It is interesting that you assume I don’t want government at all and that I don’t care about the environment because I don’t swallow everything on the green menu.

This thread is over as it is turning into an ideological back and forth. My points stand as written.

Maybe my point was not very clear: in no way did I mean to compare a capitalistic system with some sort of non-free communist system and say that the capitalistic system is not better. I understand that that was the main comparison of your post. The only thing I wanted to say is that there are limits/boundaries of a completely unregulated system. And that’s those externatilities and limited resources I talked about. Clean air/water etc. You can’t let the markets go completely free and expect the market to solve pollution problems or make sure the oceans aren’t fished empty. The only interest of the market is to make money in the short term. And as long as there’s no price/cost on clean air/water, the market will never take care of our environment.

If you are thinking in a systems’ approach, you should understand this problem. I am in no way talking ideology here. And then you also understand that someone (probably governments) should somehow intervene. By putting a price on pollution and limited resources. So fine if you fill up your car with petrol and burn it, but you’ll also have to pay for the waste afterwards. You buy a new plastic product, then you have to pay the price for the product including the cost of disposing it in a good way. So I am still talking about a completely free system here! It’s only that the costs of waste and pollution should be included. In practice, that would probably mean that gas gets four times as expensive, that many plastic throw-away products would triple in price, etc. But that would be no problem, since the market would solve it because people would just go buy the cheaper ecological products.

Is this so difficult to understand?

Last about the climate change: you basically say all the big scientific institutions are lying. Well I guess it’s your right to believe that.

“Isolating and then fixing components (sub-systems)
of a system, one by one, is the sure way to get things
done in the hard and cold reality we live in day-to-day.”

This seems to be a central thesis with your systems approach, and I agree that this would work quite nicely for most of the time, except for those case where sub-system is optimisation is negatively correlated with the optimum for the holistic system. Your counter goes a long way to addressing this concern:

“So, the question should always be asked before
proceeding with adjustment of a sub-system,
“what exactly is the goal of the primary system?”
Then, each sub-system is adjusted to point toward
that overall goal.”

But one thing stills nags me about this approach, and that’s the case of highly complex and emergent systems. In these cases it may be impossible to understand the interdependency of sub-systems with enough confidence to optimise a sub-system such that it would improve the holistic system. Examples such as human molecular biology and the international economy spring to mind. There a whole branch of complex and non-linear systems science trying to address this, with limited success. That’s why human biology is such an empirical science — try something see what happens — because the biochemical sub-systems, and their interactions, are complex beyond our comprehension. Unfortunately with some systems, like the economy and the environment, such experimental approaches may be disastrous because, of course, we only have one Earth to experiment with.

Now I’m not saying to do nothing and you’re quite right that a fully holistic approach leads to either paralysis or hippie, crystal-ball solutions — neither of which is appealing. Most times the systems approach is the best option we have. All I’m warning of is the potential for overconfidence and hubris that can come from assuming we understand and control a complex system merely because we understand and control its sub-systems (that we may be aware of).

Think systems here, not ideology.

Perhaps too few people own the wealth. But that applies especially to tyrannical states. In those regimes the ratio is typically 1% own 99% of the wealth. In a free economy, the wealth is spread far and wide with most people having a great life compared to a closed state – those are the statistics…the mechanics. Try Pakistan or Burma, Bangladesh, Cuba or North Korea. Of course things are not perfect in a free state and we must do what we can to avoid a few people from hoarding wealth or destroying the ecology. It’s a matter of degree.

Rich people don’t sit home counting the gold coins. Money flows. Yes, trickles down. One other thing re trickle-down. The stats are not exactly correct but they are close. In the U.S., 5% of the population pays something like 80% of the total taxes and, in America, more than 50% of the population pays no taxes at all. Look at the stats.

So, things are relative. I am not going to disparage free systems because things are not perfect. A free economy is way more perfect (and fair) than a closed economy if you look at the numbers.

Trickle down? Think of the enormous blood and treasure that has “trickled down” from the U.S. to poor countries over the last century. Another thing, the world is mostly free because of the above blood and treasure. Trickle down beats the alternative which can only be a police state.

I simply don’t agree with your statement “As it is now, it’s a big pile of sweets and all for oneself, grab what you want, leaving a mess behind.” I won’t even start on this except to say that I think that’s a bloated generalization (and that my own bloated generalization is exactly the opposite).

Thank you for forgiving me my opinion on climate change, but there is hardly agreement in either the scientific or non-scientific population on what caused it or whether it is “normal” or not. Anyway, speaking realistically, the very real immediate threat is an EMP or on-the-ground nuclear detonation from a rogue state, not that the temperature of the earth may go up two degrees by 2050. Why is this not a concern by those who profess to be “green”? I recommend the book. One Second After by William Forstchen.

There’s one issue however, in this designing of the system, that’s often forgotten: externalities. You are right that in a free capitalistic system without monopolistic problems (a big challenge on its own), the system will make sure the most efficient ways of capitalizing stuff will win. However, one thing remains unsolved: the fact that there’s only one earth. If there are unlimited resources and unlimited possibilities of polluting, there wouldn’t be a problem. However, that’s not the case, obviously.

So there has to be something in place which limits what the system does. If it’s a complete free system, it’s like an ant colony eating up all forests, until there’s nothing left to eat. Then the ants die. The system would work if there would be a market price for clean air, clean water etc. Those prices would be sky high, as there’s indeed a very limited amount of it. However, nobody “owns” his share of clean air, water and land. It’s nobody’s. So if I go out there, dig up some mineral, burn and process it, pollute and then sell the end product, not dealing with the waste, I am profiting while dumping the real costs on someone else (in fact on everybody else). That is the problem.

Also, the same problem lies in the issue of the trickle down theory. If, and only if there are unlimited resources, it wouldn’t be so bad that the rich get richer. Then yes, their investments will trickle down and everybody can grow indefinitely. However, the fact is that we’re with 6 billion on one planet. A limited resource. So currently the 1% richest people own like 25% of all wealth (including those limited resources). If that inequality grows, at some point a very small minority own almost everything. So yes, to some extent there’s an amount of “wealth” trickling down. However, at the same time it’s about a restricted quantity being shared by all people. And that share is more and more being inequally shared. This mechanism is probably hard to imagine, because the earth seems so huge for a mere mortal human being as we are. However, imagine being on a small island with 100 persons. At some point 1 person owns 25% of the land. With that land he is able to get richer faster then the poor people. Buying more land. Etc.

Anyway, I’m in no way advocating some communistic system. I’m a businessmen myself, running my own business. However, we have to account for those externatilities much, much better then we’re currently doing. As it is now, it’s a big pile of sweets and all for oneself, grab what you want, leaving a mess behind. But nobody thinks about the fact that at some point that pile is gone and we’re left with the big mess

Last, I will forgive you for your opinion about the climate change, since apparently in the US and on the internet there’s a lot of misinformation being spread. But it is real and for a large part caused by humans. There’s hardly disagreement among scientists. The disagreements or uncertanties that remain among scientists are constantly fought out in peer-reviewed journals, open for everybody to read about. It’s only among some politicians, stakeholders and others that the whole discussion about real or not real is happening. So unless you believe in some big world wide conspiracy between almost all scientists and governments, you can’t believe it’s not true. The “evidence” that there has been no warming in the last decade only exists on the internet and in the minds of skeptics. All big scientific institutions have concluded that the last decade is warmer then any previous one in recent history. But let’s focus on the main point of your article about capitalism, as that is something we are able to discuss rationally here.