A different, possibly more market-oriented, solution would have been a carbon tax on emissions instead of mandated efficiency standards. I think it would have gotten us to a similar place. But there's not anything inherently anti-market in saying "you cannot fill up collectively owned air with emissions."
Libertarianism are against regulations they consider paternalistic and which prevent free exchange of goods and services -- for example, minimum wages and taxi unions.
So you could argue both sides of that, although I get your drift.
Reason I mention that is they believe the market should be the master, and currently, the government won't let the market work in this particular area.
The Libertarian parties in the US are not representative of many libertarians.
Here's what I was thinking: Take the current approach with the Carbon certificate and decentralise it using blockchain technology (e.g. Ethereum) hooked up to (to be made) publicly available sensor data on O2, as well as a public data on land ownership; Give every patch of land globally a wallet address. Make an App and API for the payment process, based on liters of gasoline / oil bought / electricity used for a certain area / KM of flight taken (convert to Mols of CO2 assuming a perfect flame). Distribute the payments evenly among O2 wallet addresses. For unclaimed land and international waters, make a fund that can be distributed among national governments, e.g. by how much unclaimed land and coastline they have.
At first the payments are completely optional, made by users that want to become carbon neutral. However, businesses and governments can choose to use this system to easily implement mandatory carbon neutrality without the need to trust a third party. Blockchain powered Dapps allow just this - having code running on a network that everyone can audit, but no-one can change.
There's a few sites which aggregate the public datasources, like http://aqicn.org/map/world/
How could you filter out the noise from materials in the ~100km of atmosphere between the satellites and the targets? More pragmatically, could you explain it in a courtroom & convince the jury that it works?
I understand that you're disappointed that this extremely useful idea doesn't have a simple solution.
Btw. how about something like OCO-2? I couldn't find anything about its spatial resolution, but it seems to allow ground measurements of carbon sinks and sources.
> OCO-2 records how much sunlight is reflected off the CO 2 molecules in an air column. OCO-2 makes measurements in three different spectral bands over four to eight different footprints of approximately 1.29 km × 2.25 km (0.80 mi × 1.40 mi) each.
It's air columns, so again you would have a hard time proving that the source of the detected pollutants came from the area & excluding the case that they drifted into the area at a higher altitude.
Issues are independent from each other. Continuing to discuss each point as it fits into the frameworks of the popular ideologies only serves to polarize when productive change requires unification.
When one says "Libertarians are wrong about X", and someone answers (as several did here) that Libertarians don't necessarily believe X, you're not arguing about X but about the definition of the word "Libertarian". But all too often that argument can then continue indefinitely, with both parties thinking they're arguing about X, even though they may not actually disagree about anything except definitions of terms.
This is the fundamental root of the degradation of political discourse over the past few decades, IMO. Conversations without labels I've found almost inevitably result in previously opposed party members finding common ground and shared paths to improvements.
Policy discussion should revolve around 2 questions, IMO:
1) What should the world be like?
2) What could be done to make the world like we want?
People will often find that different aspects of those two questions cut across party-line ideologies in surprising ways.
I agree with you that labels create sides, but the reality is those that want labels (e.g. each respective party) attach their label to their causes and vocabulary. Regulations (and the abolishment of) is one that the right seems to want to claim.
>generally meaning people who want favor the market to make decisions instead of the government
People who favor no regulation aren't against all regulation. You see the difference, right?
>Regulations (and the abolishment of) is one that the right seems to want to claim
Show me where everyone on "the right" wants regulations gone. It's about as relevant of claiming that everyone on "the left" wants to throw the federal government deep into debt for a bunch of unfunded social programs because of Bernie's proposals.
Often, those who are not libertarians will support a regulation simply because they agree with its stated aim... things like "the patriot act" or "the affordable care act".
Those names are chosen to sound good, not because they reflect the intent of legislation or the outcome of it.
