> The typical golf course covers about a square kilometer. We have 40,000 of them around the world being meticulously maintained. If the same could be said for solar farms we would be almost 10% of the way there.
To me, it's one of many ways in which markets fail to allocate resources to the most pressing problems.
> Individuals don’t demand solutions to diffuse problems
Markets solve diffuse problems really well, people signal how much their section of the problem is worth solving and the market judges whether the overall problem can be solved cost effectively. Getting food to everyone is a diffuse problem for example.
Tragedy of the commons is different. Markets don't solve how to solve owning things in common and the usual market recommendation is not to do that.
It's probably easier to build a solar farm than prepare new land for hay production at this point.
Have you noticed the price of beef going up? It's because we're losing arable land to climate change. It takes a large number of high quality acres to raise a cow on grass.
That's been getting less and less feasible over time between extreme weather and erosion, so the cows get hay instead.
Hay production in places like Texas is disrupted by drought every few years, which means that ranchers have to sell their cattle at a loss or let the cows starve in the fields (assuming they don't die of heat stroke - the cows and the farmers).
After a few bad cycles like that, the ranchers start selling off land, so there aren't enough cows even in good years. Presumably this is bad for hay farmers, since demand attenuates down to what it would be in a drought year.
That brings us to 2026. It's pretty clear what's coming next.
I’ve looked into buying grassland. It’s in in the middle of nowhere. $25k/year is before maintenance and grid hook-up costs, both of which will be substantial in the middle of nowhere.
Also what is the capitol cost to stand up a golf course vs. a solar farm of equal size? I would imagine solar requires locking up a much larger investment.
I think you have misunderstood the term "tragedy of the commons", which is a phenomenon distinct from a market failure. Also, "markets allocate resources based on supply and demand" is, I believe an oversimplification one should not carry beyond Economics 101. If that were sufficient to explain the totality of market behavior, especially at large scale, then the remainder of the discipline of economics need not exist.
That comment throws all econ 101 in the wrong way. A land owners decision to build a golf course over solar farm is a decision based on competing land uses which are demand/supply for land and the potential services you could provide on that land. Which is why you don't often see solar farms or farms or power plants in the middle of cities...
I don't think its lack of land that is preventing 10% of our energy coming from solar. Do you really believe that without golf courses there, the land would be used for solar instead?
There is no magic hand, only a Tragedy of the Commons and greedy individuals doing whatever. (Federally, there is at present time little-to-no prosecution of fraudsters or tax cheats. Economically, it's basically The Purge.)
Appropriate regulations and enforcement is what is missing but ⅔ of country is brainwashed by billionaires and Fox News that "gubberment bad" and "regulations are communism".
Assuming we're even a semblance of a democracy in 2028, the US is about to see its biggest course correction since the New Deal.
I think this will include a return to a free market economy.
If I got to decide what that would look like, it'd involve a combination of claw-back of corrupt subsidies, an army of independent prosecutors, armed with the power of federalization, reorganization and secondary public offerings of reformed criminal enterprises. The "good guys" companies would only be subject to monopoly busting; their investors would not take as big of a bath.
The crazy thing is that, as I get older, I've found I've gone from the hot-head to the voice of reason in conversations like this.
Rapidly falling? Looks like it's hit an equilibrium since October, >=40% at this point is hilariously high and proves the point well enough.
> If I got to decide what that would look like, it'd involve a combination of claw-back of corrupt subsidies
I'm sure you're aware that the overwhelming majority of these go to agriculture. If you genuinely think whoever gets elected will be running on stopping those, that's blindly optimistic.
> The typical golf course covers about a square kilometer. We have 40,000 of them around the world being meticulously maintained. If the same could be said for solar farms we would be almost 10% of the way there.
To me, it's one of many ways in which markets fail to allocate resources to the most pressing problems.