The ‘tragedy of the commons’ is very much exaggerated and misunderstood. It is 100% possible to collectively govern commons without a tragedy situation, and there are plenty of examples of it happening in real life. The economist Elinor Ostrom actually won a Nobe Prize in Economics for demonstrating this.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2012/06/17/elinor-ostroms-work-on-governing-the-commons-an-appreciation/ https://aeon.co/essays/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-is-a-false-and-dangerous-myth

Consider this: modern capitalism was pretty much inconceivable to people living in the feudal era. In the same way, it is possible that the system we need is inconceivable to us at the moment. Critiquing capitalism and advocating for a move away from it is still useful.

There are plenty of things that haven’t been tried aside from small-scale examples:

• An economy based on worker cooperatives
• Universal Basic Income
• Universal Basic Capital
• ‘Library economics’ or ‘Library Socialism’

Guide on what it means here: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=SSd7KnWN9CM

Note the red pixels are just a representation, doesn’t mean the whole red area is on fire. See 1:08 to 2:10 for explanation.

If anyone wants to see the actual situation here’s NASA’s live map: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/

and a guide on how to use it, what all the symbols mean etc: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=SSd7KnWN9CM

Yes, I see that. It’s an investment blog written by the account manager of a major finance company. I’m sure he has no vested interests whatsoever and is just trying to be as factually accurate as possible.

If you don’t want to read other people’s thoughts on things, don’t post yours on an internet forum lol.

Am happy to end the conversation on a friendly note though. If we were having this chat in person, i’d say ‘fuck it, let’s grab a beer and chill’. See ya.

More on the data: global investment in the energy transition in 2021 = $755 billion total investment in energy in 2021 = $1.9 trillion (source)

Also I’ll just leave this here:

source

Lmaooo “Greenablers”. What a joke. That’s literally a corporate PR puff piece. How is corporate greenwashing PR supposed to convince me that Capitalism drives innovation (or is good for the climate?) when countless studies of data prove it wrong? The only piece of data he cites is about the billions being spent on the ‘energy transition’. I checked out his source. A good chunk of that is just government investment. Another big chunk of that is electric cars - a really stupid thing to invest in as they’ll compete with renewable energy for rare earth minerals etc. Not to mention all the emissions they’ll cause in production, and the fact that they’ll still need half the world to be paved over in asphalt for roads and parking. Better than petrol or diesel sure, but hardly efficient.

Dense cities yes. End single-family zoning yes (doesn’t really exist where I live, the US is an insane place).

Energy deregulation no. I’m sure it will be great for opening new coal plants, not a chance in hell will it lead to more nuclear power or anything useful.

Ah the innovation argument, so original. “Capitalism creates innovation”. Everyone says it all the time so it must be true right? Well it isn’t. Data doesn’t support this argument.

Pretty much every major innovation of the past century has come from publicly funded and/or not-for-profit research and development. Capitalists only step in once the difficult part is done and the ‘innovation’ can be repackaged into something profitable in the short term.

See the following: https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/7/3/459/1693191

https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pdf

Capitalism definitely creates barriers to certain types of innovation. Mainly innovation that isn’t profitable - see ‘planned obsolesence’. It also creates barriers to profitable innovation sometimes; just look up ‘patent trolls’.

But I was never even talking about innovation. You just jumped to it because that is the classic buzzword talking point that is constantly repeated everywhere. ‘Develop better alternatives’ doesn’t have to be ‘innovation’. We have the technology already, we’ve had it for decades. Trains and cycle lanes = better alternatives to cars. Nuclear energy = better alternative to fossil fuels.

Market capture exists everywhere, in every economic system.

Sure, this might be the case for every existing economic system. I believe we need to develop something new. Just like modern Capitalism was inconceivable to someone living in the Feudal era, a new system might be inconceivable for us right now. But it is imperative we try.

I swear we need to retire the term ‘Capitalism’ entirely because it seems like it’s impossible to discuss its flaws without someone just assuming it’s a statement in favour of resurrecting Stalin. This has nothing to do with communists.

Electricity can be produced in many different ways - it’s just that some are more profitable than others.

Capitalism also creates an entire web of incentive structures that make it hard to develop more sustainable alternatives - e.g car industry creating ‘lock-in’, as described in this paper. I’m sure a similar paper could be written about some Soviet bloc state 60 years ago, but that’s irrelevant. This is a problem of Capitalism and the Soviet bloc doesn’t exist anymore. Just cause ‘Stalin bad’ doesn’t mean ‘Capitalism can do no harm ever’.

what’s your favourite type of bollard and why?

You’re welcome!

I’m not an expert by any means, but did Politics and Economics as my undergrad and did decently well in it; am happy to share my knoweldge. Also wanted to apologise if parts of my previous post seemed a bit condescending, wasn’t my intention.

Would be happy to debate/discuss more at any point if you’re interested.

Figure I might as well drop some more reading recommendations:

Specific to the topics of the discussion:

Chapter 14, from 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang This basically expands on the meme, and explains the connection between liberal economics and ‘pro-rich’ economics, in only 9 pages. Not very in-depth, but quite good and readable - although note that this book is very much a pop-economics polemic, and Chang is an Institutionalist economist and very skeptical of ‘free market’ economics. He’s fairly controversial among economists, but not super radical or anything. Link to pdf of this chapter only. The whole book is free to borrow on Archive.org.

