Free Enterprise and Climate Change

The Austrian economics “plan” to deal with climate change in any direction, in any place, of any magnitude, and whenever it may occur is FREE ENTERPRISE. This is not a Republican plan, such as that of Matt Gaetz.

For any contingency of climate change that is economically worth coping with, there is a profit opportunity. There is an opportunity to provide people with a climate coping service that alleviates the problem. Only entrepreneurs (free markets, free enterprise, capitalism) have the natural profit incentives to spy out prospective climate change, be it warming or cooling. Only they have the market incentives to find which geographic locations may be affected, by how much they may be affected and when this may happen. Only they have profit incentives to offer products and services to deal with the problem.

There is no government in the world or combination of governments that’s made for this job, which is really a host of now unrecognized jobs. Governments should stand aside and not hinder free enterprise in this endeavor or endeavors.

Only a relative handful of free enterprise supporters agree with these statements. The rest of us, for one reason and another, support government as the climate problem-solver. It is a mass delusion to think of government as solving any climate problems. Its failed attempts to diagnose climate issues and to back solutions to them demonstrate its incapacity to cope with climate change.

Government simply cannot cope, because it’s not entrepreneurial. Government is not constructed to cope with such matters. Elections based on demagoguery can’t do the job. What do ignorant candidates and elected officials know about climate change? How can anyone rationally expect them to deal in economically rational ways with climate change in any direction, in any place, of any magnitude, and whenever it may occur?

Let free enterprisers do the job.

Republicans, by and large, do not favor free enterprise in any absolute sense any more than they favor limited government. The Gaetz plan is no exception. In fact, he has stated its premise: “Climate change is real. It’s not something people get to choose to believe in or not.”

Gaetz has already prejudged the matter. He sees climate change as a solid, uniform and unitary object, when in fact climate changes can go in many directions, to many places, in differing degrees and at differing times. All of this affects the appropriate economic solutions, and only entrepreneurs can and will address them.

Gaetz’s solutions involve government, to a different degree and in different ways than the Green New Deal. After all, he’s in Congress.

Let free market entrepreneurs do the job, unaided by government, undirected by government, and unregulated by government. The last thing we need is for government to be setting an agenda according to its arbitrary and inflexible ideas about climate change.

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2:51 pm on April 4, 2019