Here's My Solution to Climate Change: Part V

Where I Become a Libertarian For One Week

One of the main goals I have for this Substack is to try as much as possible to avoid culture warring. I’m not perfect so I fail at that from time to time. But there’s two main reasons I want to avoid the culture war. The first is that there are, by my rough calculations, 18,348,294 better places to get your culture war fix. Little old unknown me writing about the culture war is like if I tried to open a taco truck here in Austin. Sure, there’s a lot of demand, but what possible reason do I have to think I can offer something that distinguishes me from anyone else?

The second reason is, as I said in the intro post, my belief is that techno-optimism has always been a movement that crosses political lines. Even though you’ll meet a great many of them – particularly nowadays – I don’t believe you can call yourself a Marxist and not be a techno-optimist. Conversely, almost every techno-optimist I meet in real life is also an ardent capitalist. And to me, there’s no inherent conflict in this. We can – and should – argue over how best to allow technological progress to help us build a better future and even what that better future will look like, but we can all agree on what the engine looks like. Because of this, I really do try and make this newsletter as apolitical as possible even though I write about a lot of topics that touch on political issues.

That will not be the case today. Today, I am going to have to take some very strong political stands. And, ironically, it will generally be in the direction of libertarianism. Which is especially ironic because of how critical I am of Silicon Valley techbro libertarianism. As I’ve said before, I find this to be an incredibly childish version of libertarian ideology, simple “the government is evil” nonsense from people who gorge on government contracts and base their wealth on a technology largely created by the government. These are the people who tweet about how we should trust Elon Musk and not the government because he’s accomplished more on clean energy and space exploration while ignoring the billions of dollars of government funding he’s received to accomplish these things. It’s childish and stupid and mostly as deeply rooted in psychological issues.

I am also very critical of these people because I think libertarianism does have some good strands of thought that should be included in mainstream discussion. When I was a mainstream Democratic political hack I would get into a lot of fruitless arguments with friends because I found they skipped the threshold question over government action which is, to me, “Is that an appropriate use of government power?” As much as I believe government can be an important force for good, I also am not naïve enough to not realize it can be a force for bad.

Last week I ended with the cliffhanger of whether or not the desire to use government power to bring about their desired world of no SUVs and McMansions was feasible. My answer, dropped in the footnote, was of course it wasn’t. And it’s for the same reason that our biggest impediment is not the technological or societal or cultural obstacles but the political one. Quite simply, it’s because it doesn’t benefit the people who control government.

Now, this isn’t the segue into any sort of conspiratorial screed about international bankers or anything else. It’s just the basic form of how American government works. Almost every American elected official at any level of government that involves even the remotest level of professionalization is bought and paid for. Who they are bought and paid for by changes from person to person and area to area. For example, if you’re a member of the Iowa State Legislature, there’s a good chance you’re the property of Big Ag. If you’re a Congressperson from Northern California, Silicon Valley probably has receipts for your purchase. If you’re pretty much anyone of real significance you’re owned by Wall Street. We mock the Italians for their corruption and yet we have a level of government corruption that is so advanced it’s like comparing Michelangelo to your kid’s finger painting. It’s not some evil conspiracy theory and it’s not even particularly malicious. Elected officials want to stay in office, and the way they do that is by campaigning, which means they need campaign funds.¹ It’s just a lot of people acting out of rational self-interest and taking advantage of how the system is setup. Unfortunately, it results in some suboptimal outcomes.

I generally try to avoid using my time ripping on Joe Manchin, because that signals you’re a member of a group which I am not a member of. But if you read this article it’s difficult to not detest this guy. There’s a level of dishonesty combined with disdain for the public that I find inherently repulsive. But it also gets to the crux of the problem when he says “we shouldn’t use tax dollars to pick winners and losers.” Because that’s exactly what the government does. What’s going on isn’t some sort of neutral “let’s just facilitate the market and let it sort it out” refereeing. It’s just rigging the market in favor of desired winners.

Do you think it’s a coincidence that the Big Five disrupted industries that were politically weak? I never try and take any credit from Mark Zuckerberg but it’s not like Tom from MySpace had a lot of political sway. Google disrupted… already existing baby search engines? Libraries? Apple and Microsoft were battling it out in another politically weak industry or just creating their own. And Amazon – quite brilliantly – started off by trying to knock out Big Book Seller. By the time anyone realized it was the new retail giant it had killed everyone that wasn’t Wal-Mart, who had already spent decades slaughtering the competition.

The problem we run into now is that those technologies I spent Part III discussing aren’t trying to beat Yahoo. They’re trying to beat powerful industries. That’s why Manchin is claiming we shouldn’t pick winners and losers to defend picking fossil fuels as a winner and renewables as a loser.

