Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Seriously, though, how would a libertarian society address global warming?
by
JA37
on 19/12/2011, 14:12:18 UTC

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Do you still live under the delusion that what you pay and what cost the company have are somehow connected?
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Not in the electric power industry.
But you think that they do in other industries?

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Here a private company raised their prices because people were using their service, when according to you logic prices should go down. The only connection there is, is when their cost is higher than what they can charge.
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That's not quite what I said. The price to an individual customer should go down as their usage goes up. But higher total usage across all customers will cause prices to rise. It's the same with any other product. If you want to buy 10 Volvos, you can probably negotiate a rock bottom price. But if everyone wants a Volvo, they're all going to pay more.
The same is true in the power industry. Large consumers get better deals. You're not a large consumer, so they charge you whatever they can.

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What I find interesting about the German village discussed is that the Government have actually set a price that the power companies have to buy power back to. Without that law there would be no buyback and no incentives to produce power for small communities. The government is acting as an enabler here, promoting innovation and change.
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Right, but it's promoting inefficient innovation and change. It's not clear that producing power that costs more than people are willing to pay for it is beneficial. Meanwhile, the resources that went to producing this miniscule amount of unprofitable power can't go to other things.
How do you know it's inefficient? The government has successfully managed to create a village that is self sufficient and given incentives to others to break free from the power companies. Yes, it's a shame that the money instead isn't in the pockets of the power companies, where it would do so much more good.  Grin

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Not what people would call libertarian I guess. Let's see a way a libertarian could address global warming, this one wasn't it.
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The right way to deal with global warming is to become so smart and rich that we forget it ever even was an issue. This is the same way the human race has solved every problem it's ever solved.
That brings us back to how we find the next Einstein/Beethoven then? How to provide education and a level playing field for all so that everybody can reach their maximum potential. Except we should only look after ourselves, unless we feel a little charitable around Christmas and donate a little to some poor fellow.