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I also think government dilutes the effectiveness of the experts it employs, but at the same time the private sector is amazingly, exceedingly incapable of seeing benefit from anything but immediate profits. Investing in highly risky pilot programs which have high costs and uncertain benefits is something the private sector, except perhaps a few optimistic billionaires, would never do. If we had never supported difficult-to-quantify never-never projects, we wouldn't be finding exoplanets, we would have never discovered that asteroids are clumps of unfathomably abundant resources, we would have never gotten to the Moon, and Europeans would never have explored the New World, because the benefits at the time seemed dubious and the funding came from governments.

I am optimistic just because I have a high amount of trust for German government. They are a lot more cautious and less bandwagon-hopping and more capable of pulling stuff like this off whereas for most other industrialized governments the Energiewende would just be a dramatic stage show created by former-execs-turned-bureaucrats to put taxpayer dollars into contractor's pockets without any concern for actual results.

I think you're overlooking the age of exploration, funded mostly by private interests, and things like the first transatlantic cable.

Ah, but maybe he's not overlooking, for one example, the broadband monopoly or (essentially non-competitive) duopoly that exists in contemporary American society.

Compare what we've got with countries where the government owns the physical medium and leases it to a variety of bit-carriers--it's tough to argue against that kind of observable evidence.

There are plenty of cases where government stewardship of the playing field--with private companies competing on that playing field--works out for the great benefit of the citizenry.

> They could just not tax us, and then we could pursue our own projects.

Or, if you agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing: Tax carbon usage, and, since you don't like the government spending money, just distribute the proceeds equally among the population. This works out to a net impact, modulo transactions costs, on the average carbon-emitting person of zero, but rewards and punishes the outliers.

What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing? What if I think that the tax is too high? What if I have higher priorities?

> What if I don't agree that a low-carbon future would be a good thing?

Then my comment doesn't apply.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

The level of the tax should be chosen so, that you get the societal optimal output of CO_2. Where the measure of optimality is choosen by some mechanism, e.g. some form of democracy or so, outside of the scope of my suggestion.

If you actually want to have a high carbon-future, you might even opt for a negative tax, i.e. subsidy. The `proceeds' that get divided equally would turn into costs. If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

> What if I think that the tax is too high?

For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them. But with a tax that's too high you would get less CO_2 emissions than your society would agree on as optimal. With a tax that's too low, you'd get more total emissions than people would agree on. At the moment our situation is essentially equivalent to a tax/redistribution of zero.

> Then my comment doesn't apply.

You're still going to tax me....

> The level of the tax should be chosen so

In other words, "lump it".

> If you want no interference, you set the tax to zero and forget about it.

You're not going to let me.

> For the average CO_2 emitting person the level of the tax doesn't matter, since the scheme's designed to be cash-flow neutral for them.

That can't be true if the result is lower CO2 emissions.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you're not going to compensate small scale CO2 sequestration. (It would be too costly to do so, but the result is the same - your scheme can't treat all CO2 the same even though your reason for taxing CO2 says that it is.)

A lot of the reason why there is no natural incentive to develop new sources of energy is that the government works hand in hand with energy companies to prevent it for example, via drilling rights, subsidized prices making it uneconomical to research better sources because the companies can guarantee their profits.

"Generally government is poor at picking winners, and inefficient" [citation needed]

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Oh, it was all opinion.

That's fine.

In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector (ever seen the waste and mismanagement going on in these huge megacorps? it's insane!), and by definition can be _more_ cost-effective than the private sector because there is no need to turn a profit. Private businesses have, built in, a bit of skimming off the top for the owners (and there's nothing wrong with that, of course--that's part of why people start businesses), and government-run services by definition do not. They're not profit-seeking services. They're public services.

(You may disagree on what ought to be a public service, but once we're all on the same page that the government ought to do some things, it's just a matter of hashing out what those ought to be...)

Also...wait... NASA has grown into an organization that works for the glory of its leadership? what? sorry...again...what?

"Often the government people end up on the side of workers in the field rather than the public that they're meant to be serving." [citation needed]

Citation provided: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#American_exa...

During the 20th century there were many attempts at government-directed economies, some very large. In every instance they underperformed free market economies.

We tried it. It doesn't work as well.

I didn't say anything about a Soviet-style centrally-planned economy, either.

... Hey, I discovered a great site the other day:

http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

You said "In my opinion, government is as efficient as the private sector." Directly refuting you is not a strawman.

I'm sorry, maybe you can explain it like I'm five.

What does the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the public or private sector have to do with a centrally-planned economy?

Or, let me be charitable (because I think I know what you were getting at...) and instead put it to you this way:

Let's say government-financed or government-run health care is more efficient or more cost-effective than privately-run health care, because there's no privately-run insurance company that exists to extract a bit of dosh from every doctor-patient transaction.

(And safe money's on government-financed/run health care buying better health care for its citizens, dollar for dollar and measuring on a variety of health outcomes. I've seen a lot of arguments from theory that "more free markets, less regulation" would do as good a job, or better, but I haven't seen evidence of that, just arguments from theory.)

Does this mean that a country that adopts a single-payer or government-run health care system for its citizens has _also_ adopted a centrally planned--or in your words, "government-directed"--economy?

I think we are getting hung up on different usages of the word "efficient."

Government can be efficient at delivering a well-defined service, or meeting a well-defined goal. For example Medicare is a pretty efficient program, and we did make it to the Moon with NASA.

Efficiency can also refer to the allocation of capital toward innovations with the greatest expected payoff or outcome. This is where freely operating private markets outperformed government planning by a large margin during the 20th century.

I thought we were discussing this usage of "efficient" since cturner referred to "picking winners".

Under this model, how would we end up with something like the Interstate Highway system?

Hopefully we wouldn't have! I'd rather have had more intact city cores and fewer drivers.

Probably my major objection to the system, urban freeways, didn't have to be part of the system, and Eisenhower apparently personally did not want them to be, see http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/faq.htm#question23a Having destructive elements added to a giant plan usually seems to come with selling it though.

The German energy plan described in the article I'd bet involves a lot of tradeoffs to get support from various players. It sounds way riskier than say just more massively taxing carbon emissions and subsidizing energy R&D. But presumably those aren't politically feasible.

Another political infeasibility (I'd guess) that surely has been suggested elsewhere: Germans should instead get a large % of solar energy (or derived revenues) produced in southern Europe to pay for bailouts. This would also mean solar panels deployed more effectively, and local Greek, etc, labor employed for installation.