patrick.net

Honest Abe says

I can’t think of any instance in which the free market is not self correcting - can you

We just described one for you. Companies pollute the air in China or in Pennsylvania, but people in CA. don't care so they keep buying their products.

Nomograph says

Honest Abe says

I can’t think of any instance in which the free market is not self correcting - can you?

Water, electricity, roads, schools, health care, forestry, mining, drilling, waste management, transportation, etc… These all will self-destruct or completely monopolize. There are many more.
Regulation doesn’t evolve because of “freedom haters” or other such nonsense. Regulation evolves in response to free market failure.

Indeed. Market fundamentalists operate as if the uneven and suboptimal latter half of the 19th century did not exist.

When Norway found oil on their continental shelf in the 1960s, the state set the exploitation up such that the bulk of the net proceeds ended up in their Pension Fund, which now amounts to $400B vested in 1% of global equity right now (well, $400B until the big haircut today). To avoid needless domestic inflation and unsustainable dependence on an relatively ephemeral income, they do not touch the principal, they only tap a portion of the interest returns for current expenses.

The history of oil exploration and exploitation here in the Land of the Free was a big mess, often literally. Anybody actually believes in the free market fairy has a screw loose with this sordid history staring them in the face, unless they fetishize winner-take-all competition and widespread commercial ruin and economic coercion.

The sweetheart giveaway of natural resources was one of the bigger mistakes made in our economic history; Russia made a similar mistake with the fall of the Soviet order and the subsequent mass selloff of previously unprivatized natural resources and associated capital investment.

Even today, current leases in the GOM are lucky to yield just 40% of net to the state, half the rate the Norwegians collect from their oil production.

Honest Abe won't talk about the Norwegian Eurosocialist example because AFAICT it utterly destroys everything he thinks he knows about economics. I could be wrong about Norway, having never been there, but from some cursory research their managed economy looks rather damn solid.

Here is what I found out about Norwegian Eurosocialist mentality: (1) They think capitalism is "evil and stupid" (2) The present Deputy Leader, Audun Lysbakken, is a "self proclaimed revolutionary, socialist and Marxist" and (3) there was an "earlier connection to communist organizations around Europe."

Well, that's enough for me to say NYET to Norwegian Euro-socialism. I'll take American opportunity, liberty and freedom over that any day.