To give you an example of the folly of fuel economy regulation, consider that 90% of automotive pollution is created by the oldest 10% of cars on the road. Does it really make sense to force all buyers of new cars to pay extra? Why not charge a tax that increases for every year a car gets older, so that the person driving the smoke-emitting clunker has an incentive to upgrade into something that is cleaner and safer.
Libertarians value having a clean environment just like anyone else does. The question is how to create regulations that are fair and don't create disincentives for innovation. Note that several automakers needed government bailouts partly due to the cost of complying with fuel economy regulations. But rather than letting those companies fold and allowing Tesla to rise to prominence much sooner, our regulators propped up the makers of the most polluting cars, a move which set back US emissions significantly (compared to the counter-factual I described).
Are you a Real Libertarian, or a ROYAL Libertarian? is a must read.
Yes, they are. See https://www.lp.org/issues/the-economy/
"Libertarians believe that the only proper role of government in the economic realm is to protect property rights, adjudicate disputes, and provide a legal framework in which voluntary trade is protected."
Second, environmental regulation falls out of property rights, since pollution spreads onto people's property. If you pollute a stream, the stream carries the pollution to someone else's property and damages it.
Rather than have a priori environmental legislation, the libertarian position is to wait until the (possibly irreversible) damage is done, then try and find the person who did it (if you can, and good luck if it was a variety of entities), then take them to a court, then prove them at fault (not a given, especially if more than one party), get a judgement of fiscal damages against them (hopefully they have enough money for recompense, but not enough money to tie you up for years), then actually get the money from them, and finally put that money towards cleaning up the spill (again, if it's not irreversible).
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism :
"Some libertarians advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights,[7] such as in land, infrastructure, and natural resources. Others, notably libertarian socialists,[8] seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production in favor of their common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[9][10][11][12]"
You have picked a bad example.
"Pollution" in the sense you're using it is entirely independent from carbon emissions. Old cars pollute because they have poor emissions controls. Carbon emissions are directly proportional to fuel consumption regardless of emissions controls. For example, a fifty year old VW Beetle gets the same 30MPG as a brand new car, which means it emits exactly the same amount of carbon, but much more pollution, meaning particulates and smog.
The purpose of fuel economy regulations is not to reduce particulates, it's to reduce carbon emissions and oil imports. There are separate regulations covering particulate emissions for new cars, but nobody complains about those because highly effective modern emissions controls are a solved problem. How to make a big fast car that gets 100MPG is not.
The correct solution to the smog problem is to impose emissions limits on all cars. If your old car pollutes too much you either pay to retrofit some modern emissions controls or you don't drive it on the road.
The correct solution to carbon emissions is an energy cross charge. You tax carbon (trivial to do at the pump for gasoline) and use the money to subsidize non-carbon energy. That lets you use half as much carbon tax for the amount of price differential you're creating between carbon and non-carbon energy, and it takes no money out of the average person's pocket. It just means you pay more for gas and less for electricity, which makes you want to use less gas and more electricity by buying an electric car.
In other words, CAFE is stupid but not for the reasons you said.
That's not really nice. Some poor fellow with his old beater he drives less than 2000 km a year gets to walk home and look into spending big money because his car didn't pass some arbitrary limit. The next guy who passes the limit by a hair may drive all the 30 000 km he wants and can easily afford?
Seems like this tax burden would fall disproportionately on the poor who couldn't afford to upgrade their old clunker in the first place.
US libertarians are a special breed that hacked up classical libertarianism to fit within the framework laid down by the US Constitution.
Basically they are believers in the US Constitution first and libertarians second.
Not a rigid definition but neither is the parent post
Isn't the problem the pollution emissions, not the age of the car? Charge people an emission tax based on manufacturers' guidelines, and then switch to periodic measurements after the car is greater than N years old (N>5). That way, people can buy new, polluting vehicles as they wish & their budget can stretch to.
This is the UK's approach, which works because cars have a yearly check for roadworthiness.
Are you saying that the name Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act was chosen for something other than descriptiveness?
