This liberal economist refers to an article written by economists for the American Economic Review which explains how the capitalist market utterly fails to account for one input to the costs of production--environmental costs. Well, for informed people like you and I, this is "old hat". However, capitalists continue to refuse to account for these costs. Krugman explains why:
What this tells us is that we are not actually having a debate about economics. Our free-market advocates aren’t actually operating from a model of how the economy works; they’re operating from some combination of knee-jerk defense of the haves against the rest and mystical faith [my emphasis] that self-interest always leads to the common good.But, why not also explain the marketeer's (capitalist's) resistance to account for all the devastating costs to workers that their capitalism causes: unemployment, devastation to the communities because many jobs have been outsourced to cheap and oppressed labor areas of the world leaving behind these effects: poverty, poor health care, poor education, high crime rates, divorce, etc?
Their "knee-jerk" defense has all to do with the greed and selfishness that characterizes this ruling class.
Their "mystical faith" alludes to the fact that capitalism is really a self-serving, faith based religion--totally irrational from any sound social system point of view. "Markets" are more than wrong, they are the means by which a class of people engage in crimes against humanity and the environment for private gain. Markets are to the ruling class as guns are to robbers. Ruling class robbers prefer "markets" because they function with the "invisible hand" which allows them to get away with these crimes.
