions on behalf of the aggregate vector -- which probably points in a generally good direction most of the time, or at least we know it points in the direction that society wishes it to by inspection -- to curtail those who would act against that vector. Right? In other words, legislators to punish or dissuade people from doing things society doesn't want them to do.

That's not a problem that is answered by capitalism. That's a political problem, not an economic one, and it's no different than addressing any undesirable social activity - criminal or ethical or otherwise.