If the only fridges on the market contain CFCs then people are going to buy them because they need fridges. If the only CFC-free fridges are more expensive than CFC ones then only affluent people, at most, are going to buy them.
It’s called a market failure: There are costs associated with a product that are not taken into account because the regulatory regime doesn’t make sure they are. In the case of CFCs we went even further than making fridge producers pay up for the externalities they cause (which would’ve been an astronomical sum) and right-out banned that stuff. The consumer, after all, is still saving money with CFC fridges (their food doesn’t spoil as easily), they’re not paying for the ozone hole, either.
See the free market is a theoretical model, it indeed promises prefect results given that all actors are perfectly rational and act on perfect information, the maths makes sense. Perfect rationality and information don’t exist in the real world, though (and in fact ads and company secrets exist to degrade the information available to everyone) so we need regulations to fix market failures so that the real-world market comes closer to approximating the free market. Misunderstanding of this point brought to you by peddlers of institutionalised market failure equivocating “free market” and “unregulated market”.
The EU tends to have a good grasp on it, the US, boy oh boy.
If the only fridges on the market contain CFCs then people are going to buy them because they need fridges. If the only CFC-free fridges are more expensive than CFC ones then only affluent people, at most, are going to buy them.
It’s called a market failure: There are costs associated with a product that are not taken into account because the regulatory regime doesn’t make sure they are. In the case of CFCs we went even further than making fridge producers pay up for the externalities they cause (which would’ve been an astronomical sum) and right-out banned that stuff. The consumer, after all, is still saving money with CFC fridges (their food doesn’t spoil as easily), they’re not paying for the ozone hole, either.
See the free market is a theoretical model, it indeed promises prefect results given that all actors are perfectly rational and act on perfect information, the maths makes sense. Perfect rationality and information don’t exist in the real world, though (and in fact ads and company secrets exist to degrade the information available to everyone) so we need regulations to fix market failures so that the real-world market comes closer to approximating the free market. Misunderstanding of this point brought to you by peddlers of institutionalised market failure equivocating “free market” and “unregulated market”.
The EU tends to have a good grasp on it, the US, boy oh boy.