"Some "deep green" environmentalists think that, but certainly not all enviornmentalists. I care deeply about the environment, and as such I'm a supporter or sustainable development - striking a balance between the economic, social and environmental impacts of man's activity, and seeking to allow growth to continue without causing harm to society or the environment."
If you support sustainability, you support free markets.

I think Uly summed it up best:
"There's little point in inventing in a technology that is economically unfeasible to operate, when you can be inventing technologies that actually are. Sure, it's nice knowing you have a backup and if aliens came and gave it to us we would be happy, but if their perfect solution that would cover our energy sustainablity forever would require drilling hundreds of miles in the ground, we would still not use it because drilling hundreds of miles in the ground is much more costly than using what we have."

In a free market, we use the price system to determine what resources to use. Coal has almost tripled in price over the last 15 years, wind has almost halved in price over the same time. Despite that, coal is still cheaper then wind, and as soon as wind becomes cheaper then coal, in a free market we switch over, that way we maximize productivity of energy by using coal while it is economically feasible to do so, and when it becomes too expensive, we switch to alternatives. It is the best system for the environment, for economic growth and for human well being.

"Many "green" technologies are based on energy efficiency. Whether or not you believe that reducing CO2 emissions is important, if you reduce the amount of energy your business uses, guess what - your energy bills will be less. Amazing but true! Often sustainable solutions are just good business, but companies are slow to implement them because of an "ain't broke / don't need fixing" attitude."
This is wrong, companies run under the maximize profit method, and in most cases the short term cost of implementing eco-friendly business policies doesn't justify the small long term gains that will be realized.

"Another example is driver training. If you run a company with a large distribution operation or company car fleet, training your drivers to drive more economically is environmentally positive since the vehicle emissions will be reduced - but sensible, economic driving will also reduce wear on tyres, brakes, and other components, prolonging their life and cutting your fleet maintenance costs.

It's just good business."
I can almost guarantee you that people paid to drive around, truck drivers for instance, will have a small education first about driving efficiently to cut down on costs, but lets say they didn't, it might be more expensive to do so, cause you have to pay for the education.

Most big firms higher managerial accountants who are paid to evaluate costs and present to the managers whether increase in costs are justified etc.
The fact of the matter is companies like to be as efficient as possible if that is what maximizes profit, at the end of the day, thats all that matters.

"Yes, but the majority of companies don't have shareholders. A huge amount of economic activity is undertaken by small and medium sized firms that aren't floated on the stock market."
Up until Sarbanes-Oxley most companies did have shareholders, but new regulation on publicly traded firms significantly increased the price of IPOs and being a public firm, the result was that a heavy majority of new firms since 2003 have been private, and aren't publicly traded.
In anycase, the point of a company doesn't change, the goal is to maximize profit for the owners, whether that owner is a limited-liability partnership, or a bunch of shareholders doesn't really change that.

And I seriously doubt there is a single case out there where some company manager is saying 'I know being environmentally efficient will make me more money but I don't care", that is bullshit since their goal is to make as much money as possible (at least I hope that their goal)

@Fasces

-claps-

Improves my day to see someone advocating the free market and not some idiot railing against it.

@ Fasces:

ME: ""Many "green" technologies are based on energy efficiency. Whether or not you believe that reducing CO2 emissions is important, if you reduce the amount of energy your business uses, guess what - your energy bills will be less. Amazing but true! Often sustainable solutions are just good business, but companies are slow to implement them because of an "ain't broke / don't need fixing" attitude."

YOU: "This is wrong, companies run under the maximize profit method, and in most cases the short term cost of implementing eco-friendly business policies doesn't justify the small long term gains that will be realized."

It's not wrong. I know whereof I speak. Part of my job involves working with local companies to help them identify ways to make their business model more sustainable. Often smaller firms put so much effort into keeping things running day-to-day that they don't look at potential ways of improving their business model, as long as their business is reasonably profitable. I'm not wrong about this - I see it regularly in practice. You appear to be speaking on the basis of economic theory. That's fine as far as it goes but I'm speaking from actual, first-hand experience of how small/medium firms behave.


"I seriously doubt there is a single case out there where some company manager is saying 'I know being environmentally efficient will make me more money but I don't care""

I never said there was. The point is that the company manager is often so concerned with the day to day "bread and butter" of his company's operations that he doesn't notice potential opportunities to make the business more sustainably efficient. It's not that he's aware of it and does nothing, what I'm saying is that he doesn't take the time to make himself aware.

"Often smaller firms put so much effort into keeping things running day-to-day that they don't look at potential ways of improving their business model, as long as their business is reasonably profitable. I'm not wrong about this - I see it regularly in practice. You appear to be speaking on the basis of economic theory. That's fine as far as it goes but I'm speaking from actual, first-hand experience of how small/medium firms behave."
And that is why people like you exist, the free market isn't perfect and I don't pretend every CEO that makes money knows how to maximize profit, that said I still believe the government has no place telling CEOs how to make money because CEOs will know more about their business and how to make money then any bureaucrat will.

