We can judge a policy by the methods necessary to implement it

Jason Hickel has another entry in his listing of reasons why we should all be poorer so that we can be socialist. Abandon the idea of us all getting richer and we can indeed be those socialists.

Don Boudreaux chastises usefully on a number of points. The most obvious of which is that if we need to reduce - if, note - resource consumption then capitalism and markets are the best known manner of doing that. No one looking East from the Brandenburg Gate in 1989 thought that actually existing socialism was light on or efficient with resource consumption.

We offer a slightly different method of measurement. Hickel says that, actually, all would be richer by having this less. From which we’d take the logical position that, since humans like being richer then and therefore there would be no compulsion necessary in Hickel’s schemes.

Ah:

But these models typically focus on a single country and fail to take into account cross-border dynamics, such as movements of capital and currency. For example, if markets are spooked by low growth in one country, some companies might move their capital overseas, which could adversely affect the original country’s currency and increase borrowing costs. Conditions such as these posed severe financial problems for Argentina in 2001 and Greece in 2010. International cooperation for tighter border control of capital movements needs to be considered and the effects modelled.

Everyone must be prevented from even having the possibility of opting out of this new scheme. Which does lead to us at least assuming that Hickel thinks some to many would do so. That is, there’s no point in advocating a manner of preventing people fleeing the new utopia unless there is a belief that people will indeed flee the new utopia. Or, even, that even the proposers agree that it won’t be a utopia because some to many will flee it.

And if they don’t believe it would be a good thing then why the heck should any of the rest of us?