Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Washington Post:
Brian Czech repeats one of today’s most frequently heard mantras – namely, that continued economic and population growth spell disaster for the planet and humanity (Letters, Nov. 5).
Virtually all available evidence contradicts this doomsday claim. For example, the earth’s population today is seven times larger than it was in 1800, and yet most people today live lives that are far more sanitary, healthy, long, and rich in experiences than were those of all but the most privileged potentates and pooh-bahs before the industrial age. Each hectare of land now feeds more mouths and clothes more bodies than ever before. Water and air in capitalist countries are cleaner than they were a century ago, or even just 50 years ago – and still getting cleaner. Available supplies of oil and most other raw materials show no signs of being depleted, despite the fact that today we use absolutely larger quantities of these materials.
Mr. Czech commits the common mistake of assuming that humans are net consumers of resources. But when markets are reasonably free and property rights extensive and secure, most people are net producers. History amply supports this claim. I challenge Mr. Czech or anyone else to offer evidence to the contrary.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
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Cute title.
Before I read the letter I was speculating in my head that this post would be about the practice of simony.
Wow! DynoMite!
I read somewhere that there 67 “followers” of this blog.
I hope that didn’t mean there were only 67 readers of it, and of the best writing in economics today.
Anwyays, we all here love you and appreciate you, even if no one else does. And we’re the best in the world.
I love optimism but blind optimism is what we saw from the unregulated market proponents. Many of them still cheering as we were, like Wile E. Coyote, suspended over the chasm of the economic downturn. And this from specialist in the fields of markets and economics no less who should have known better.
Fortunately, the experts in the natural sciences seem to be much more cautious about what the data says of their chosen fields of study. Unfortunately they are losing the philosophical and policy debate.
It’s easy for the layman to see food on the table and water in the tap and assume this should go on forever as it’s never stopped before.
What we humans are doing to the world is unprecedented. For some one untrained and uninformed to glibly assume we should trust their presumptions is not a good idea in my opinion.
Every day more and more data, more ominous then the evidence of impending collapse of the derivatives market comes out. The ocean fisheries are on the verge of collapse, the ocean is acidifying, coral reefs are dying, the ice caps are melting, droughts are more common, desertification is increasing, species are going extinct and on and on… and the pro-market ideologues want to continue willy nilly to push the support systems of the Earth to their limits because they have endless bread on their table and we need more …more …more
These are the idea’s of people who think planning for the future is a bad. It’s to the point of being a cult like belief and it threatens to take not just a secluded group of true believers but all of humanity with it.
The Soviet Union could not effectively “centrally plan” the production of shoe laces. Yet what some people want to do is “centrally plan” the climate. Color me singularly unimpressed with such arrogance.
These are the idea’s of people who think planning for the future is a bad.
Actually, there is nothing wrong with planning; it is who does the planning that is the issue. The notion that the state or some group of states can plan the climate is just beyond ludicrous.
Planning surely will not be done by markets. Markets are completely incapable of doing so and that is one of there biggest faults. E
So you admit you’re into planning. You realize that markets don’t plan, and that’s hardly a bad thing.
People in markets plan of course. We see examples of this throughout markets. Wal-Mart and Starbucks just didn’t arrive out of the blue fully formed, there was a fair amount of planning and adjustment to plans that went into the development of those fantastic firms.
Government claims to be the long-range planner for society, the center of dispassionate science, with the lofty view for dealing with the future.
Ironic. Government planning has fouled up long-range savings for retirement. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and state pension systems are all underfunded and going broke.
There is no investment base for Social Security, only an I.O.U. repayable by the Treasury from current taxes. The Treasury has no investment base to repay Social Security. The government has collected and spent all tax receipts on current projects, and borrowed more. There is not enough there to repay its debt.
The government has denied the populace a true idea of what they should have saved privately, by spreading false promises about what the government was saving for them. This is criminal in morality, if not in law.
These are the people who are supposed to do a better job now, under the same incentives that have already led to failure.
Now, considering the Democrat’s long-term vision of healthcare, they don’t even have a readable explanation of the proven and successful policies that they want to enact. The best they have done is to proclaim “We want healthcare for all”, as they proclaimed in the Gread Depression “A chicken in every pot”.
The disaster – both economic and from the aspect of human welfare – that is ethanol ought to tell us something about the ability of government to plan the “environment.” I mean, how many people died of starvation due to ethanol subsidies?
And, Let’s not forget that (while accusing us of being corporatists) Cardinal Yasafi Torquemuirduck supports subsidies to the corporate giant, Archer Daniels Midland, to produce ethanol.His Holiness: The Divine Prophet Algore I, Supreme Leader of The Church Of AGW, has declared that ethanol is vital to the survival Mother Gaia. One does not question the fallibility of His Holiness.
Well said, Andrew.