@Jamiet - Don't forget the old school attitude of "WE've done it this way forever. I ain't changing now and you can't make me." Just watch an episode of Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares and you'll see how stubborn owner/operators of businesses can be even when their business is failing and about to go under.

but thats the beauty of capitalism, it rewards those who are fiscally responsible and provide goods that consumer wants at reasonable prices while minimizing costs associated with production. You can make a profit only fitting some of the above criteria, but you wont make as much.

Agreed, fasces, but when it is a small local merchant with a near monopoly on the goods (maybe the only Mexican restaurant in town?) then sometimes government mandates become required for the public good. For instance, asbestos is bad for the environment in general and is a known carcinogen so the government has mandates that any restaurant, even one in an old building, must be asbestos free. This includes the roof of the building the restaurant just happens to occupy (say an old building downtown). Remember, a free market is a theoretical concept. In practice, regionality prevents a true free market from existing. Distances allow regional monopolies which are counter to a true free market to exist and then we need government to step in and break up the monopolies. Bell Telephone is a good example. Bell had a monopoly on the wires and long distance service was all through them. Free market was all fine and good, but in that case, it would have required Bell to relinquish its lines and share them voluntarily (for a fee of course) or for any competitor to run it's own set of lines. Well, Bell decided to do the shared lines but the fees were pretty high and anytime someone came close to threatening their stranglehold, Bell just raised that competitors line leases to outrageous figures to put them out of business.

Free market works when everyone is on equal fotting at the start, but when someone tries to break into a behemoth's business arena, then behemoth can put them out of business or buy them out. That is why free market needs to be aregulated free market in practice.

Monopolies don't exist in unregulated free markets. If a monopoly has massive profits, then someone will start competing with him, and the lower prices will entice consumers.

Even if a monopoly buys out the competitor, someone else will join.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO8ZU7TeKPw

Bullshit, Fasces. When someone invents something new and keeps it close to their chest, they have a monopoly on that product until someone else figures out how to replicate it. In the case of services which are harder to reverse engineer, the inventor can be so huge as to easily squash any comptetition and get a monopoly by virtue of size. Let's look at Microsoft for a moment. They may not be a true monopoly, but they are as much a monopoly in effect due to size in the business class OS world as a true onopoly would be. Look around every desktop and laptop in corporate America. Unless the company is a graphics design firm or does some sort of scientific research, that machine will be running a flavor of Windows. This would have happened with or without regulation.

And without regulation, Apple would hold a monopoly on the MP3 personal music player and likely the smartphone and tablet as well. As it is, they hold a massive market share in both despite selling inferior products at excessive prices. (First smartphone with 4G went to Motorola and an Android OS and many tablets and MP3 players are far superior to iPads and iPods for half the price).

Part of this is because of the third party applications and accessory market. The ubiquitous nature of the iPhone and iPod means many manufacturers makle products that use the iPort on the phones and players. Hell, my Mercedes has one in its glove box and the controller software is built into the car's OS so I can control it from the toggle wheel in the center console. Yet the bluetooth interface is phone only, not A2DP and AVRCP compliant, so I had to buy a separate blue tooth to iPod adapter to send my phones music through the car stereo and I still have to control it through the phone.

Now, the new Benz models have A2DP and AVRCP so that won't apply when I upgrade in 3 or 4 years, but these protocols existed and were quite prevalent in 2009. Why didn't Mercedesd put it in then? Because Apple had such a dominance in the market. Until Android started challenging iOS, they didn't have a motivation and that challenge only happened because regulation prevented Apple from taking over Google and killing the Android OS.

"Monopolies don't exist..." "Even if a monopoly buys out the competitor..."

Well which is it? Either they don't exist, or they have to fight off and buy out their competitiors. Pick one, dude. Both statements cannot be true.

Natural monopolies very well exist in unregulated free markets. And it doesn't have to be in the clichéd example of utilities, many industries can develop a natural monopoly over time. Implying increased returns to scale, an early entrant in the market can move along the average cost curve so far that any other potential competitor can never hope to catch up and still enjoy a positive return on its investment, since he would be losing money all the way only to enjoy a minor profit in the end. Moving along the cost curve giving an unbeatable headstart is a real issue in international trade for instance. It's the reason why no country in the world tries to create a competitor to Boeing and Airbus for instance - the margins in large planes manufacturing are not so high to offset the immense investment needed to create a company capable of competing with those 2.

@ Draugnar: "Don't forget the old school attitude of "We've done it this way forever. I ain't changing now and you can't make me.""

Indeed. I encounter that attitude with frustrating frequency.

@ Fasces: "the government has no place telling CEOs how to make money because CEOs will know more about their business and how to make money then any bureaucrat will"

I agree with that. The government does, however, have a duty to step in if the company's activities are causing serious damage to the environment, or if they're abusing their workers, etc. That's exactly the proper role of government in regulating the activities of economic operators.