> The question is how to create regulations that are fair and don't create disincentives for innovation.
That's not what I've heard libertarians advocate. They generally advocate for regulations that don't restrict - that is, no regulations.
So... am I right that you, as a presumptive libertarian, support the fuel efficiency regulations passed in the 70's and 90's, as witnessed by the evidence in the linked article? If someone expert told you that similar regulation passed today would have a similar effect, would you support it?
No I would prefer a carbon tax charged per vehicle based on miles driven per year and the pollution emitted from the vehicle.
> If someone expert told you that similar regulation passed today would have a similar effect, would you support it?
What effect did it have? Do you think automakers would have continued to use 1960s era engines?
The question to be asked is not whether I support it but whether a different policy might have been far better. I think a tax would have had a far less distortionary effect on the economy and potentially a more beneficial effect on the environment.
Your "far better" proposal is potentially worse.
I genuinely don't understand how a technical person can look at the graph in the linked article and ask that question. This is just willful disbelief..
Yes, and a commons, and must be protected for that reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
For example, people want clean cars. Government mandates cleaner cars. Cars are now clean enough to make most people happy, but still somewhat dirty. If government didn't act, the overwhelming number of people who desired clean cars may have pushed the market to switch to electric cars. That's happening much more slowly now, because the solution the government implemented was "good enough" for most people.
The elephant in the room, of course, was that the government only mandated the minimum - there was nothing stopping the local businesses from creating more than that which, of course, they absolutely did not do. This is the essence of libertarianism in reality - a whole lot of complaints on restriction of activity and "if we were more free, this would happen", but never any follow-through.
It's a leap in technology, analogous to the jump from carburetors to electronic fuel injection.
Specifically, there's been a huge advancement in turbochargers in the last ten years. Advances like water cooling, ceramic bearings, and ceramic wheels. Turbos are far more efficient, durable, and well behaved than they were just ten year ago.
The massive advancements in turbochargers coupled with dual variable valve timing and direct injection means we can get huge amounts of efficiency and power out of the tiniest of motors.
Customers want power and fuel efficiency, the government mandating it did little to enhance that. There's plenty of loopholes for auto makers to skew their mileage numbers and make regulations basically useless. The driver behind faster and more efficient engines was customer demand and the technology to make it possible.
There are in fact, two types of regulation: "Safety and Soundness" and "economic."
Economic regulation is almost always a bad thing and results in gross market inefficiencies like barriers to entry, cronyism, and destroys any hope of a functioning capitalist system. Think trucking regulations in the 70s and before...
Safety and soundness is almost always a great thing as it helps ensure we are able to have a healthy and functioning society. Seat belts is a great example of this...
Where most people, and I agree, it's generally libertarians and republicans go wrong on the is conflating the two types of regulation or not being able to see which kind of regulation it is clearly. Granted it's not always easy to know which...
A prime example of people getting it wrong is with banking regulation. Banking regulations, for example a lot of people thought Glass–Steagall was economic regulation and it was not-- it was in fact a safety and soundness regulation that made unbelievably great sense. It's destruction cost the world greatly because it allowed unsafe markets to be created, corrupted, and later destroyed as a result.
Energy and environmental regulation is another one where it's strictly safety and soundness regulation but people complain about the cost. Then they start calling it "economic regulation" because there's a cost associated with it. Well there is a cost associated with everything including not protecting the earth and its inhabitants. I without hesitation say the cost of a de-regulated environment will be dramatically higher than the cost of implementing and progressing with the regulations. Unless of course one would prefer extinction.
Yes some business and markets may go under because of safety and soundness regulation but this is because they were not correctly accounting for the true cost of business. If they had been, it would have NEVER been profitable.
Edit: I'm very, very left but it's solely a result of my economics education. I started life right, then moved to a pseudo libertarian outlook, and finally abandoned all of that to move to the far left. Because it's what makes the most scientific sense-- and economics is in fact a science.
