Galt's Gulch
10

Capitalism saves the environment

Posted by Vinay 8 years, 4 months ago to Economics
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Ammunition to convince people that Capitalism is good for the environment.
SOURCE URL: http://www.thesavvystreet.com/capitalism-loves-the-earth-but-the-greens-hate-capitalism/

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  • Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 4 months ago
    Well said. What the environmental wackos don't understand is that true capitalists aren't one-and-done. They want to make profits every year. That's true business - long term and steady. It's the looters who are in it for a quick fix. Real businesses aren't interested in antagonizing their investors or their patrons because they need them! It's the same with their treatment of the environment: most aren't going to intentionally destroy something that could be used later - even if it requires a small effort now.
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    • Posted by Danno 8 years, 4 months ago
      Yes, any capitalist biz (i.e. no tax money funding or bailouts) first objective is to please the customer. Think Apple under Steve Jobs, no debt ever only equity investment.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 4 months ago
    The problem we have is that our history has been revised and confounded. Even those of us that went to school in the fifties and sixties learned it wrong. I would put this as a top priority to fix first. I wish we could put this article on a billboard or play a narrated version just under the rapping while those are skateboarding around. I laughing here, but this is a problem...so is the present level of consciousness, but that's my job here.

    Interesting point about the word "Greed"; it seems greed was not always a bad thing, prior to the French connotation, it was a good thing and a resource to be counted upon when times got hard.
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  • Posted by wiggys 8 years, 4 months ago
    You can present every logical argument with factual information showing that capitalism makes every aspect of life better to certainly include the environment, but due to the poorly educated in the usa and I believe europe as well we capitalists have no capability to convince them of our position. THEM is supposedly the educated of our country. Losing battle.
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  • Posted by Lucky 8 years, 4 months ago
    Stephen Hicks' article is very good.
    I want to add some points-
    -The technical name for the kitchen cleaning problem is 'the free rider hypothesis'. It is very common, it seldom works well.
    -In the shared house, 'the eight private rooms varied from clean to messy'.
    It can happen that the messy ones are a threat even tho' the rooms are private, for example as a source of pests. The concept of property rights does not permit intervention on the grounds of dirt or self-harm, but, intervention may be justified when the pests become a threat to others. If walls or barriers are nor practical then intervention should be based on some contract written or implied in which a standard of behavior and cleanliness is required.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 4 months ago
    Can't get the URL to appear.
    Oh well, that never stopped me before.
    It is unfortunate that rationality no longer is used in the asylum named after the man who was the epitome of rationality.
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  • Posted by Vinay 8 years, 4 months ago
    Even very old capitalist owners think long term, because they think of the legacy they want to leave even if they don't have children. Otherwise they also don't want to ruin the asset for their children--do farmers ever trash their own farm in their last years? What the Greens don't understand is that corporations are very long-life entities. It is in their interest to think many decades into the future, and plan accordingly. In fact, bigger the corporation, ESPECIALLY those involved in energy, the more likely they will plan extremely long term, and they need to.
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  • Posted by davidmcnab 8 years, 4 months ago
    Capitalism is like a chainsaw - powerfully constructive in the hands of people with intelligence and skill, and horrifically destructive and dangerous in the hands of idiots.

    In the capitalism and environment debate, it's useful to reference New Zealand, a country with two major assets - a predominantly pasture-fed dairy industry with top breeding lines, and a stunning tourist-magnet environment.

    The dairy industry is rapidly destroying the environment, to the point where most rivers, lakes and creeks are now too dangerously polluted to swim in. This is threatening the tourist industry. And now, the dairy industry is destroying itself, through farmers burning out their pastures through excessive herd densities and over-fertilisation, as well as selling off their top genetic breeding lines to overseas competitors. This form of capitalism is completely unsustainable, and will turn New Zealand into a third world country (or at least an impoverished post-Soviet-style state) within 10 years. KPMG produced a report in 2010 warning New Zealand about this; New Zealand ignored it in search of short term profits.

    The Greens party here have embraced capitalism, but they do so from much longer term strategic timelines. They think: what decisions now will imbue our children's generation with greater business opportunities than we've had today? And from that perspective, environmental sustainability makes a ton of financial sense!
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    • Posted by $ WilliamShipley 8 years, 4 months ago
      Many people confuse capitalism with a quest for short term profits. Capitalism is just one of the systems for deciding who get's to determine how to use the assets generated by productivity.

      One of the most common historical mechanisms was the Chief/King. When, under the leadership of the Chief, assets were accumulated, he got to decide what to do with them. The implicit presumption is that he had the abilities to do so. Since this role was typically hereditary, it counted on genetics which works -- until regression to the mean gets you or the situation changes requiring a different skill set.

      There are also political means for deciding, either through democracy or communist type structures. This implies that the person who can get the most votes or the one who can rise to the top of the party is the one qualified to decide how to manage resources. This fails pretty quickly but remains popular.

      Capitalism says that the person who made the wealth gets to decide what to do with it. This does not guarantee that they will decide wisely but it does mean that if they decide poorly they lose the power of decision relatively quickly.

      Nothing in this implies that the person who makes the wealth should not think long term. I do have a problem with the word 'sustainable' because it typically fails to take innovation into account and assumes that you will always keep doing things the same way. Of course trashing the water is obviously bad and if you cut down trees you should plant more. But there are good capitalist reasons for doing both of those things.
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