Chapter VIII ‘Monopoly and the Social Responsibility of Business and Labor’, from Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman. For a free-market take on monopolies, although a bit of an outdated take (the data has changed a lot, but the general arguments are still relevant). Free on Archive.org

Are markets efficient or do they tend towards monopoly? The verdict is in, by Joseph Stiglitz Pretty short article that expands on our discussion about monopolies in the modern world. Link to article

Chapter 2, Section 3 of ‘The Poverty of Philosophy’ by Karl Marx This is basically Marx arguing against Proudhon, so a lot of it is weird out of context, but does sum up Marx’s views on monopolies. As with most Marx, not super easy to read, but very interesting. Link to text from Marxists.org

Chapter 2, ‘Liberalism and Liberal Thinkers’, from 101 Great Liberal Thinkers by Eamonn Butler A summary of liberal ideas, written by a self-described (neo)Liberal and founder of the Adam Smith Institute. Freely available from the American Economic Association

More Generally Relevant / In-Depth Stuff:

The Wordly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner Is a nice and readable intro to the history of economic thought, would recommend for an enjoyable read and broad overview. Available to borrow on Archive.org

Economics: The Users Guide by Ha-Joon Chang This is somewhat of a ‘pop-economics’ text so is quite readable, but also has solid knowlege. Chapter 4 has a nice summary of some of the major schools of thought, and there’s a lot of interesting economic history in here as well. Available to borrow on Archive.org

Market Reasoning as Moral Reasoning: Why Economists Should Re-engage with Political Philosophy by Michael Sandel Short article with interesting arguments about the limits of economics as a field, especially in considering the moral implications of allocating resources using markets. Freely available from the American Economic Association

Chapter 3, ‘The Nature of Heterodox Economics’ from ‘Essays on the Nature and State of Modern Economics’ by Tony Lawson Although this one is very academic, chapter 3 is only about 20 pages long and has a fairly good summary of some of the assumptions and criticisms of ‘modern mainstream economics’ vs ‘heterodox economics’. The rest of the book is excellent as well, it’s focused on a critique of modern economics and its attempts to be a ‘hard science’ by using lots of maths and models, with questionable results. Link to a pdf here.

Chapter ‘The Place of Liberty’ from An Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff Especially recommend the section on problems with liberalism Available to borrow on Archive.org

The Economy by Core Economics This is just a textbook, not exactly light reading but it’s free and written by some pretty high-profile (mainstream) economists. It’s what I was mainly taught from so if you’re interested in what they teach at mainstream econ courses but want to skip the whole ‘paying massive tuition fees’ part, here it is. Link to the textbook on their website.

Also, Marginal Revolution has good stuff on econ on their YT channel and website; they are very pro-free market.

Hope this is interesting and/or useful, have a nice day!

Sure, real economists don’t explicitly hold those views. But the kinds of metrics and models liberal economists are fond of using basically lead to that flowchart.

I appreciate you trying to answer a question in good faith, but you’re conflating ‘liberal’ with ‘vaguely left-leaning’, and none of what you’ve said makes any sense outside of current US political ‘discourse’ where ‘Liberal’ means ‘slightly left-wing’.

What you describe as liberal economics is closer to Keynsianism or Social Democracy.

In economics, the ‘Liberal’ school of thought is generally against regulation and interference in the market, seeing it as being ‘self-regulating’. In economic terms, Reagan and Thatcher were Liberals - hence them being associated with ‘Neoliberalism’.

The whole thing you said about Capitalism tending towards monopoly is actually a very Marxist/Socialist idea - Liberal economic theory tends to argue that monopolies form because of government and that they wouldn’t occur in a truly free market (although its more nuanced than that, there’s major disagreements over ‘Natural Monopolies’ etc. within the Liberal school). Source: look up any Liberal economist/thinker and their view on monopolies. E.g Friedman, J.S Mill.

Capitalism being an economic system doesn’t make it apolitical. ‘In theory’ Liberalism and Capitalism are very very closely intertwined, it’s not implicit, it’s absolutely explicit if you read any Liberal political or economic theory.

Economics is inherently political.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/#Libe Sections 3 and 4 of this are a decent starting point.

Also the idea of slightly changing our voting systems as the way to drive change is quite hilarious. Sure, moving away from FPTP would probably help a bit, but it’s not like countries with other systems are doing fine. These issues are more fundamental. And historically, fundamental change has never occured through small technical adjustments to political systems.

Sharktopus, bad in a fun kind of way though

Love my USDDB cables, the built-in kettle function is a big plus 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧

I think the difference here is paying for a single newspaper vs having to get recurring subscriptions that are a pain to cancel. With print media, if I want to check multiple sources’ take on an issue, I could go out and buy 5 different newspapers, and that’s it. But with online news, I’d have to spend like an hour cancelling all the subscriptions after I’m done and if I forget to cancel any i’ll realise when I’m down like £50 6 months later.

Also don’t like having to enter personal details into so many websites.

Thank god for Archive.org.

I wonder why no news company has tried the ‘buy today’s digital newspaper for £1 and that’s that’ approach. I could be wrong and maybe someone has, haven’t seen it though.

Context if anyone is interested:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/02/02/582665947/victims-father-lunges-at-larry-nassar-in-michigan-courtroom

Spin-offs in other cities would have been cool

Ah this show was wonderful! Ahead of its time with the AI and mass surveillance stuff (IIRC it called it before the Snowden leaks).

Haven’t read The Dispossessed yet, but love Le Guin’s work ever since I read The Lathe of Heaven and The Word for World is Forest, can’t recommend these enough. Am reading through a collection of her short stories now.

Anyone interested in a general Le Guin discussion thread, or a reading group type thing where we discuss a different book each month?