The fundamental flaw in Left Wing
thought is to think that a free market is the problem when it may be better
noted that it is the lack of a free market that is the problem because its lack
of freedom has been deliberately disguised by the participants.
The fundamental flaw of Right Wing
thought is to not understand that free markets are all managed markets and that
it matters if this is done in an open and accessible manner.
The failure of drug law is not
least that it legislates the trade into the nether world of criminality instead
of regulating the transaction process and opening it to full scrutiny and
effective intervention as deemed necessary.
The cigarette trade is presently
been suppressed by regulatory constraints and taxation very effectively to the
point that it is creditable that it will in time a totally expire. All other drugs, with the exception of crack
and even crack in its own nasty way are even better candidates than tobacco for
the same form of proactive suppression.
In British Columbia, the act of
simply making it completely inconvenient to smoke almost anywhere has driven
the numbers down to around one in five men of which a large number cannot be
described as heavy smokers at all and
similarly one in seven women were heavy smoking is rarer anyway. This is where the market is going in all
jurisdictions and it would not surprise me to see the remainder of the
population working harder at shaking the habit.
Managing a given market for the
optimum benefit of all participants and that does not necessarily mean at the
lowest price needs to be addressed properly across the board. The participants need a voice and that does
not mean a cartel of our betters without recourse from the consumers of the
service.
Naomi Klein is half right: Distorted markets are the real problem
14 MAR 2012 4:31 PM
Naomi
Klein’s interview in Grist this week is smart, insightful, and half
right. Her assessment of the obstacles to solving climate change — from
ideology to misplaced faith in green consumerism — are exactly right. And
she’s right that fixing this problem means changing how the world does
business.
But Klein is wrong in her more serious assertion, first articulated
in her “Capitalism vs. the Climate” article in The Nation,
that we can save the planet only if we abandon capitalism:
Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the
free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency.
The deeper problem is not that our markets are too free; it’s that
they are woefully rigged in favor of pollution. Which is also the main
reason the Earth finds itself in peril. (I’m pretty sure Klein would agree with
that point.)
Think of it this way: As the system is set up now, my 1-year-old son
has less right to grow up breathing clean air than to get his driver’s license
and join the polluting masses 15 years hence. The reason is simply that
markets are constructed so that few have to pay for the pollution they produce.
Every time I open my fridge, turn on the heat, hop in a car (or on a
train), or do much of anything, someone else incurs the costs for the pollution
my actions produce.
When I fly from New York to Austria
Klein offers two solutions. The first calls for a radical rethinking of
how we lead our lives, opting for a more leisurely path. A lovely thought. I’d
much rather spend weeks at a time visiting my parents in Vienna
and in-laws in Bangkok
So yes, let’s create a culture where it’s OK for everyone to take off a
couple months in the summer, and perhaps another one around the winter
holidays. It works for the Swedes, why not the rest of us?
But Klein realizes this sort of cultural change won’t happen overnight
and wouldn’t by itself stabilize the climate. Which leads her to call for
“taxing the rich and filthy.”
Nice turn of phrase, but, unfortunately, it confuses the issue. It’s
really about taxing the filthy. It’s not about taxing anyone for the sake of
sticking it to the man. It’s about asking everyone to pay for their own
pollution instead of shoving those costs onto society.
I’d gladly pay the $20 extra for my flight to see my parents. But Klein
argues, correctly, that nothing will be accomplished if the only people paying
are do-gooders who want to feel better about their carbon footprint. If we want
to affect the planet, everyone has to pay the cost of their pollution. Only
then will we truly level the playing field.
That all seems like wishful thinking, but it can be achieved. The
European Union, starting Jan. 1 of this year, put a carbon price on every
flight to and from the E.U.
The program is starting modestly; my flight to see my parents might
cost around $2 extra, not the $20 or more that would make up for my pollution.
Still, it’s a start. And keep in mind that the E.U.’s system covers a third of
all miles flown globally. That’s no longer a bunch of greens spending extra on
their organically sourced lettuce. That’s change on a scale the planet notices.
Europe, of course, is not alone. California Australia British
Columbia India China Washington
All of these are the kinds of changes that work with, not against,
market forces and human desires — desires that capture the imagination of
billions and make many of us want to buy the latest iAnything or fly on that
Airbus 380.
My real argument with Klein is that in trying to escape capitalism, she
is trying to evade human nature. We could and should work to make human desires
less material. Some of the world’s rich may well be in a sufficiently
comfortable position to be able to lead lives in sheltered solitude on their
organic farms upstate, but I’m afraid that’s a losing proposition for the
globe. (Just look at the density of iPads at any environmentalists’ gathering
to know that limiting your own desires isn’t quite as easy as talking about
others doing the same.)
It’s not about a full-scale assault on human desires, capitalism, and
free markets. That’s another agenda and another debate. It’s about freeing
markets, and in the process freeing all of us to do the right thing. It doesn’t
get more ethical than that.
Gernot Wagner is the author of But
Will the Planet Notice? How Smart Economics Can Save the World. He serves
as an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund and teaches at Columbia
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