tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7366878066073177705.post61535768890899379..comments2024-02-09T18:16:45.614+00:00Comments on The Psy-Fi Blog: Caught in a Rat Trap: Jevons’ Paradoxtimarrhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06254802085744425067noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7366878066073177705.post-5196093013496601242012-03-18T12:58:51.427+00:002012-03-18T12:58:51.427+00:00I'm amazed to find you retailing this kind of ...<i> I'm amazed to find you retailing this kind of dishonest lefty claptrap. You should be ashamed. This is not and has never been proposed by any serious defender of liberty. Obviously, the freedom required to respect self possession includes but is not confined to freedom to consume what you can pay for.</i><br /><br />It’s not a political point; it’s a psychological one. <br /><br />Freedom entails not just the freedom from external constraints (Berlin’s negative liberty) but also the freedom from internal constraints (positive liberty). As this is a blog all about behavioral bias, the unconscious drivers of our behavior, the context of this is that without understanding and having some controls over ourselves we’re actually not capable of exercising negative freedom. Far better we educate ourselves than allow our leaders to “nudge us” in the directions they want us to.<br /><br /><i>The fact that fuel efficiency leads people to consume more fuel is not a market failure, it's a market *success*.</i><br /><br />No it's not. If you set out to achieve one thing and achieve the exact opposite it's a failure. That it has positive side-effects is not the point being made.timarrhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06254802085744425067noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7366878066073177705.post-24085999463854118482012-03-18T11:03:16.135+00:002012-03-18T11:03:16.135+00:00"The idea that freedom is all about the freed..."The idea that freedom is all about the freedom to choose to consume whatever you want is a relatively recent invention, developed when producers realised that consumers already had all they actually needed"<br /><br />I'm amazed to find you retailing this kind of dishonest lefty claptrap. You should be ashamed. This is not and has never been proposed by any serious defender of liberty. Obviously, the freedom required to respect self possession includes but is not confined to freedom to consume what you can pay for.<br /><br />You also seem to have fallen into another typical lefty arrogance: of regarding people as stupid. The fact that fuel efficiency leads people to consume more fuel is not a market failure, it's a market *success*. It may be news to you, but life is not about conserving resources. People use resources to do things that enrich their lives and if they can do more such things cheaper then it is a GOOD thing that they can and do.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7366878066073177705.post-27879277563222756492012-03-17T17:35:35.729+00:002012-03-17T17:35:35.729+00:00Where do prices enter the discussion? I don't...Where do prices enter the discussion? I don't believe it's possible to run the resource-based economy off a cliff by running out of anything. The price will go to infinity before that happens. I'm sure I'm stupid and missing something extremely obvious. If the information about resource limitations is not already in market prices, then nothing informational ever will be. It's a rather common meme.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7366878066073177705.post-20160451429625338352012-03-16T14:11:23.071+00:002012-03-16T14:11:23.071+00:00With the same certainty you might suggest that in ...With the same certainty you might suggest that in western europe they preserve coal for the economy of the future.<br /><br />When all naive countries will burn they fuel the only place where it is left will be western europe.<br /><br />There is an uncertainly ahead, but it always being the case. I do not believe it is possible to change it by frugal life style or modesty. It will not work in the consumerism society.Financial Independencehttp://www.niterainbow.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7366878066073177705.post-83851222321320685252012-03-15T14:45:25.131+00:002012-03-15T14:45:25.131+00:00"if you believe that the world’s resources ar..."if you believe that the world’s resources are really finite then a reduction in economic growth is an inevitable consequence"<br /><br />You need another belief for this to be inevitable: that economic growth is resource-bound. It is not. If resource intensive activities become more costly, non-resource intensive activities become relatively cheaper and preferred. So you end up with say more lawyers and fewer carmakers, and growth in legal services can go to infinity no problem. This can be observed today when you look at how the relatively richer spend their money: their expenditure on resources does not grow linearly with income.<br /><br />I tried to cover this in a blog some time ago:<br /><br />http://commentisglee.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/the-growth-industry-fallacy/cighttp://commentisglee.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.com