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charon wrote:

menglish wrote:

Certainly markets can solve many problems, but they are definately plauged by the problem of strongly tending towards local optima and not getting over large initial barriers to entry very well (different ways of stating the same problem).
For instance, we find ourselves faced with a huge infrastructure of roads not because a capitalist market made it that way, but because the gov't decided it would be good to have a really nice system of roads.

Not entirely sure what your point is.  OK, for better or for worse, we have roads, and that was a government decision.  That provides more economic reason to use gasoline than if no roads existed at all.  What's done is done.  It's not a market failure to take advantage of the amenities that already exist; quite the opposite.  (Of course, nothing says that we have to use gasoline-powered cars.)

My argument is that switching off of oil is not an imperative that we need to impose on anyone; we should just 1)stop doing dumb things to keep the price of oil low, 2)try to make the price reflect any externalities (e.g., pollution), and then 3)let people make their own choices about energy.

My point was that there are some problems that can't be solved correctly by captialism.  Capitalism can only find local optimizations.  If the solution to our problems require a full scale paradigm shift that requires significant capital investment then it is likey going to have to be imposed from outside.  I brought up the roads because they were represented a fundamental and expensive shift in our country's transportation system, and it wasn't capitalism that produced it.

The idea of letting true capitalism resolve the oil crisis will really only give us minor variations on our current solution.  I think it's likely if we are able to implement step 1 effectively then we as a country will start talking alot more seriously about a solution imposed from above

Is there a compelling reason why "market forces" should take precedence over the common good?

ShnickyShnack wrote:

The bigger picture, near as I can make it, is that we're screwed.

and without the vaseline.

Think about this: one rail line can carry as many people as 16 lanes of highway. That's hundred or thousands of acres of land that are left either in their natural state or available for development.

Also, rail lines are easier to lay than highways because they don't require large amounts of building materials and are more easily maintained than highways.

Last edited by The New Guy (2005-04-11 8:39 am)

my position is i am tired of getting screwed.

more or less wrote:

my position is i am tired of getting screwed.

Might want to try something a little more dominant, then. Or have you not the balls?



...




Lick my shoe.

more or less wrote:

ShnickyShnack wrote:

more or less wrote:

my position is i am tired of getting screwed.

What are ya gonna do about it, girlyman?

marry my toaster?


i dunno, but whatever it is, it will be stupid and futile.

isaidlickmyshoeyoufilthylittlebitch{slap}

I SAID "admit it", FIRST. YOU CAN'T USE IT.

ShnickyShnack wrote:

more or less wrote:

ShnickyShnack wrote:

What are ya gonna do about it, girlyman?

marry my toaster?


i dunno, but whatever it is, it will be stupid and futile.

Blowing something up would make you feel loads better, I promise.

Let's all play Halo.

charon wrote:

menglish wrote:

My point was that there are some problems that can't be solved correctly by captialism.  Capitalism can only find local optimizations.

I don't see what "local" has to do with it.  We trade regularly with people on the other side of the Earth, bringing benefits to both parties.  That's the market, not central planning.

IMO, it's not that capitalism fails outside of "local" problems, rather it fails where externalities are significant and cannot be internalized.  Roads may be such an example because they create a positive externality--lots of people benefit but there may not be a way to make them pay for the use (they are, quite literally, "free riders").

But I don't see how this applies to oil, outside of the pollution it causes.  And we already have at least one mechanism in place to deal with that--excise taxes.

Shifting away from oil wouldn't be the first time that market actors stopped using a resource or a technology in favor of something more cost-effective.  For that matter, substitution of goods and services in response to scarcity goes on in all our lives every day.

I'm sorry, I just assumed that you'd know what I was talking about with the term "local optima" (I apologize for my cs bias).  Basically the idea is that market forces provide an optimization technique that is not necessarily capable of finding the very best solution possible.  It can only make incremental improvements on the current solution.  This is a result of the fact that market forces pretty much constantly work to improve the solution, with little ability to find solutions that might require first exploring slightly less effective solutions.

Most of the time it's unclear if we are approaching an optimal solution, but if we are able to identify that our current path is flawed I feel that market forces can only make slight improvements on our current path, a real significant change might require involvements other than markets.

menglish wrote:

Basically the idea is that market forces provide an optimization technique that is not necessarily capable of finding the very best solution possible.  It can only make incremental improvements on the current solution.  This is a result of the fact that market forces pretty much constantly work to improve the solution, with little ability to find solutions that might require first exploring slightly less effective solutions.

I'm not sure what sort of "best solutions" that require "less effective solutions" you're referring to, particularly in the case of energy production, nor what you're basing your conclusion on.  Market forces aren't mechanical, they're just the decisions of real people who, I imagine, are perfectly capable of finding global optima.  And why wouldn't central planners (or whatever alternative you have in mind) be at least as limited in their thinking?

menglish wrote:

Most of the time it's unclear if we are approaching an optimal solution, but if we are able to identify that our current path is flawed I feel that market forces can only make slight improvements on our current path, a real significant change might require involvements other than markets.

I don't think "our current path is flawed."  Oil is finite--so what?  It's not a mistake to make use of something while it lasts.

I would be worried if there were no mechanism to encourage a transition away from oil as it becomes scarce, but that's exactly what the market does through prices.

Last edited by charon (2005-04-11 11:28 pm)