IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ids/wremsd/v8y2012i3p358-374.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The iron fist vs. the invisible hand: interventionism and libertarianism in environmental economic discourses

Author

Listed:
  • Philip Z. Maymin
  • Tai Wei Lim

Abstract

Drawing from a broad range of sources, we define and discuss the two primary ways of contemplating issues related to environmental economics, namely, interventionism and libertarianism. We then interpret a cellular automaton as a model that allows for either approach, as well as anarchy, and show that interventionism exponentially reduces the number of possibilities while libertarianism, even when only probabilistically applied, tends to retain rather than destroy the underlying economic complexity. Thus, the libertarian, ex-post, remuneration approach may deserve more than the scant consideration it typically receives in such discourse, while the interventionist, ex-ante, regulation approach may have hidden long-term dangers not previously recognised. More generally, the approach outlined here may prove useful as a mechanism by which various regulatory proposals may be tested and compared.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip Z. Maymin & Tai Wei Lim, 2012. "The iron fist vs. the invisible hand: interventionism and libertarianism in environmental economic discourses," World Review of Entrepreneurship, Management and Sustainable Development, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 8(3), pages 358-374.
    • Handle: RePEc:ids:wremsd:v:8:y:2012:i:3:p:358-374
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=49395
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Philip Z. Maymin, 2012. "A New Kind of Finance," Papers 1210.1588, arXiv.org.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ids:wremsd:v:8:y:2012:i:3:p:358-374. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sarah Parker (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.inderscience.com/browse/index.php?journalID=173 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.