> Your "solution" is also well on its way to making the earth uninhabitable
It's not just my solution. It's the solution consistently voted for in many countries by the most educated general population in history.
If your point is so strong, why do you need to exaggerate? When will the earth be uninhabitable? Do you know a date?
>Responsible for creating societies that have incredibly poor mental and emotional health
Taking this interesting statement at face value, if you traveled back in time several hundred years and asked someone if they would trade: plentiful food, medicine that can heal infections, nearly eliminating infant mortality, rapid travel to distant destinations, nearly everybody enjoying the luxuries that only the exceptionally wealthy of their own time have access to in exchange for: poor mental and emotional health, what choice do you think they would make?
If we don't take it at face value, how do you even measure poor mental and emotional health? Do people with alternate economic systems have better mental and emotional health? I don't think the millions that died in mass starvation in Mao's China appreciated having superior emotional health.
> Worse, the opportunity costs of future development lost because of short-sighted greed - the poor energy choices, the regular financial meltdowns
What opportunities are we passing up? Our energy choices are largely driven by obtaining energy most efficiently, just like the rest of nature. The energy choice you are probably most critical of, coal, is largely responsible for lifting the worlds poorest people out of poverty. Is not wanting to be impoverished being greedy? Are you using a device that runs on electricty? Does it contain plastic?
As for financial meltdowns, economists have discovered recessions throughout history. They are a normal feature of all economies and they affect non-market driven systems too. I'm not sure how you think you would avoid recessions, but lots of people have tried with little success.
> the fact that so much progress relies on military spending and research
I wouldn't agree that a lot of progress relies on military spending. I think a lot of resources are wasted on military spending. However, there needs to be sufficient spending to deter other parties that might start to think they would be better off taking from others rather than creating for themselves.
> the vast cost of industries like smoking and sugar that are only profitable because they destroy the health of their customers
At the time these industries came into existence, there was no evidence they were harmful. All of the evidence is relatively recent. Are you saying in your alternate system you would have foreseen this and banned them before they were ever produced? Perhaps you are saying that as soon as there was evidence they were harmful you would have banned them. But, when trans fats were invented, health conscious scientists wanted to replace all of our fat intake with trans fats because they thought they were healthier. Would you have enforced this change too? What about when it was found they were mistaken about trans fats? Would you force everyone to change back? Maybe it's better to let people make up their own minds.
>If economics came with built-in accounting for the cost of externalities, predictable human failure modes, network effects, and negative feedback for corporate sociopathy, we'd probably be on our way to the rest of the galaxy.
If what you are saying is true, then surely an alternate economic model, like those attempted in Communist Russia and China would have smashed our poor little capitalist economies. Or some other model would have arisen throughout the ages. Or maybe you are saying our situation is hopeless and there is no economic model, either market driven or other, that can force people to behave the way you want them to? In which case we're all doomed and you don't have much to contribute.
> The Internet electric cars are a nice consolation prize, but they're not any more than that - certainly not when the effects of poverty and caste stratification
It's hard to believe that you can throw away all of the achievements of the industrial age so lightly. If you don't value a significant reduction in poverty, longer life expectancy, increased living standards, reduction in child mortality, vastly improved standards of literacy and education, elimination of many infectious diseases, improved environmental outcomes in developed countries vs developing/ex-communist countries... then what do you value?
I'm not saying we can't improve the systems we have. But I think we can be proud of what we've already achieved and feel confident that we will be able to do even better in the future. There isn't any reason to be defeatist or cynical.
It's not just my solution. It's the solution consistently voted for in many countries by the most educated general population in history.
If your point is so strong, why do you need to exaggerate? When will the earth be uninhabitable? Do you know a date?
>Responsible for creating societies that have incredibly poor mental and emotional health
Taking this interesting statement at face value, if you traveled back in time several hundred years and asked someone if they would trade: plentiful food, medicine that can heal infections, nearly eliminating infant mortality, rapid travel to distant destinations, nearly everybody enjoying the luxuries that only the exceptionally wealthy of their own time have access to in exchange for: poor mental and emotional health, what choice do you think they would make?
If we don't take it at face value, how do you even measure poor mental and emotional health? Do people with alternate economic systems have better mental and emotional health? I don't think the millions that died in mass starvation in Mao's China appreciated having superior emotional health.
> Worse, the opportunity costs of future development lost because of short-sighted greed - the poor energy choices, the regular financial meltdowns
What opportunities are we passing up? Our energy choices are largely driven by obtaining energy most efficiently, just like the rest of nature. The energy choice you are probably most critical of, coal, is largely responsible for lifting the worlds poorest people out of poverty. Is not wanting to be impoverished being greedy? Are you using a device that runs on electricty? Does it contain plastic?
As for financial meltdowns, economists have discovered recessions throughout history. They are a normal feature of all economies and they affect non-market driven systems too. I'm not sure how you think you would avoid recessions, but lots of people have tried with little success.
> the fact that so much progress relies on military spending and research
I wouldn't agree that a lot of progress relies on military spending. I think a lot of resources are wasted on military spending. However, there needs to be sufficient spending to deter other parties that might start to think they would be better off taking from others rather than creating for themselves.
> the vast cost of industries like smoking and sugar that are only profitable because they destroy the health of their customers
At the time these industries came into existence, there was no evidence they were harmful. All of the evidence is relatively recent. Are you saying in your alternate system you would have foreseen this and banned them before they were ever produced? Perhaps you are saying that as soon as there was evidence they were harmful you would have banned them. But, when trans fats were invented, health conscious scientists wanted to replace all of our fat intake with trans fats because they thought they were healthier. Would you have enforced this change too? What about when it was found they were mistaken about trans fats? Would you force everyone to change back? Maybe it's better to let people make up their own minds.
>If economics came with built-in accounting for the cost of externalities, predictable human failure modes, network effects, and negative feedback for corporate sociopathy, we'd probably be on our way to the rest of the galaxy.
If what you are saying is true, then surely an alternate economic model, like those attempted in Communist Russia and China would have smashed our poor little capitalist economies. Or some other model would have arisen throughout the ages. Or maybe you are saying our situation is hopeless and there is no economic model, either market driven or other, that can force people to behave the way you want them to? In which case we're all doomed and you don't have much to contribute.
> The Internet electric cars are a nice consolation prize, but they're not any more than that - certainly not when the effects of poverty and caste stratification
It's hard to believe that you can throw away all of the achievements of the industrial age so lightly. If you don't value a significant reduction in poverty, longer life expectancy, increased living standards, reduction in child mortality, vastly improved standards of literacy and education, elimination of many infectious diseases, improved environmental outcomes in developed countries vs developing/ex-communist countries... then what do you value?
I'm not saying we can't improve the systems we have. But I think we can be proud of what we've already achieved and feel confident that we will be able to do even better in the future. There isn't any reason to be defeatist or cynical.