# The Fundamental Rules of Economics

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fundamental-rules-of-economics/971357>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [September 11, 2022, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fundamental-rules-of-economics/971357 "2022-09-11T01:50:08Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 109

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**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\
**Post date:** [September 16, 2022, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-fundamental-rules-of-economics/971357/109 "2022-09-16T22:58:45Z")

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> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Today, the government is ‘helping’ agriculture in The Netherlands by demanding that nitrogen fertilizer use be reduced by 30-90% depending on region. They think they know better how to run agriculture more efficiently than do the people who have made the tiny Netherlands the #2 food producer in the world and #1 in Europe.

For Pete’s sake, Sam, you know better than to keep spouting this particular nonsense. The Dutch government isn’t imposing regulations about nitrogen fertilizer reduction for the sake of some woolly bureaucratic generalization about “how to run agriculture more efficiently”. They’re doing it for the specific purpose of reducing dangerous levels of nitrogen pollution, which the farmers themselves have not successfully managed to do in their efficient running of agriculture.

This libertarian bushwa is so predictable. As I said, it consists of ignoring the considerable role that markets played in creating any of these problems, and just blaming governments for their “arrogance” and “stupidity” when they can’t magically prevent all the negative side effects from their efforts to solve these problems.

(See also: climate change in general. Expect long, long decades and centuries of libertarians continuing to whine about every “business-unfriendly” step governments take to try to mitigate climate change, while remaining determinedly oblivious to everything that businesses have done and continue trying to do that makes climate change worse.)

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