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Comment by beerlord | Hacker News Reader

Market failure got us to 400PPM. The externalities of carbon and methane pollution have not been properly priced in. That can be resolved with a market mechanism - a carbon tax.

The free market has also brought us widespread electric cars, solar panels, gas power plants. The very things with which we will combat climate change.

Socialism has brought us expanding populations globally, by offering free food to people who are not productive enough to buy it. The biggest threat to the planet now are the expanding populations of countries who still have their fertility rate above replacement rate.

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There was an interesting observation at some day cares in Israel. When their day care closed, parents would drop everything to make sure they picked their kids up on time, but some would still be late. At some point, these day cares decided to start applying fines whenever the parents were late, and it completely backfired. Parents were suddenly always late and in large numbers, because parents felt guilty about making teachers stay late, and by adding a fine, they removed that guilt.

I view a carbon tax in the same way. It's an easy way for companies to continue with whatever their doing and they replace any guilt they may have with an easy payment. It certainly isn't going to solve much, because it removes any real chance of accountability. It is not a significant enough incentive for them to implement impactful change.

The free market may help create solutions, but it will not sustain them. Reversing climate change will not be a profitable endeavor in the short-term, and unfortunately market success is a greedy algorithm.

It's a complete contradiction that a free market could ensure conservation, since it relies entirety upon consumption, and market success is about who consumes the most.

Link to article about Israel day cares: http://freakonomics.com/2013/10/23/what-makes-people-do-what...

It's different because companies don't feel guilt. Instead, they are motivated purely by revenues and profits which makes a carbon tax a viable incentive for them to decrease carbon emissions. As of now, there are almost no real repercussions for companies who destroy the environment.

It might not be guilt per se, since it was only an example, so consider it what you want. Be it bad PR, obligations, compliance, etc.

>The free market has also brought us widespread electric cars, solar panels, gas power plants.

Massive government investment brought us each of those.

>Socialism has brought us expanding populations globally, by offering free food to people who are not productive enough to buy it. The biggest threat to the planet now are the expanding populations of countries who still have their fertility rate above replacement rate.

If we are attributing threats, I'd look closer to home.

The hard right solution: lets have some way to let the bottom half of the population drop out of the world. At least it's an honest take on capitalism ideology, gotta give it him!

If we're just going to attribute anything that happened during capitalism as a result of the "free market" then I get to say that communism invented satellites, discovered stem cells, and cured maternally transmitted HIV.

Electric cars and solar panels won't save us. You're not fooling anyone with that. Solar panels are not nearly efficient enough to replace anything major any time soon, and electric passenger cars will certainly help, but they are not hitting the pavement fast enough to have any kind of impact in the timelines we need to see to avoid apocalyptic catastrophe.

Also how will gas power plants help climate change? Unless this is a different use of the word 'gas' than i'm used to, I think you're referring to natural gas, aka: one of the largest contributor to carbon emissions.

And damn, I've heard a lot of dumb anti-socialist arguments before, but "people who are not able to provide labor to a market economy should starve to death" is a new one.

Do you have a source that natural gas is the largest carbon emissionss contributer? Genuinely curious, because over here in Germany gas companies (Gazprom.. ;)) market themselves as the opposite and the same argument is used for cars running on natural gas. I know that's just PR, but I thought it produces less emissions because it burns more efficiently than other fossil fuels.

CO2 emissions are essentially the same, but other pollutants are much lower. There are less contaminants in natural gas, so burning it in a cheap and inefficient engine like a bus in a city is better than using petrol.

I should have written "one of the largest", not the largest, my apologies.

> And damn, I've heard a lot of dumb anti-socialist arguments before, but "people who are not able to provide labor to a market economy should starve to death" is a new one.

Horrible indeed. The callousness of it reminded me of this exchange, loosely recalled, in the "Conspiracy" HBO movie about the Wannsee conference:

Some nazi bureaucrat: - "Hard labour? But many haven't picked up anything heavier than a pencil in their entire life?!"

Heydrich: - "Yes, and subsequently most will perish of natural causes." casually moves on the the next point

Some nazi bureaucrat: leans back visibly shaken.

Very high on the list of things that capitalism has brought: socialism. It literally would not exist without capitalism. Therefore, whatever you can attribute to socialism, it's also an indirect outcome of capitalism.

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