Interesting thread Sylvia,

I agree with others that there are other things that should be considered than just the straight dollar for dollar trade off. Not really fair of you to attempt to limit others’ (probably valid) points because it doesn’t fit your narrow parameters.

I am not a “greenie”, however I do believe that we should be looking at alternative energy sources. The benefits and practicalities of all options should be compared, and as it presently stands, solar panels may actually require more energy to produce than they “save” from standard energy production.

The problem with it all is that everything is obscured by the profit factor. Companies that produce energy sources, whether it is coal fired, gas or oil based, solar or wind technology etc. do so to make profit which artificially inflates the “cost” of producing the energy.

Then there is the wasted energy used in producing consumer goods for profit.

Were it not for the profit factor, human beings as a community could take all evidence available and make the most rational decision based on the real needs of humans and the environment in which they live.

Your “parameters” are an illustration of the current culture which encourages us not to give weight to social, health and environmental considerations narrowing the debate down to pure “economics”. Anyone who wants to make other points is drowned out.

In my opinion, we are all the poorer for it.

tao,

Nowhere have said that financial considerations are the only ones that sbould be used. All I've said that to the extent that one wants to take financial considerations into account, there is a right way to calculate them, and a wrong way. The right way is DCF.

As for "profit", I know it's become a dirty word in the minds of some, but it's really nothing more than an incentive to act, and to take the risks inherent in that action. Without it, few people would bother to do anything that didn't provide a direct benefit to themselves. Our entire society depends on profit.

If there were no profit motive, then it would be left to governments to provide every service. That's been tried, and failed miserably. In the absence of profit, there are no funds available to borrow, so any services provided by governments have to be financed by capital obtained from the tax payer. The tax payer might well prefer to be doing something else with that capital, and consequencely perceive that providing it to the government represents a cost. The only way the government can compensate the tax payer is to charge more for the service than it costs to provide, and give the surplus to the tax payer. Oh - but that's profit again.

You really can't get away from it.

Non governmental entities generally cannot afford to take non-financial considerations into account, because if they do, their products and services will be more expensive than those of the competition, and they'll go out of business. By way of an example, note that the market for renewable energy is quite small. For all the supposed public angst, few are willing to dip into their purses and pay a premium.

So the parameters have to be set by the government so that the financial analysis produces the desired result. E.g., if and when the government decides that CO2 production has a cost, and imposes a tax accordingly, industry will adjust its behaviour. But for that to happen, the public has to be willing to pay extra.

Sylvia,

Do you only do things because of the profit incentive? Perhaps you wouldn’t get out of bed if you couldn’t make a profit? If so, I suggest you don’t judge others by your own standards.

Most people in the world just struggle to survive. Most people get up in the morning and go about their meagre lives trying to scratch enough food to put on the table. Even most of us in the richest countries in the world only want a decent house, enough food, decent health care and good education for our children.

I’m sure all most of us really want above and beyond all of that is more time on our hands to spend with our friends, make a useful contribution to society, and be a bit creative. But I grant you, there are a few in the world who think that making profit is the be all and end all of life – and those are the people who tell the rest of us that we have to be “more productive” which is code for make us more profit.

You say “In the absence of profit, there are no funds available to borrow, so any services provided by governments have to be financed by capital obtained from the tax payer.”

However, if it where not for a system in which profit can be accumulated in the hands of a few people as capital (or stored surplus labour) who only invest it to reap more profit (or more surplus labour), all of that surplus labour would be available for the benefit of the whole of humanity.

continued...

You also say “For all the supposed public angst, few are willing to dip into their purses and pay a premium.” Most people cannot afford to pay the premium. In fact, they already pay the premium which is the profit on their labour which, if they really had a say, could be put to better use – hospitals, schools, or maybe even green energy research.

Yet those who make profit from what we might call dirty energy, refuse to dip into their massive purses for the benefit of society to fund research or subsidise clean energy. They’re not in business for the benefit of society. As you say, their only incentive is profit.

Humanity has the capability to solve the energy/climate change crisis, but the solution does not lie in the profit "incentive".

"Do you only do things because of the profit incentive? Perhaps you wouldn’t get out of bed if you couldn’t make a profit? If so, I suggest you don’t judge others by your own standards."

You're misrepresenting (a stronger word would be twisting) what I said - a strawman argument - and the final part about judging others by my own standards is dangerously close to being an ad hominem attack. Let's keep the personal stuff out of these discussions.

I said that without profit, few people would bother to do anything that didn't provide a direct benefit to themselves. That clearly does not exclude getting out of bed. It does exclude risking ones assets in order to provide products and services to others.

Some would, no doubt, but not enough to make a functioning society. Even personal labour is done for profit - the labour is done because the person attaches more value to the money they get than they do to their time. The difference is their profit.

We have a society that functions with profit. You may believe that a modern society could function without it, but so far that's not been achieved. To argue successfully for a society without profit, you need to do more than merely point to aspects of profit that you perceive to be bad.

Sylvia.

Sylvia,

You said “without-profit,-few-people-would-bother-to-do-anything-that-didn't-provide-a-direct-benefit-to-themselves”

So in other words, you are saying that the majority of people (as opposed to the few) don’t bother to do anything that doesn’t provide a direct benefit to themselves without the profit motive. Correct me if I’m twisting your words here.

Firstly,

Human beings have been “bothering” to do things for both themselves and their communities for tens of thousands of years. Capitalism – or the profit system - has only existed for a few hundred years. Therefore people have been “bothering” to do things for direct and indirect benefit to themselves without profit for far longer than they have been doing them for profit.

There are plenty of examples of people who “bother” do things that don’t directly benefit themselves, without profit. Thousands of people in this country volunteer, donate to charity, coach sports teams, help little old ladies across the street, etc. I would hazard a guess that if people didn’t have to work 40, 50, 60 hours a week they would “bother” to do much more.

Then, there are the billions of people all over the world, who CAN’T do much more than scrounge what they need for themselves let alone “bother” to do anything that provides a benefit to someone else, and I dare say they still “bother” to contribute to their community when they can, and would do more if they could – all without profit.

So I think your generalisation about what the majority of people bother or don’t bother to do, and their motives, is on pretty shaky ground. It is legitimate to ask on what grounds, and by whose standards, you make such judgements.

So to clarify my alleged ad hominem argument, let me rephrase the question – Do you bother to do anything that doesn’t directly benefit you without expecting a profit? If you do, then on what basis do you make your generalisation? If you don’t, then one can only assume you are drawing an inference about the motives of 6 billion people from your own behaviour – all in the face of contradictory evidence.