A classic example of government “planning” is the episode of Samuel Pierpont Langley at the beginning of the 20th century. With $50,000 from the federal government, and using established science, he built an aircraft that flew 20 feet before crashing into the Potomac River.
Nine days later, two brothers from Dayton Ohio, using their own funds and doing their own scientific research, achieved man’s first fully controlled powered flight, taking off and landing at will four times in one day.
But this is only one example of private vs. government effort. I like the shoelaces story too.
I love optimism but blind optimism is what we saw from the unregulated market
We’ve been over this many times before. Why bring it up again? I have asked you to give me evidence in numbers of the net loss of regulation. You have admitted that it wasn’t a net loss, but loss of a couple of key regulations – in other words, the planners got the regulatory goop all mixed up recently. I have tremendous optimism about an unregulated market, but we do not have a market that remotely resembles unregulated fair. Markets are more regulated today than it was last year, and the last year it was more regulated than the year before, so on and so forth. It was Bill “blow job” Clinton and Saint Albert Gore who signed your pet “deregulation” into effect, voted by a majority of Demoncrats.
If you want to have an intelligent debate on this blog, you should give your childish obsession with a phantom called “free-market” that dropped from the sky on Jan 20th, 1981. Get over it.
“I love optimism but blind optimism is what we saw from the unregulated market proponents.”
I know this is pointless, but hello kettle. You don’t have blind optimism to regulation and government intervention?
All human run systems are fallible and will have failures. The question is which systems repair and recover from those failures better. Free markets tend to do better. It has the feedback mechanism in place to extricate the cancer and heal up – that feedback mechanism is individual choice. That feedback mechanism works better than any feedback mechanisms in the government. In fact, those feedback mechanisms tend to give blood supply to cancers so they can grow.
If you were honest and open minded, you might be willing to take an honest look at the economic implosion and attribute more of the cause to the distortions caused by government.
Do you listen to Russ’s podcasts? He has had several guests on over the last few months that have dived deeply into the underlying government interferences that caused the boom and bust.
Well since muirdog thinks central planning is much better then “Free markets”, he should give us the countless examples of its success in the world.
I can’t give you any examples of success of free markets. Other then in Somalia they don’t exist. All the developed world has progressed with much planning.
What you need to do is earn that the real world is not either black or white free market or centrally planned.
Currently the social democracies of the world have brought humanity to it’s pinnacle of success. Countries with better planning do better.
Free markets do not work and central planning does not work. But well regulated market economies with democratic political policies are indisputably the best.
You want free markets… they don’t exist and such an ideal is RADICLE. What I and most people of the world want is well run democratic market based economies and societies. Nothing radicle at all. Just some fine tuning of process is all that’s needed.
But the Free Marketeers and the resulting Economic Royalist with their accumulated masses of power continue to interfere with the desires of well intended peoples who want sane rules and a just and effecient society.
You wouldn’t know a free market if it hit you between the eyes like a 2×4. Keep destroying straw men, you’re good at it.
He is honest and open minded. He told you he used to vote Republican!!
Seth, if the system that recovered from failures better were a command and control economy would we necessarily be better off? In looking only at the volatility in the economy it seems we undervalue liberty. The price of stability, even if can be achieved, seems to high if it comes at the price of self-determination.
Self-determination, self-actualization, freedom. All those things apply to people who want it. I have a feeling that we are at a tipping point in America where a majority would rather have the surity of a government check, then the risks/rewards of freedom.
More likely it is because they are unable or unwilling to accurately calculate the cost and benefit of surity.
BTW, I don’t think this is entirely true. If it were, Nancy would have been able to pass her government meatgrinder health care option months ago. Only people’s opposition stopped her and there are plenty of people who are opposed precisely because it would rob them of self-deterimination.
speaking of which, it’s time to call them again and let them know you’re still not for it.
By definition, yes. Thankfully, for all of us that’s a bogus question. Like asking what if gravity repelled, rather than attracted.
“Fortunately, the experts in the natural sciences seem to be much more cautious about what the data says of their chosen fields of study.”
Hahahahahahahahahahaha……haaaaaaahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaa, ppfffffffftttthh, aaahh hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Global Warming.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha……haaaaaaahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaa, ppfffffffftttthh, aaahh hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Creationism.
What does creationism have to do with natural sciences?
Your level of understanding of the science of climate change is comparable to that of a creationist level of understanding of natural selection.
It’s really pitiful.
I think this is a funny reply to the muirpidity that has plagued humanity for generations:
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2006/04/where_to_put_al.html
The big point being . . .? The free market were going to end whaling anyway so when governments passed legislation it was just water off a duck’s back? Or something like that?
What is humorous about the entire climate debate is that every year (just like this year) a whole bunch of nations get together, sermonize about something needing to be done, make a political statement about it, and then walk away from the table with nothing binding. This is a revealed preference.
