[hliyan]

I felt this was telling:

> 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.

[chongli]

Markets allocate resources based on supply and demand. Individuals don’t demand solutions to diffuse problems. It’s tragedy of the commons every time.

[roenxi]

> 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.

[dotancohen]

How much money does a golf course bring in yearly? How onerous are the regulations?

How much money would a solar farm bring in yearly? How onerous would the regulations be?

[hliyan]

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.

[edwcross]

Nice expression, but the book by the same name is fatally flawed in its science.

[bawolff]

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?

[adrianN]

Lack of land where you’re permitted to build solar is actually a real problem.

[burnt-resistor]

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".

[hedora]

For values of ⅔ ~= 40% and rapidly falling.

https://www.economist.com/interactive/trump-approval-tracker https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-approval-ratin... https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-approval-rating-slip...

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.

[pfdietz]

Land is cheap, so why not golf courses?

[perilunar]

Not in cities (where most people live) it isn't