@Repeal
In theory, your position sounds nice, but in reality, your ideology is an epic failure.
This should have been obvious with the financial crisis leading to "the Great Recession": the near total lack of effective regulation left the "free market" free to do disastrously foolish and wicked things with the financial system, such as Dun & Bradstreet lying about the credit-worthiness of CDOs, which lead to the current crisis in confidence still afflicting the economy today.
That is, because of the failure to regulate, the so-called "free market" failed to live up to the promise of "The Wealth of Nations", instead leading to economic collapse. Despite the technical definiton of 'recession' saying it is now over, we -still- have absurdly low inducement to invest, even with bargain basement interest rates. This is the major reason why we are having our THIRD "jobless recovery" in a row.
There is another reason your ideology is a total failure: Google 'externality' and look at ANY of the explanations of it that pop up.
I saw, for example, Wikipedia's "In these cases in a competitive market, PRICES DO NOT reflect the full costs or benefits of producing or consuming a product or service, "
(emphasis mine).
But that is EXACTLY the problem with energy costs. The price we pay or oil or coal FAILS to realistically reflect the real costs to the whole society of continuing to kill off phytoplankton with excess CO2. If the cost did reflect it, you would much rather pay the lower costs of solar/wind and even nuclear power.
Even more to the point, because it is externalities we are talking about, we CANNOT rely on "entrepreneurs[sic]" to invest in new technology. There is no payoff for it, as long as people are paying an unrealistically low price for carbon.
So recapitulating in brief: there are TWO common reasons for your "it really works when allowed" to fail 1) externalities and 2) sagging business confidence leading to low inducement to invest.
Discussion on:
Message 2 of 1
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