I partially agree to that and understand the need for the government to step in to curb the negative effects externalities.

I also have recently come out in support of minimum wage (to the annoyance of my Libertarian friends), because I understand the economic benefits of having everyone on affordable wages.

That said I support a progressive minimum wage, I really like the minimum wage law of BC, where its $6/hr until the employee has 500 hours of work experience, where it becomes $10.25. I do think these numbers are a little high, but I really like the idea of using minimum wage as a way of encouraging, rather then discouraging hiring people with no work experience.

That said regulation has to be simple, laws like Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank are overburdening and hurts small buissnesses too much with excessive compliance costs.

@Uly: Natural monopolies form when competition, due to economies of scale, are undesirable, it is still in the best interest of the consumer. In the case of Boeing and Airbus, its as you said, noone competes because its too expensive to compete, however its only too expensive because they are not overpricing their planes, if they jacked up their prices so that competitors could offer it for less, then competition would arise.

"The government has no place telling CEOs how to make money because CEOs will know more about their business and how to make money then any bureaucrat will

The government does, however, have a duty to step in if the company's activities are causing serious damage to the environment, or if they're abusing their workers, etc.

That's exactly the proper role of government in regulating the activities of economic operators."

There's a lot of substance in these 3 sentences. In my personal economic spectrum, someone disagreeing with the first belongs on extreme left. Someone disagreeing with the second belongs on extreme right. What constitutes "serious damage to the environment" or "worker abuse" then distinguishes between mainstream left and mainstream right.

@krellin

I am reading your white paper now. As you've referred to it several times, I hope we can have a discussion on its content when I'm done.

Which white paper?

Also on another note has anyone noticed that every topic ends up turning into a discussion on either a creationism vs evolution thread, a debate about gun rights or a debate about whether free markets work?

The natural monopoly is expropriating an abnormal part of the social surplus. Should the government forced it to surrender that abnormal part in favour of consumers, the allocative efficiency of capitalism would be maintained yet the consumers would be clearly better off, so you cannot say it's in the best interest of the consumer. It's merely the best a consumer in genuinely free market can hope for.

But I hate to pull the libertarian rhetoric on you (but in this case I feel its justified). But what gives the government the right to determine when this natural monopoly is not desirable? Natural monopolies are sometimes good for the consumer due to economies of scale (best example is Standard Oil, where adjusted for inflation the price of refined oil droped 70% during the course of their monopoly. Then the government broke the company up due to lack of competition, and the price of oil increased).

The government doesn't know whats best so I don't want to trust it with the power of decided what should and shouldn't be a monopoly.

Oil is a bad example,my friend. Consdiering we are hamstrung by the middle east and the price of what we pay at the pump for gasoline is not based on what that fuel costs, but what some analyst thinks it will cost to replace it... Combine that with obvious price fixing in the oil market, do in no msall part to one supplier supplying fuel for all the distributors in a region and you get a very bizarre and not natural from of monopoly even with regulation.

And, yes, there is one supplier for both the BP station and the Shell station and the Mobil station on the four corners of mainstreet in your home town. The only difference in their gasoline is the additives that are added to the fuel before it is delivered to that station.

"Which white paper? "

See my newest thread.

I dare to say that even a bureacrat is able to count to two ;) If he can but there is only one company to count, keeping an eye on it is a standard procedure. After all, private companies are not obliged to publish their financial statements so the potential competitors might not even know how high the margins actually are.

Fair enough, but thats a problem with the current system, there are more regulations that apply to public companies then private ones. Remove those regulations and many would go public because its easier to raise capital.

I still think a system that rewards capitalists that give the consumer what they want is better then a system where the government has the power to determine which companies are allowed monopolies. This is why special interest groups exist, and why big banks do a lot of lobbying, because you want the people that decide winners and losers to want to pick you as a winner.

The president (and owner) of Cincom (my employer) has a saying... Give me liberty or give me an IPO. He believes that losing control of your company (regardless of regulations) to a board of directors is for the boards. You could completely deregulate everything and he *still* wouldn't sell share in his company.

"This is why special interest groups exist, and why big banks do a lot of lobbying, because you want the people that decide winners and losers to want to pick you as a winner. "

I agree with this but I will rather reserve the right for the government to enact antitrust policies than to categorically say that it can never do anything useful in this area.

rant
Surrendering vital government competencies without any compensation and in a world where their power relative to biggest companies wanes anyway threatens to lead to a situation where the government focuses more and more on meaningless shit since all the important matters cannot be influenced by it anyway.
/rant

And I never said he would, but the number of IPOs has dropped significantly since Sarbanes-Oxley, for a reason.

Yes, S-Ox is a fucked up bureaucratic monstrosity. The irony is... All is basically says is you have to self audit with checks and balances and those who sign off are personally responsible if a lie slips through the cracks. It could just as easily been written as "You must be honest with your creditors and investors. If we find you lied, the officers of the company will go to jail. There is no plausible deniability when it comes ot your company's financial statements."