cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/33936586
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2025
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Markets respond only to profit changes, and even then they are far from perfect. It's simply an economist fiction that they are uniquely good at adaptation, one proof being the utter failure of markets to handle the global catastrophe climate change is going to cause.
Markets find the need of a market and respond to it only when there is profit. It is completely uninterested in other needs, this is why externalities are a problem.
I don't hold it to the standard of perfect, but markets are simply not effectively dealing with the realities of climate change.
Industrialization is definitely an issue, the larger issue is that with economies exclusively driven by markets, even when every knowledgeable person on the matter is aware of an issue like climate change, markets need to be fought and bent against their very nature to deal with the fact that it's less profitable to take care of the environment.
I bring them up because they demonstrate my point. Externalities need to be taxed because profit is the only need markets respond to, which was my point.
Only using a contorted definition of efficiency that favors markets, namely maximizing GDP. It does not speak to the efficiency of throwing away food, cutting up old clothes, letting people die from curable illness, or to reiterate the point, making the only planet we've ever seen sustain life unsuitable for us because it's simply impossible to convince market economies to seek anything other than profit.
Agreed, the USSR was also going through rapid industrialization. The difference is market economies have an absolute global hegemon, and still cannot meaningfully address the reality of climate change because it would effect profits.
I disagree, but to the more important point you still seem to dance around the fact that market economies have had decades to align with the incredible wealth of science describing the problems we are facing, and failed to do anything more then gesture at solutions.
Like genuinely, what good is all this 'efficiency' if it's killing us and refusing to change?
They are not responsive and they are not adapting anywhere near what is needed because there is no profit in doing so. China is still largely a market economy, but the centrally planned aspects allow it to push much harder towards a de-carbonized economy compared to the west.
Here is a summary from Yale reflecting the outlines of THE 13TH FIVE-YEAR PLAN FOR ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA, and Outline of the People’s Republic of China 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and Long-Range Objectives for 2035.
I'm getting pretty tired of this conversation though if we are at the point of arguing if, the choices of state own energy and public transit companies, following state directives, are not planned.