When not to worry about stranded assets, even to prefer them
People worry about properties that lose value if we move toward sustainability. For example, if demand for fossil fuels drops then things whose value depend on the price of fossil fuels like factories, refineries, and companies will lose value. If their values drop more than they’re worth to use, they become worthless. Finance people call them stranded assets.
If enough people stop flying and driving, the stuff in this image could become a worthless stranded asset.
People worry about shocks to the economy, but what about values, especially basic human values?
Imagine someone found a way to end fentanyl addiction so that all current addicts stopped buying it. Then all illegal fentanyl-producing facilities would become stranded assets. Would we delay ending addiction because those assets would become stranded? I don’t think so.
Are you concerned because the factories were illegal? An illegal factory still plays a role in the economy so making it stranded affects the rest of the economy, but let’s consider something legal then.
Imagine someone found a way to end tobacco addiction so that all current addicts stopped buying it. Then all tobacco-producing facilities would become stranded assets. Would we delay ending addiction because those assets would become stranded? I don’t think so.
What if we could end gambling addiction? Have you heard of how lives can be ruined and families torn apart by it? But it might make casinos stranded assets. It might ruin Las Vegas. Should we not stop gambling addiction?
If oil fields, factory farms, and plastic-producing factories became stranded assets, a meaningful comparison might be what happened with the Thirteenth Amendment. Until then, legally, slaves were a form of capital and source of industrial energy. The Thirteenth Amendment freed them. From the slaveholders’ perspective, their asset became stranded.
Does anyone out there think the ratification of the amendment should have been delayed one second because slaveholders’ would lose valuable assets? Absolutely not.
When an asset destroys life, liberty, and property, its use violates the consent of the governed, and its supplies do not leave enough as good in common for others, it undermines liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy, as my upcoming book shows. That asset’s value comes from tyranny. I suspect you agree we’re better off without illegal fentanyl factories or tobacco addiction.
Likewise, I have found through research and experiment that we’re better off without any Type 2 pollution or depletion.
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