Could it be that California’s regulations are actually counterproductive? More fundamentally, why would one have any confidence that these regulations are not counterproductive? What’s your “gears level” theory of how regulations end up being designed as well as possible for the common good, rather as an attempt to get the votes of uninformed electors, or as an outright corrupt mechanism of enriching well-connected businesses?
Here’s the gears level model:
(1) there is no guarantee, and regulations can be counterproductive
(2) there are many problems where the incentives are misaligned, and so capitalistic forces CANNOT solve the problem. The government is a critical piece of the system, like an organ in a human. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
You can also observationally notice that places with lots of government intervention can be either extremely nice (parts of Europe) or highly productive with the strongest economic growth known to history (China).
The undertone I am sensing is you have accepted political propaganda that generally says “government is bad”. This is not correct. Bad government is bad, but more good government is almost always better than a capitalist Moloch equilibrium.
Along those lines, what, for example, do you think of Drax wood pellets
Well, the math says every ton of pellets has a certain amount of CO2 you avoided releasing, but you have to correct for the harvesting, shipping, processing, and just the general scalability issues. There is only so much land in the world that can support a forest, it probably isn’t a viable large scale strategy.
Care to explain why rather than making this claim without an argument.
“It’s not a gears level model because.”
If I read the above, I claim:
1. There are no guarantees of government goodness
2. There are large classes of things only government can do, thus anarchy or limited government fails
3. We do not have examples of successful countries that did anarchy/limited government in human history, and modern day successes had large and very expensive governments, including the united states.
Seems like I acknowledged the point, gave a reason why government is necessary, and gave empirical evidence that government is necessary and it must be large. How much detail do you demand.
It’s not about detail, it’s just that what you gave is not a gears-level model.
Sorry, I feel kinda rude just leaving it like that, but… if that link doesn’t help, I feel like it would take a lot of effort to explain in depth, and I don’t think I want to put that effort in.
I made the specific claim that government is a critical part of a modern economy and well chosen policies make a country highly successful.
I give a mechanical reason—those policies cause availability of “public goods”, which multiply the performance of the economy. For example, China building high speed rail and large power networks and large sea ports and mass training thousands of engineers, refusing to fund liberal arts training, and mass training thousands of doctors rather than allowing a medical cartel to restrict supply—these are all government actions with consequences, and they all fit in the class of public goods. None of these things would happen organically from private industry for a number of a reasons that won’t fit in this post.
For this to be untrue—for this claim to be falsified—there would need to exist a counter example. There is not. People advocating for anarchy or various levels of libertarianism are simply scammers, they want their personal taxes lowered and plan to die from aging before the severe negative consequences affect them.
Could it be that California’s regulations are actually counterproductive? More fundamentally, why would one have any confidence that these regulations are not counterproductive? What’s your “gears level” theory of how regulations end up being designed as well as possible for the common good, rather as an attempt to get the votes of uninformed electors, or as an outright corrupt mechanism of enriching well-connected businesses?
Here’s the gears level model:
(1) there is no guarantee, and regulations can be counterproductive
(2) there are many problems where the incentives are misaligned, and so capitalistic forces CANNOT solve the problem. The government is a critical piece of the system, like an organ in a human. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
You can also observationally notice that places with lots of government intervention can be either extremely nice (parts of Europe) or highly productive with the strongest economic growth known to history (China).
The undertone I am sensing is you have accepted political propaganda that generally says “government is bad”. This is not correct. Bad government is bad, but more good government is almost always better than a capitalist Moloch equilibrium.
Along those lines, what, for example, do you think of Drax wood pellets
Well, the math says every ton of pellets has a certain amount of CO2 you avoided releasing, but you have to correct for the harvesting, shipping, processing, and just the general scalability issues. There is only so much land in the world that can support a forest, it probably isn’t a viable large scale strategy.
I note that what you’ve offered is not remotely a gears level model.
Care to explain why rather than making this claim without an argument.
“It’s not a gears level model because.”
If I read the above, I claim:
1. There are no guarantees of government goodness
2. There are large classes of things only government can do, thus anarchy or limited government fails
3. We do not have examples of successful countries that did anarchy/limited government in human history, and modern day successes had large and very expensive governments, including the united states.
Seems like I acknowledged the point, gave a reason why government is necessary, and gave empirical evidence that government is necessary and it must be large. How much detail do you demand.
It’s not about detail, it’s just that what you gave is not a gears-level model.
Sorry, I feel kinda rude just leaving it like that, but… if that link doesn’t help, I feel like it would take a lot of effort to explain in depth, and I don’t think I want to put that effort in.
It satisfies the criteria.
I made the specific claim that government is a critical part of a modern economy and well chosen policies make a country highly successful.
I give a mechanical reason—those policies cause availability of “public goods”, which multiply the performance of the economy. For example, China building high speed rail and large power networks and large sea ports and mass training thousands of engineers, refusing to fund liberal arts training, and mass training thousands of doctors rather than allowing a medical cartel to restrict supply—these are all government actions with consequences, and they all fit in the class of public goods. None of these things would happen organically from private industry for a number of a reasons that won’t fit in this post.
For this to be untrue—for this claim to be falsified—there would need to exist a counter example. There is not. People advocating for anarchy or various levels of libertarianism are simply scammers, they want their personal taxes lowered and plan to die from aging before the severe negative consequences affect them.