You're just creating terms that only mean "good regulation" and "bad regulation" and arguing that all we need is to have the good regulation but not the bad regulation. The business of separating the one from the other is the whole issue.
> Yes some business and markets may go under because of safety and soundness regulation but this is because they were not correctly accounting for the true cost of business. If they had been, it would have NEVER been profitable.
Problem: Minors are gathering in outdoor community spaces to consume alcohol.
Solution 1: Impose liability on operators of community spaces. Many community spaces can't afford the expense of constant monitoring and close down.
Solution 2: Impose liability on stores that sell alcohol to minors. A liquor store that had been doing significant business with minors goes out of business.
Both solutions mitigate the same problem but different regulations impose the cost on different people.
It's also trivial to devise regulations that will simultaneously be effective and inefficient. You can easily prevent elevator accidents by prohibiting elevators.
For starters I didn't create those terms. The second issue I have is your statement is completely unqualified, that the problem is separating them. Please qualify how they are the same or provide evidence. Right now you're just making things up or so it appears.
> Problem: Minors are gathering in outdoor community spaces to consume alcohol.
For one you assume it's a problem. It may or may not be. Your solutions are at best a false dilemma and are limiting choice when there could be and are a multitude of other options. If there's a point you're trying to make with your example it has gone well over my head.
> It's also trivial to devise regulations that will simultaneously be effective and inefficient. You can easily prevent elevator accidents by prohibiting elevators.
Yes... You can trivially make anything work or not work. What is your point? Are you attempting to say there is a triviality to making something safe and sound and/or economic in regards to regulation? I really don't at all know what your point is here. What is the relevance of this in the conversation?
Right now I'm very honestly, very, confused about what you're trying to say.
Protectionist taxi licensing regulations nominally exist for safety reasons and might in fact do both things at the same time. The "safety regulations" around nuclear power plants were specifically designed to make them not economically viable, by a baptists and bootleggers coalition of anti-nuclear weapons activists and fossil energy companies.
The distinction doesn't provide a useful filter, it's just a restatement of the fact that cronyism is bad.
> For one you assume it's a problem. It may or may not be. Your solutions are at best a false dilemma and are limiting choice when there could be and are a multitude of other options. If there's a point you're trying to make with your example it has gone well over my head.
Suppose hypothetically that under-aged drinking is a problem. That there are a multitude of other options to solve it is the entire point. The different choices have different economic consequences, so whoever is writing the legislation gets to decide who they want to kill and who they want to save.
A pure example of "bad" economic regulation would be completely naked. There would just be a law that says that only GM can sell cars. But that never really happens. Instead it gets dressed up in some ostensibly legitimate justification.
Can you share some literature for the non-academics? My personal study into economics turned me "pseudo libertarian", i dont see myself going to the left. I wonder what ideas could.
> and economics is in fact a science.
Thats a very right-wing approach to economics!
You need to justify that, otherwise it's pointless claptrap. The far left advocates for lots of government-provided services, which means markets without competition. I'm not aware of economic theories that strongly back the idea that no competition is best for social utility.
> and economics is in fact a science.
Well there are large portions of economics that are bunk. If you have a field that has multiple "schools of thought", then it's not really scientific because it means there aren't experiments to reproduce. If it's not reproducible, it's not science.
So most 'economics' studies that compare things like government structures, entitlements, etc are about as useful as trash. There are so many confounding variables that can't be controlled for that it's really easy to ignore all of the ones that disagree with the author's premise.
I don't need to qualify it. You can study it. You don't walk up to a physicist and ask them to qualify relativity they say it's science and to go learn it. So go learn you some economics for make benefit your brain.
> Well there are large portions of economics that are bunk. If you have a field that has multiple "schools of thought", then it's not really scientific because it means there aren't experiments to reproduce. If it's not reproducible, it's not science
You can have different schools of thought, take super symmetry vs multiverse in physics right now. I also don't know how you can go from multiple schools of thought to not being reproducible and thus not science. Different ways of looking at a problem will yield the same answer if it's correct. Im aware of nothing in economics that goes against this. The different schools of thought are trying to solve largely different problems. Assuming I at all understand what you mean by this...