I’ve mentioned Tesla as one of our great hopes in fighting climate change. And they have certainly disrupted the auto industry. But they had a couple major advantages. One, they were doing so at a time the automotive industry was incredibly weak. In 2012 they contributed a hilariously low $2.2 million. Even their lobbying efforts were paltry, and almost entirely directed at fighting environmental regulations, not at directly fighting competitors like Tesla.² Secondly, connected to this, Tesla came about at a time when the tail was wagging the dog – remember, the U.S. Government just bailed out the auto manufacturing industry – and they could afford to give Tesla government protection.

Despite that, Tesla has still had to fight against inane government protection rackets, just not for automakers but for auto-dealers. When Tesla began selling their cars – which they sell directly – they faced a map where almost the entire country had laws banning direct sales of automobiles. You would need to be hilariously naïve to believe these laws were developed organically and kept on the books out of ideological devotion. They exist – and are defended – by the dealership associations through their government officials. Thankfully, Tesla has enough money to fight these, and most importantly, they built a better mousetrap so they sell them anyway. But look at how even the greatest green tech success story – run by the wealthiest man on Earth – still is slowed down by fighting against entrenched government interests. Now imagine how difficult it is for less established businesses and start-ups.

Remember how we kept saying the problem with most of these new technologies is they’re too expensive compared to current technologies? Well, consider the insane amount of money being spent on lobbying against any policies that would make it more difficult for oil and gas companies, thus continuing to give them a free ride on their negative externalities and disadvantage green tech companies. Then there’s the $5.9 trillion governments across the world spend subsidizing fossil fuels³ while also fighting against subsidies for competing technologies. That’s why it’s so expensive.

Perhaps the most hilarious and shocking of these efforts are from the beef and dairy industries, one of the most truly despicable industries that exist.⁴ Like any industry, they spend lots and lots and lots of money trying to fight for climate change and against plant-based alternatives. Their most popular approach – as discussed in the last of those links – is their tactic of trying to make it illegal for plant-based products to be labeled with any term (regardless of modifiers) that suggests they’re related to cow-based products. This would be merely hilariously stupid and not just grossly dangerous if there weren’t members of the United States Senate – a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than you’ll ever find elsewhere – who are trying to make this law. But my favorite part of this is the gross hypocrisy. The same people fighting so hard for truth in labeling are the same people who bought government labels that imply their animals are being raised in natural, cruelty free environments instead of the sci-fi dystopia that “free range” actually means.

All of this is government picking winners and losers. And it looks pretty depressing. But the good news is that, again, politicians do this to maintain their office. Which means they are susceptible to public pressure. Perhaps not as much as they should be, but they are. There’s a reason those Tesla dealership bans fell in state after state, and it’s not simply because Elon bought state legislators with the money in his couch cushions. It’s because people wanted to buy Teslas.

There’s few phrases I detest more than “raising awareness” and “changing the conversation.” But what we need to do here is raise awareness and change the conversation. And that’s partly done by what I’m trying to accomplish here: shifting the discussion from one based on you turning down your heater in the winter and to one based on developing and deploying new technologies. Sure, people can call Joe Manchin a villain for being pro-climate change. But if we want actual change, you need people like Senator Tammy Baldwin being painted a villain for attempting to kill plant-based foods to keep her beef money rolling in. It’s stopping applauding politicians for “making pledges” and “taking climate change seriously” and start pillorying them for not doing things that change the price relationship between fossil fuels and renewables and fossil fuel powered technologies and renewable powered technologies. Government doesn’t have to step in and fix this. Government just needs to stay out of the way. If innovators can build better products, we don’t need governments to pick them as winners. Just don’t pick them as losers.

1. I often recall a meeting I once had with a candidate. Among other things we needed to review a candidate questionnaire from the Chamber of Commerce – an organization I am certainly no friend of. But the majority of ideas were reasonable, and our candidate agreed with them. Unfortunately, agreement with some ideas would alienate the unions and agreement with other ideas would alienate the trial lawyers (my people). And that’s what dictated it because without their financial support our candidate would be dead on arrival. This is how it always works!

2. If I can parlay this into a gig writing advice for tech people – and if you’re interested, my price for selling out is surprisingly reasonable! – I would spend a lot of time preaching about this lack of imagination. These embarrassing corporate leaders – the industrial equivalent of the 20th Century Ottomans destroying the empire built by legends like Mehmed and Suleiman – were so short sighted and focused on the wrong enemy they managed to make Elon Musk the world’s richest man.

3. I should note that – even though I used the headline number – the paper relies heavily on the idea that we should county the amount we don’t charge these companies for their negative externalities as subsidies. I philosophically agree with this argument, so I used the eye-catching number. But if you don’t agree with that argument, you’re looking at about one tenth that amount in direct subsidies. Which is still a gigantic number.

4. This is the second time I had to delete a long screed against these industries. I assure you it was entertaining, but perhaps over the top for the tone I wish to go for. There’s very few times where my urban political sensibilities and my rural cultural sensibilities align, but industries that manage to massively contribute to climate change while inflicting immense cruently to animals and destroying the family farms that were the backbone of this nation? That’s like a hat trick of pissing me off.