Is this Orwellian or just ignorant? Redefining capitalism

I love the title of this post from The Eco-Libertarian: Dept. of the Bleeding Obvious: Subsidies are not capitalist.

David points out that several academics have taken to characterizing Carbon-Capture Subsidies in Canada as free-market measures, a circumlocution he rightly derides as "frankly, bollocks."

Moreover, he emphasizes that while Carbon Capture may well be a critical strategy, government subsidies do not promote but rather distort the actions of the market:

It’s a fair concern — that carbon-capture will be a stopgap that distracts us enough that we won’t solve the actual underlying problem — but that’s making better the enemy of the good. A world with extensive use of carbon-capture technology is a lot better than a world without it, whatever else is going on.

But spinning government subsidies for the technology as a capitalistic measure is, frankly, bollocks. Subsidies are, in the most generous possible assessment, a necessary evil. They will interfere with the construction of wind and tidal and solar power, unless such projects are subsidized even more to compensate. They will put off pricing of carbon emissions, if only because the federal policy apparatus can only handle so many massive innovations at a time. They will take money that taxpayers would have spent on something else and commit it to helping large corporations that — even if Homer-Dixon and Keith dismiss the significance of this fact — are mostly very profitable.

If you think the subsidies are necessary, by all means say so. But let’s not pretend they’re something they aren’t.

Great point, not only in the context of the global warming debate.

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