Just in time for Earth Day, here’s “Economic Calculation in the Environmentalist Commonwealth,” under review at the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. The abstract:
Do environmental initiatives like carbon accounting provide a viable alternative to monetary calculation based on profit and loss? Economic insights about calculation and imputation suggest that they do not provide a reliable, rational guide to action. Non-monetary calculation of the environmental effects of action runs into the same problems of in natura calculation and commonly-owned means of production. The information needed for rational economizing does not exist when we forsake the price mechanism. A legal regime based on strict private property rights solves environmental problems. Relaxed restrictions on property rights can generate environmental benefits and reduce our contribution to environmental degradation. Examples include the elimination of restrictions on housing markets and privatization of municipal recycling and garbage collection.
Update: Forthcoming in New Perspectives on Political Economy, here’s “A Note on Profit, Loss, and Social Responsibility.” The abstract:
This short note discusses the role of profits and losses in organizing information. I explore the ethical status of a firm earning losses and argue that to earn a loss reveals important information about the production plans that are likely to be successful. I further argue that the information revealed in a profit-and-loss economy is socially beneficial.
Cross-posted at Division of Labour and The Beacon.
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I can’t help but cheer at your work, Art Carden, especially considering you’re an insider here. Your insight about environmental calculation is exactly what I have been screaming at Austrians for the past year.
Many times, I’ve seen Austrians argue something like, “We can handle environmental problems by telling people not to be wasteful or calculating their ____ footprint.” But far from being good arguments, these claims implicitly accept that it’s possible to learn the value of something without property rights-based prices.
No one can tell you that you’re being wasteful. Only the interplay of your values and property rights can tell you that. Shame on you Austrians who missed this.
Super summary abstract -> calculation in a command economy is impossible.
I have been searching for a pithy term to describe my libertarian views. ‘Immunocracy’ seems best. We should all be immune to community coercion. As an Immunocrat, I support individual rights over group strength, private over public, local over central. Any other terms out there?
I kind of like Freedomist
‘Freedomist’ sounds like someone who studies freedom, not somewhere to go! Immunocracy tells you the hoped-for destination- where all individuals are immune from coersive democracy! ‘Freedomist’ is like libertarian, a broad term. I’m looking for well-defined terms, like anarcho-capitalist, or Rothbardian, etc.
where is yuri maltsev?
i agree with carden that bureaucratic planning is inherently wasteful of resources and thereby environmentally destructive, but it would be nice to see some case studies of how clean and green the ussr was. (chernobyl received publicity as part of a broader anti-nuclear agenda – where are the other stories?).
i wonder what the e-coli count is in some of cuba’s waterways?
Newson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
in USSR
Newson
I read some time ago that it used to snow black in Poland before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Google pointed to nothing on that specific claim, I did find this though: http://www.mountainvoices.org/po_th_environment.asp.html
Money quote: “Pollution of the environment was a serious problem in the Klodzko Valley during the 1980s and early 1990s, but now the feeling is that ‘everything is going in the right direction. Things are changing for the better’.”
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