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I remember a links post by Scott from like 8 years ago where he asked, given the fact that humans have been responsible for the extinction of tens of thousands of species, mostly bugs I think I recall, (not to mention introduced lots of invasive species detrimental to various local environments), why the hell haven't we seen catastrophic impacts to our ecology and agriculture? I guess I have a pet theory I've been working up in my mind for a while
Epistemic status: I know close to nothing about agriculture, except some basic historical facts I've heard about previous food industries changing.
Essentially, I think that capitalism and human industry may be what has saved us and prevented catastrophic changes. As someone who works in engineering, I know you always have to deal with changes to your plans, and nothing ever goes right. When you do deliver systems that work, nothing ever stays non-broken, and you always have to come up with new fixes. However, you have goals, and as such you keep finding tradeoffs and workarounds so you're still able to deliver and fulfill the customer need consistently. If you don't, then you lose the customer's business and someone else ends up fulfilling their need instead. Perhaps almost all human-impacting ecological sectors have essentially already been turned into self perpetuating industries.
Is there some fungus which is going to kill all the Gros Michel bananas in the world? Banana farmer moguls absolutely do not want that happening, and they're not stupid. They will end up employing experts that help them set up systems to delay that eventually as long as possible, so they can still meet their quarterly earnings projections, whether by developing new farming methods or new antifungal treatments for the plants.
Does it finally get to the point that the Gros Michel banana can no longer hang on? Either the Gros Michel banana moguls have already started setting up systems to farm new varieties of bananas in preparation for this eventually, or else some until-now specialty supplier of bananas that used to be not as popular (like the Cavendish banana) ends up rising to power by fulfilling the now-unmet demand for bananas, capturing the market and supplanting the old industry leaders as the new head of the industry.
For the record, Gros Michel bananas did taste different, and maybe even better, than Cavendish bananas. But I guess Cavendish bananas are a sufficiently good workaround because they've been the norm for 70 years now.
Is it still bad that humans cause so many changes to the ecology? Yes, but maybe not THAT bad. I postulate two situations.
There might be aspects of ecology that would have been ripe for eventual human exploitation that have not yet been industry-ized. What if the Gros Michel banana specifically contained some protein that could have been turned into a low-carbon-emission fuel source using 2025 technology? Well, then we are out of luck in exploiting that fuel source as a new industry. However, this still doesn't impact current industries, only potential future ones. We may never realize what we could have achieved and what we lost the opportunity to do had that banana not gone extinct, and as such this isn't viewed as a catastrophe.
There might be negative effects to the environment that are so detrimental that there is no mitigation possible, and it will make non-viable even other related industries that might have come in and filled the gap. This is the catastrophe scenario that is typically pushed by environmentalists to make laymen worried. But really, I'm not certain I know of any examples of this catastrope scenario coming to pass (not that that means it cannot happen in the future). I guess I've heard that in pre WWII France, they had the technology to farm truffles, and the decimation of France in the war resulted in them somehow losing that capability. As such, truffles need to be hunted and gathered these days by specially trained pigs, and the price of truffles went sky high. I'm not too clear on how this happened, and I'm not sure if it has to do with ecology or just loss of human knowledge.
I speculate that this model of "ingrained industries as a shield" may also apply to other non-agricultural scenarios as well.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a bit of a tool, but I think his concept of "skin in the game" is a valuable one. The older I get, the more I discount people's opinions when they don't have skin in the game.
For example, here's a group whose opinions I don't respect: climate change experts. We could mitigate 90% of the negative effects of climate change in the next decade – but few experts are recommending action. Why? Because climate change experts don't suffer from climate change. If anything, their power and prestige grows when the climate gets warmer. Why else would they hype up any negative report and downplay any positive news. If somehow the climate stopped warming tomorrow, they'd be out of a job and looking rather foolish.
The beauty of capitalism is that it usually (though not always) aligns incentives in a positive way because the people making decisions have skin in the game.
Doesn’t the whole concept of externalized costs undermine this claim?
I’m don’t think it’s a specific failing of capitalism but the insulation of decision-makers in business from consequences seems alive and well to me.
Capitalism isn't utopian, and most capitalists are willing to let the state address its inadequacies. You acknowledge that this isn't solely a failure of capitalism, but isn't the externalization of costs even greater in bureaucracy or democracy as a whole?
I don't follow the question really as I don’t see bureaucracy or democracy as the same type of thing as capitalism.
All I’m saying is whatever its virtues I don’t see how capitalism somehow leads to more decision makers having skin in the game. Would you be willing to flesh out an argument?
Allow classic Milton to get you into the basics with only a sound bite.
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No of course not. The existence of exceptions doesn't negate the general rule. I thought about bringing up externalities but it felt long winded. So I just said (though not always) and hoped that would cover it.
Capitalism is the worst system except for all the other ones, yadda yadda.
What is your evidence of the general rule?
To make sure I understand, you’re saying “in general, capitalism leads to decisions made by people with skin in the game,” right? Would you be willing to flesh out an argument a little more? I just don’t see why that’s true.
At the risk of being basic, here's a simple example. Let's say I own a restaurant making chicken sandwiches. I have skin in the game. If I serve bad sandwiches at high prices, I will lose money and then go out of business.
On the other hand, consider the DMV. No one gets promoted or fired based on performance of the DMV. People are required to use their services, and they can't go out of business. No one has any skin in the game.
Chicken sandwich restaurants are generally good. DMV's are generally bad.
As a stupid counterpoint, we had a chicken chain try to move in recently. Super Chix. Good sandwiches at high prices. I think they lost out hard to the existing (and ever-expanding) force of Chik-fil-a.
This isn’t an argument against the general principle, but it is a reminder that there’s more than one way to lose money. Whether or not we eradicate a species has less to do with our stated preferences and more to do with its particular habits.
Super chix tried to advertise themselves as the woke version of chic-fil-a at higher prices. Needless to say, paying a premium to get gay chicken was not a recipe for success in the Dallas suburbs even if they did have slightly better fries.
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Wouldn’t the same be true of a worker’s coop? This seems more like an example of markets providing the right incentives than capitalism. Many group the two together; not trying to nitpick, it’s fine if you want to group them together, just want to make sure I’m clear.
It would be even more true of a workers' coop when considering the market for the provision of goods. The place workers' coops fails is, ironically, when considering the market for the provision of workers' compensation. Putting your investments in a single business instead of diversifying is in general a bad idea; making that business be the same business you rely on for a salary makes it an even worse idea. Maybe not for the customers, because from their perspective the workers' incentives are now just about as well-aligned as they possibly could be, but when considering the workers or even just considering both together it's hard to beat keeping most wealth in index funds rather than a "pray to God this one company doesn't go under" fund.
For sure. I get paid mostly in shares of stock and it blows my mind that my colleagues will keep theirs instead of selling and diversifying.
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