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Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by EGreg on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @07:17PM (#5754396)
Voluntarily it would take a lot to resist making maximal short-term profits from gas guzzlers for long term unproven gains such as the ones Musk's company has been doing. Are you saying governments shouldn't institute any regulations, including carbon credit systems, and everything should be decided by the free market?

Sure, it's not voluntary, but then again neither is most of the stuff that producers of things do. The consumer demand is the taskmaster, and thanks to government regulations, so is the public interest, in the form of policies designed to reduce carbon emissions and pollution.

I think unqualified free market advocacy amounts to basically a wish for there to be consumer interest only, without any system for representing public interest that uses any signal other than money. But taken to its extreme, the absence of any system to balance the money signal can lead to things like buying up lakes to dump in, or buying up all the judges in a town, just because you can pay off enough people. In a completely free market, if you are rich enough, you can theoretically buy enough institutions and mercenaries and set up enough corrupt judges to let you kill people for fun.

Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by rz2k on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @08:21PM (#5754631)
I suspect that the above commenter is skeptical about carbon emissions as a legitimate externality. There are also plenty of people who do not think we should be able to address externalities through legislation.

It is strange though because it is often the people who acknowledge or advocate the use market approaches who later complain about them when they are put in practice.

Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by icebraining on Thursday May 23, 2013 @06:01AM (#5756008)
Usually those proponents advocate the use of market approaches free from governmental intervention; a market where the commodity is a virtual creation (carbon credits) by the government is obviously contrary to their preferences.

(Note: I'm not saying the approach is wrong, I'm just explaining the position. Personally, I still haven't found anyone making a decent libertarian position on the issue. The only ones I've read/listen boiled down to "I'm not a climatologist, but I'm pretty sure it's not a real problem")

Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by benaiah on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @07:50PM (#5754544)
Don't confuse free market advocacy with anarchy. Buying up judges, bribing other officials, and other fraudulent transactions, including stuff like misrepresentation of goods and other deceptive business practices, are not necessarily okay in a free market. However, direct government interference is. I don't advocate for a completely dog-eat-dog, caveat emptor society, but I do advocate for one in which those in power cannot control the flow of private wealth (often to their own benefit).
Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by sjwright on Wednesday May 22, 2013 @10:22PM (#5754985)
So then who is going to "interfere" on behalf of the society at large? On behalf of the environment? Will individual consumers do what's right for the common good, for the first time in ever?

Look, everyone is part socialist, part capitalist, part communist, part fascist, part anarchist. Just don't fall into the trap of thinking your current favourite blend of these colours is the one true path. If there's one thing you learn looking around the world, there are many blends that have proven to work comparatively well. (And others that clearly don't.)

Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by benaiah on Thursday May 23, 2013 @12:40AM (#5755383)
I don't mean to imply I have the perfect system (though it obviously doesn't contain any errors I'm aware of), but rather that advocating a free market does not imply what he says it implies. Advocating a free market does not imply endorsing bribery and fraud. That was the extent of my point there.
Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by EGreg on Thursday May 23, 2013 @01:34AM (#5755506)
I agree with you but the elephant in the room is, although you may be against "bribery and fraud" how would a community actually stop someone with enough money from doing just that, unless you do in fact have governments and regulations? What is going to balance the money signal? It's not enough to say that you are not for it, but what mechanism would the system actually have to deal with such abuses?
Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by JackFr on Thursday May 23, 2013 @10:40AM (#5757037)
The irony is implicit -- the way to avoid the corruption of government bureacracies is to increase the size and power of said bureacracies.
Re:Tesla Repays Department of Energy Loan Nine Years Early by benaiah on Thursday May 23, 2013 @01:40AM (#5755515)
Again, I am in favor of government, just not its economic interference. Reducing its economic interference actually reduces the motivation for corruption and bribery (not that I think that's enough). Bribery and corruption should still have legal penalties and be prosecuted by the government.

Abuse of wealth should still be a problem, but that doesn't require the government micromanaging that wealth.