> So most 'economics' studies that compare things like government structures, entitlements, etc are about as useful as trash. There are so many confounding variables that can't be controlled for that it's really easy to ignore all of the ones that disagree with the author's premise.
Can't be controlled for yet. Neuroscience will put all the social sciences out of business one day. And to make such a broadly sweeping statement is just full of so many fallacies I'm not sure where to start addressing them so I won't because it's pointless. Have you studied economics? Or can you more thoughtful provide examples?
Yes, a significant amount about pricing and market theory. Very little of it supports significant government intervention into markets.
Look at net neutrality for example, the reason ISPs can be assholes is because of regulatory capture effectively granting them local monopolies. Google, one of the richest companies in the world, had to give up on Google Fiber because local regulations blocked them at every step. Now we're left with cable being the only viable high speed connection (fast enough for HD video, etc) for huge swaths of the US because of excessive regulation.
So the only feasible way forward by most left-leaning people is even more regulation on how traffic can be handled. Nothing to introduce more competition, just more fuel for the regulatory capture fire.
>And to make such a broadly sweeping statement is just full of so many fallacies I'm not sure where to start addressing them so I won't because it's pointless.
I'm not sure you are using the word 'fallacies' or the phrase 'full of' correctly. I'm making one assertion in that context, and it's that any large-scale economic study that tries to extract findings by looking at the after-effects of a policy change is little more than tarot card reading because there is no control group.
>Or can you more thoughtful provide examples?
Lookup any economic paper that tries to argue the importance of something like the New Deal. There is no control group, so you can provide as much analysis as you want but there is no way to really say whether or not it was the reason for the recovery because there are far too many confounding variables.
The same thing will happen with the analysis of the quantitative easing programs by the Fed. Doves will produce a wealth of things seeming to show that it prevented the second great depression and hawks will produce a wealth of things claiming that it prevented the important aspect of cutting weak companies from the market.
>I don't need to qualify it.
You most certainly do. You can't state something as brazen the left making the most scientific sense without citations.
> The separation of commercial and investment banking prevented securities firms and investment banks from taking deposits, and commercial Federal Reserve member banks from:
* dealing in non-governmental securities for customers * investing in non-investment grade securities for themselves * underwriting or distributing non-governmental securities * affiliating (or sharing employees) with companies involved in such activities
It prevented mergers and acquisitions which allowed the banks to become too big to fail.
As in there is some way people are cooking the books. Hello VW!
That the moment the government says 'though shalt be more fuel efficient' the numbers go up. Is that the mix of cars they offer for sale rather than by the numbers with real fuel economy?
The US is a fair sized share of the global car market but it's not even 25% any more I think. It would be interesting to look at fleet efficiency in other countries.
The difficulty in writing good legislation (then or now) is that other markets that value fuel economy more have already created some great cars. As a consequence, the easiest workaround is to import those cars and sell them here. That would predictably lead to job losses in an industry with an influential union.
However, in a general case, market forces should theoretically be pressuring the manufacturers to improve in that 10 year standstill. The real question is why they didn't compete. You could fill up an entire book exploring the economic motivations that might stifle that, though.
There is probably some low key argument here about how these regulations price out new entries into the industry, but what was the last successful gasoline car startup in the US that survived? I remember Delorean, launched 75 and bankrupt in 82. Doesn't seem like an industry that is disruption friendly, especially when Chrysler seems to be on deaths door. I'm surprised they float every year. The only real disruption is coming from parallel industries in Tesla, and the volume of Tesla sales is a blip on Fords and GMs revenue.
My point is that there is something to it if, on one hand, the industry stagnates without forced improvement through regulation like CAFE while at the same time nobody can enter the market disruptively. Since the stagnation period indicates that trying to brush it off as legitimate competition is wrong, it implies there is market collusion or some other force impeding disruption of a noncompetitive market.
