Free for me and not for thee.
Comment on Republicans are pulling out all the stops to reverse EV adoption
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Are we in a “free market” are we not? The answer is “depends on what lobbyists wants.”
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 month ago
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Might as well be the offical preamble of the Constitution.
rusticus@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Lol without all the subsidies gas would be $12/gallon. And burning fossil fuels (40% is automotive) kills more than 250,000 Americans per year. Whats the cost of a human life brah?
laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I think they’re more commenting on how the supposedly “free market” champions constantly interfere with the market when it suits their agenda
rusticus@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Yeah but in this case (EVs) it’s way better for public health and the “interference” is still a fraction of the scales tilted in fossil fuels favor.
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Exactly. Those people tend to be extreme hypocrites.
barsquid@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Whats the cost of a human life brah?
That depends on if grandma is being evaluated by an Obama Death Panel (life is precious and invaluable) or by the stock market in 2020 (she has, what, a couple years left anyway, let her die).
rusticus@lemm.ee 1 month ago
In the US there is only one metric: Dow Jones death panel. The insanity of our culture is that Obama Death Panels were an invention of the Dow Jones death panel board to rally the lemming brained right against the concept of public healthcare (the horror!). Oh yeah, obligatory fuck Joe Lieberman.
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yes, that’s the point. These politicians interfere and meddle and cry “free market” when it is convenient for them.
rusticus@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Would have been far easier to just type “there is no free market”
buzz86us@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Exactly I am not getting all this subsidy unfairness nonsense that stops Chinese firms from selling cars here. The only difference I’m seeing is that we’re subsidizing cars on the back end through oil subsidies, and they are subsidizing cars on the front end with production subsidies.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Free market involves pluralism of systems and distribution of power as important preconditions. Lobbyism requires monoculture of systems and power being sufficiently centralized to be controllable.
maynarkh@feddit.nl 1 month ago
Also, the free market is a tool, not a utopia. It optimizes for whatever the people setting the limits of it make it optimize for.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 1 month ago
Hence things I said. Otherwise the wheel is free for taking for the worst people.
paf0@lemmy.world 1 month ago
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, is it really a free market if we are incentivizing one technology over another?
Natanael@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
When the oil industry doesn’t have to pay to clean up their externalities we already don’t have a free market. You break it you pay. Fixing the externalities by incentivizing better technology is at minimum a correction to the market.
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 month ago
That argument can be made about the tax incentives.
However, regulations about emissions are intrinsically something we want, and we shouldn’t hold back on that just because gas cars can’t get to the level of emissions we need.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Are we in a “free market” or we not?
Not.
BarbecueCowboy@kbin.social 1 month ago
Only when it helps to keep the poors in their place.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Not even only. The recognized goal of the modern marketplace is to achieve monopoly. Billionaires write entire textbooks on the subject.
TheDubz87@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Free market goes to the highest bidder.