A Negative Externality

Here is a brief post I wrote in October last year in response to Flora Faun's whinging about externalities. I quote two points:

1) "In any insane, sisyphean attempt to calculate the unintended consequences of government, the "negative externalities" of the State as it were, we could surely do no better than to begin by noting the immense radius of social upheaval and misery described in North Africa last year by the effect which U.S. government subsidies for ethanol production had upon the price of grains."

2) "... the chief ethical principle on which a free-market must be predicated - private property rights - is also the chief prerequisite for any attempt, whether effective or ineffective, to redress the loss of value that negative externalities cause. Without the principle of private property rights (or its substitute: permissions), identification of who is responsible for what damage of what extent to whom can never be achieved through anything more objective than an arbitrary decision."

Here is what Flora Faun - attempting to comment here anonymously for the Nth time - has to say about externalities:

"Repeat after me (the neo-liberal idiot supreme): externalities don’t exist! Externalities don’t exist! Externalities don’t exist! They are just eco-fascist inventions! They are just eco-fascist inventions! They are just eco-fascist inventions! One day you and your ilk will (hopefully) be called murderers."

She then goes on to point to some Guardian article. I make a note of this here to illustrate the ugly, but revealing incongruity of the Taipei Times' continuous indulgence of her bile-filled gibberish whilst at the same time promoting the criminalization of "hate speech".