--- Warren Ockrassa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Ahh, but the other side of that is (for instance) > how rare asteroid > strikes to Earth have been; it's probably not going > to happen as long > as our species is around. However, would you agree > with capitalism's > logic that it's inefficient -- therefore unwise -- > to plan for such a > contingency and develop technology to help us > prevent it?
That's not the logic of capitalism. It's barely even the logic of some sort of cliched stereotype of capitalism. Protecting against risks like that is what is called a public good. Somewhere around your second week of a first year economics class, they'll explain that public goods are things that markets don't provide for adequately, and this is when governments have to step in. Gasoline is, however, not much of a public good. > > Efficiency in a market can't be the only measure of > a thing's value, > because there are human-scale effects which can't be > costed. A true but trivial statement. Efficiency in a market is an _enormously important_ value. When a market is inefficient you are saying that, in the aggregate, people are less well off than they might be. If you build a refinery using some resources, then you fail to build something else with those same resources. You are giving something up by choosing to build that refinery. So you must make a decision. Build a refinery or build something else. A company that built a refinery 20 years ago (when gas prices were quite low) or 10 years ago (when they were _extremely low) would have been making a very bad decision. Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
