I respect Mike Joy’s work looking at river quality. But man he makes a hash of things when he strays from what he knows about. His oped in today’s Dom Post … it’s hard to know even where to start. It is an embarrassment to the institution that employs him.
The piece’s central thesis is simply wrong. He claims that orthodox economics ignores externalities. Anyone who has taken a principles-level course has encountered externalities. It is in every principles-level textbook I have ever seen. It’s sometimes covered badly, but to the extent it’s covered badly, it’s to leave the students with the impression that any external cost justifies government action rather than focusing down on policy relevant externalities (Pareto-relevant technological externalities that affect choices at the margin rather than having inframarginal effect).
Policy can and often does screw things up. Mike goes on at length about the negative externality imposed…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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