Carbon emission reduction: News and technology

[Brian Peacock]

Mac doesn't like it because it implies capitalists are selfish and rapacious. Mac might not be a selfish capitalist, but a hell of a lot are.

To be fair, mac often says that capitalism needs more democratic oversight or regulation to curb its rapacious tendencies. Unfortunately, as we're saying, the 'debate' about regulation only ever seems to push in the other direction.

[pErvinalia]

I'm just winding him up. He's the only capitalist we have left now...

[Brian Peacock]

I'm just winding him up. He's the only capitalist we have left now...

tehe To be less generous, if someone says that there's nothing wrong with capitalism as a system, it's failure is to be found in the people doing it, as mac has done in the past, then I would suggest that that person doesn't really understand what 'the economy' is, or capitalism as a system of social organisation, or the nature of the problems a capitalist economy causes for everyone in society - ardent capitalists included.

[Svartalf]

I thought it was malthus who was all about scarcity and limited resources?

[Brian Peacock]

I thought it was malthus who was all about scarcity and limited resources?

You could easily call Hardin a neo-Malthusian, see:
First as Tragedy, Then as Fascism: Ecologist Garrett Hardin’s enduring gift to the nativist right

[Brian Peacock]

Escaping the Tragedy of the Commons through Targeted Punishment
Johnson, Royal Society Journal, 01 Aug 2015 (open access)

Abstract

Failures of cooperation cause many of society's gravest problems. It is well known that cooperation among many players faced with a social dilemma can be maintained thanks to the possibility of punishment, but achieving the initial state of widespread cooperation is often much more difficult. We show here that there exist strategies of ‘targeted punishment’ whereby a small number of punishers can shift a population of defectors into a state of global cooperation. We conclude by outlining how the international community could use a strategy of this kind to combat climate change.

[macdoc]

I dunno - there are fair few countries with mixed economies and the best GINI scores.
........and Adam Smith remains wrong

[pErvinalia]

What was he wrong about?

[Svartalf]

maybe because he encouraged people to follow their darkest impulses and hoard on publicly necessary resources for their own personal benefit at the expense and worse of the rest of the population?