Comment by Ajedi32

Comment by Ajedi32 a day ago

> Not everything needs to be 'efficient' sometimes things should be 'just' or 'humane' rather than 'efficient'

You ignored the second part of my paragraph. It's far easier to be humane when operating in an efficient system than an inefficient one.

Even a multi-billion dollar datacenter can and will go unused if the price of water to cool it gets high enough. If keeping that datacenter running is somehow so important to larger society that it's actually more efficient to airlift in water from across the country to supply coolant than to shut down the datacenter (extremely doubtful), then that's exactly what should happen, and it's exactly what the market will make happen unless you interfere.

If unstable market prices result in temporary, unacceptably inhumane conditions for other people, then the most efficient solution is certainly going to be to work within the market-based system to help those people (e.g. subsidize the cost of water to residential homes until prices stabilize), not to override the system and prevent that (apparently extremely valuable) datacenter from being constructed in the first place.

> > NYC's congestion pricing

> That isn't a market, that is a tax.

People are freely choosing to exchange their money in return for a service. That's a market. Not a perfectly free market since NYC roads are a local monopoly, but closer to that ideal than the previous system of "free roads".

> Look, markets are great, but I don't get this quasi-religious adherence to one mechanism amongst many as the be-all-end-all of solutions.

Markets are more than just great, they've proven themselves time and time again to be nearly unbeatable in their ability to create wealth and allocate resources efficiently.

Markets are based on the collective decisions of millions of people taking billions of factors into account to create the most efficient outcome for everyone. None of us have any hope of beating that with our own naive takes on what "seems best". Anytime we interfere we're making everyone poorer in the service of whatever other goal we're trying to achieve, so we better be darned sure it's worth it.

Eisenstein a day ago

> It's far easier to be humane when operating in an efficient system than an inefficient one.

Why no reverse it though? First, look out for people, then figure out efficiency.

> If unstable market prices result in temporary, unacceptably inhumane conditions for other people, then the most efficient solution is certainly going to be to work within the market-based system to help those people

Why are you so obsessed with efficiency? What is wrong with being a little inefficient if it means that people aren't even 'temporarily' in inhumane conditions. And if they were 'unacceptable' you wouldn't accept them.

> People are freely choosing to exchange their money in return for a service.

As stated in the wikipedia entry for Congestion pricing in New York City:

"This Pigovian tax, intended to cut down on traffic congestion and pollution, was first proposed in 2007 and included in the 2019 New York State government budget by the New York State Legislature."

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigouvian_tax

> Markets are based on the collective decisions of millions of people taking billions of factors into account to create the most efficient outcome for everyone.

So what?

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Ajedi32 a day ago

> Why no reverse it though? First, look out for people, then figure out efficiency.
Because the empirical result of that sort of thinking every time it's been tried on a national scale is widespread poverty where nobody is able to help anyone because everyone is starving. You need to have wealth in the first place in order to give it out to the needy.
> What is wrong with being a little inefficient if it means that people aren't even 'temporarily' in inhumane conditions.
You're misinterpreting my comment. You'd obviously step in to help people before conditions become temporarily inhumane. All else being equal, the more efficient (read: less wasteful) solution is the better one.
> This Pigovian tax
Taxes and markets aren't mutually exclusive. Carbon credits, for example, are another type of market-based tax.
> > Markets are based on the collective decisions of millions of people taking billions of factors into account to create the most efficient outcome for everyone.
> So what?
So read the rest of the paragraph after that sentence.

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- Eisenstein 14 hours ago
  
  > Because the empirical result of that sort of thinking every time it's been tried on a national scale is widespread poverty where nobody is able to help anyone because everyone is starving.
  You think that keeping corporations from buying local resources needed for citizens has consistently resulted in everyone starving? I'd love to see that empirical data.
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  Ajedi32 2 hours ago
  
  No, I'm saying that "that sort of thinking", where you naively design your economic systems around "First, look out for people, then figure out efficiency." rather than "efficient systems first, then work within those systems to help people" when taken to its logical conclusion and "tried on a national scale", is communism. Communism always sounds like such a great idea to people who think they know better than markets, but it consistently results in everyone starving, or at least being in abject poverty, every time it's tried at scale.
  "keeping corporations from buying local resources" is a much weaker application of the same philosophy which will cause significant harm on a smaller scale for much of the same reasons, but probably not enough to impoverish a whole country unless combined with too many other policies based on that same sort of thinking.
  
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