[1]https://i0.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads...
What is fundamentally different of the seatbelt than the other million things that endanger our lives everyday and we live with ?
We also have regulations on building safety and construction, or would you rather not force people to have the precaution of getting a structural engineer when building homes and buildings?
Alcohol has been banned for a while, but eventually it was decided as a society that we were willing to accept that risk and negative outcome. Bad food is also banned via food safety standards via the FDA. I could keep going on... but ultimately everything comes down to a cost : benefit analysis that's done collectively as a society. Recently we have the example of marijuana being rethought as a society and now those bans are largely going away. Things can shift in either direction.
The tiny cost? First, its a tremendous cost! Why allow any 2 types of cars with different safety features? If safety is paramount on a car, then we should only one model: the safest.
Second, the probability of death varies wth many activities. For example, biking is very dangerous in SF. So are many outdoor activities like mountain climbing. Or diving.
There is a case for the seatbelt because when people die in a car accident, there are externalities, but forcing the seatbelt to protect someone is a paternalistic idea.
> We also have regulations on building safety and construction, or would you rather not force people to have the precaution of getting a structural engineer when building homes and buildings?
In this case, this is the safety of others. Very different to the safety of yourself: the whole concept of libertarianism is self-posession,that who you are is only owned by yourself. It is surely acceptable to use the powers of the state to protect one from others.
> Alcohol has been banned for a while, but eventually it was decided as a society that we were willing to accept that risk and negative outcome.
We have countries in the modern world that have banned alcohol still. Its purely cultural, its not a foundational moral or economical trade-off. And the negatives of alcohol are pretty bad!
> Bad food is also banned via food safety standards via the FDA
Depends on the definition of bad: if you mean toxic, sure. If you mean food that degenerates health, definitely the opposite. Sugar for example, could simply be banned to a very positive result in public health.
> Recently we have the example of marijuana being rethought as a society and now those bans are largely going away. Things can shift in either direction.
This is the appealing point from the libertarian stance: you dont need to depend on the mood of the moment for the direction of policy to benefit you. Marijuana would have never been banned under a libertarian conception. And neither would cocaine and other drugs, provided the harm is done only tos elf, and not to other.
I will argue that the reason taxes are high on tobacco is because its become social suicide to defend tobacco. The taxes are high on tobacco because its an easy case to make that gets no opposition. Alcohol is next in line.
I'd argue that if something is bad but popular its hard totax (i.e. special TV tax, special Netflix tax, special Facebook tax), or that something is good but unpopular its too easy to tax (tax foreigners, tax the poor, etc).
You can't take an all-in or all-out approach to things. Each case is its own contextual matter that must be independently considered. If you want to see an example of where anything goes, the world has many examples of lawless societies. Not somewhere I'd want to live.
Sure, but its important to notice that the grave inconsistency with the which we apply policy has to be a consequence of systemic failures.
For example, cigarettes have to show pictures of diseased people, but cheese doesnt have to show pictures of obese or diabetic people. Cars dont have to make a diclosure that "you might kill people with this" and show you pictures of that. The picture policy on cigarettes is pretty morbid to me.
And then the defense for it is that "its good for people". Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons does not provide me satisfaction.
Other dimensions not mentioned in the article: safety and affordability. A quick search shows that the affordability of cars has declined steadily, which makes it harder for the bottom of the economic ladder to get into a car. No car means it is harder to get to a job and climb up the ladder.
It looks like road fatalities have declined over time, but I couldn't find data on non-fatal injuries.
Also very interesting to see a whole lot of "they" and not a lot of "we" when defining what libertarians believe.
As if engines weren't improving due to other factors as well, like market forces for lower fuel costs and improved overall technology? What if there were more sensible regulations that taxed externalities directly, like pollution taxes? This is a pointless, illogical politicization of a topic more complex than you're aware of.