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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (373861)	3/12/2008 1:22:18 AM
From: RetiredNow	Respond to of 1573711

I made that statement to make a point. The point wasn't that we all wanted companies to pollute. The point was that we all came up with plenty of reasons why it was unreasonable for the government to put all these laws in place that constrain businesses from making a profit. It's economic Darwinism. But the plain fact of the matter is that companies have a duty to the environment and to the citizens to leave it as it was or better off. As Tim repeated from my earlier post, pollution represents an externality that has to be added to the cost of products, but we don't do that very well. Oil and gas production has a whole host of externalities that we struggle to account for, which leaves the price of gas artificially low. I believe the use of our military to secure oil supplies is probably the biggest, although it's a bit of a stretch to call it an externality. Rather, I would simply categorize it as an extra cost to the oil business and oil companies should be taxed to help support our military. Either that or supply their own security and own navy to secure the trade routes from the Middle East and elsewhere to the US. However, there are true externalities related to oil. For example, terrorists now are aiming at us primarily because of our interest and meddling in the Middle East, which we only care about because of oil. Another is pollution and rising CO2 levels, the quantification of which is just now getting increased press. If rising CO2 levels lead to volatile and extreme climate changes, then that might start to damage our infrastructure and raise insurance rates dramatically. But at this point, I don't think we have enough data to quantify this one. But you get my point. I don't believe gas, even at $4 a gallon, is fully priced. I think we haven't added all the true costs to it. So when we all pretend to be in favor of market dynamics, but then say the market has been allowed to act to price gas correctly, then we are being disingenuous. Gas properly priced by removing all the subsidies and tax incentives, and adding back costs of security and wars would double or triple it. Then alternatives would become cost competitive over night with no help from the government.