If we want a sustainable future, are we better off letting the market (i.e., profits) control the decision making, or relying on some kind of a regulatory plan?

There is often the touting in politics of letting the invisible hand of the market decide how things are to be done, as though the market will always decide to do the right thing in it’s best interest. Which is nonsensical at best and deliberately misleading at worst. I know soda is bad for me. The Dr. Pepper I just drank had 250 calories in it and I loved it. Salad is good for me, and I don’t eat it. The market is comprised of people, people make bad decisions for their short term interest all the time.

Politically it’s provable that deregulating economic markets and energy markets would not help the economy. George Bush called it Voodoo economics, then as Reagan’s Vice- President denied that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8hnM6xNjeU But Bush was correct all along.

Fast forward to modern day and we have politicians debating the existence of facts because they get massive amounts of lobbying money, otherwise known as bribes, from fossil fuels, special interests, and generally not for the environment in their policies.

So keeping this in mind, and noting that the Richard Branson and Elon Musk kinds of billionaires are the exception rather than the rule, what reason could anyone believe that the markets will do the thing that isn’t immediately profitable, for future potential profits and sustainability, unless there was signifigant penalties and incentives to make them do this? I end this diatribe, with a relevant quote from Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, “Every GOP administration since 1952 has let the Military-Industrial Complex loot the Treasury and plunge the nation into debt on the excuse of a wartime economic emergency. Richard Nixon comes quickly to mind, along with Ronald Reagan and his ridiculous “trickle-down” theory of US economic policy. If the rich get richer, the theory goes, before long their pots will overflow and somehow “trickle down” to the poor, who would rather eat scraps off the Bush family plates than eat nothing at all. Republicans have never approved of democracy, and they never will. It goes back to pre-industrial America, when only white male property owners could vote.”

He wrote this during the time of George W. Bush as president. He’s been dead for eleven years and he’s still right in my opinion. Electing a new congress that will hammer through pro environment policies should be a top priority. Half the Great barrier reef is dying.http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/great-barrier-reef-half-of-natural-wonder-is-dead-or-dying-and-it-is-on-the-brink-of-extinction-a6992411.html We can either attempt to reverse course on this mess or crash headlong into it. And the decision in this country rests with the electorate. Maybe expect that the worst will come to pass, because the  trees are not going to come alive and drown the fires in India and China like they did in Isengard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8WyXv7hQvE