Karpow! What on earth are Karpowerships and what to they have to do with bad incentives, means, markets and the future?
Today's signal, looks at how last-ditch liquified gas/diesel-burning rental boats can be made clean and green and "carbon neutral" (yes, in theory, the maths checks out even if in reality the fossil fuel burns the sky black) simply by changing the owners details on a title deed to a game farm.
ESG "economics" as a total and utter sick joke - leading billions of people to believe that changing some names and numbers on a computer has any "net positive" (or even "net zero") effect on the actual environment.
Positive economics (the kind that looks at past actual performance rather than normative subjective solutions) shows us that markets make MORE. Ergo they are good for goods, and um, bad, for bads. (Unless you want more bads, like carbon credits, for example.) Karpowerships being "made" clean and green through buying existing property is no less evil than churches selling indulgences to "save" sinful souls from hell. Some things cannot be priced and shouldn't even if they could.
ESG and carbon markets are a great example of means-fixation, rather than focusing on shared ends - that (singular, sorry fellow professional futurists, you're wrong) FUTURE we are ALL going to end up living in eventually. (There are myriad potential futures but only one arrived at, however briefly in the ever shifting SHARED present).
Anyway, I'm ready for you all to disagree with me!
What are your thoughts?
Are markets for bads actually good? (If so, go ahead, convince me)
How can we undo the unintended consequences of EGS by numbers?
Where else do you see secular indulgences being sold to the guilty and naive?
Can you cancel out physical wrongs with fiscal fines?
Have you spotted "means" arguments distracting from ends and evidence?
Let me know! (and please do share this with a friend to start an argument in my name)
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Karpow!