Don, it’s a great response. Alarmists (on either side) never bring up the level of the debate. I’m not convinced that means we have nothing to look into and be concerned about, but there’s a wide gulf between “looking into and being concerned”, and thinking that doomsday is always around the corner. Thanks again for reminding us.
Yet alarmists seem to get 90% of the attention from the crowd/mob/sheep.
Perhaps…
Sometimes I feel like anyone who gives the time of day to climate change is considered an “alarmist” on here, though. And alarmists who think doing anything about climate change will destroy Western civilization aren’t considered “alarmists” at all!
But yes – they definitely get more time than they should, even if we use a restricted definition that you and I would both agree on.
Ah, because we push back against your “climate change talk” which really means “let’s impose huge carbon taxes and wreck the economy” that makes US alarmists? Look at your ideology kuehn and get back to us.
Pushing back is fine. It’s labeling it as “alarmist” (at the same time that you have your own brand of alarmism over “wrecking the economy”) that leaves me scratching my head.
Centrally planning the economy and heavy restrictions on every detail of daily life (light bulbs, for instance) in the name of sparing us from some murky looming disaster has never ever been known to destroy civilization anywhere it was ever tried. Those people who oppose it are definitely alarmists.
Leave it muirbot to cite the virtues of central planning as as solution to all our ills. Never mind that the USSR was the most polluted country on earth – and still is.
That was Mommsen1625. Muirgeo never mentioned or advocated central planning – it was imputed to him.
This is why we call you disingenuous kuehn. Muirbot advocates central planning for years on this blog. Are you cognitively dissonant?
He didn’t cite the virtues where you said he was citing the virtues. Central planning came up with mommsen1625. Maybe he said central planning was great in the past – I don’t remember such an incident but it’s possible.
Ah, because YOU didn’t read him saying it, therefore it doesn’t exist right DK?
Arrow, come on. You have to remember that as long as they don’t call it “socialism”, it’s not socialism. If they don’t call it “fascism”, then it’s not fascism. If they didn’t explicitly say “central planning”, then it’s not central planning.
Sort of like when Nancy Pelosi tells you that forcing you to purchase insurance is not a tax, it’s not a tax.
Reminds me of Jaime Johnson’s latest documentary of his angst over being rich. He interviewed Milton Friedman. When Milton Friedman told him he was advocating socialism Jaime insisted he wasn’t until Milton remembered how scarce time is for a nonagenarian and kicked him out.
Muirgeo says above:
“These are the idea’s of people who think planning for the future is a bad. It’s to the point of being a cult like belief and it threatens to take not just a secluded group of true believers but all of humanity with it.”
Is Muirgo talking about personal planning? Not in my understanding. He says the lack of central planning threatens to harm all of humanity.
He is calling for central planning. And quick.
Then let me put it this way – what policies could an assembly of representatives elected by the people (for the purpose of making policy) adopt that you wouldn’t consider “central planning”? Muirgeo was talking about public planning, yes, and if you equate any public policymaking with central planning then at best you’re rendering the term meaningless, and at worst you’re trivializing the experiences of the people that actually suffered under central planning.
Public planning is central planning writ small – particularly in its actual practice. I’ll also one up that; licensing is central planning too, though it is a looser variety.
This is not a trivialization of the term; as these things are actually practiced they look just how central planners in the Soviet Union would determine how many shoes were needed for the next five years.
“Planning” as it was used by muir IMHO is shorthand for centralized planning. Do tell me why I am in error.
Ten bucks says that the answer will include something about not being able to read Muirpid’s mind.
No! Planning is the planning that is done under the advice of experts, political representatives and with the consent of people through their democratically elected representatives.
GO TO ANY Professor of Political science and NONE will tell you that THAT process fits the definition of central planning.
It really IS all about branding and labeling for you guys because an honest discussion is not what you’re interested in. You need black and white versions of reality only and anyone not conforming to the group think must be labeled a blasphemer… an enemy…. a central planner, a socialist… a communist… a Stailinist!!
I said the word that must not be spoken amongst the members of the group. I said “PLAN”… I must be a tyrant communist central planner.
Ah, I get it now muirdog. Because a CEO isn’t democratically elected by the citizens of the community he isn’t qualified to decide anything economically speaking. Only Czars are allowed.
Well, first of all, logomachy is just plain stupid.
As Gordon Tullock states in his primer on public choice, people are people whether they are in government or in markets. That ought to tell you something about your idealized version of how politics works. It in fact doesn’t work that way, despite the myths associated with civic virtue going back to the classical Greeks.
Here’s a reading suggestion:
Gordon Tullock, Arthur Seldon & Gordon L. Brady, “Government Failure: A Primer In Public Choice”
Re: “It really IS all about branding and labeling for you guys because an honest discussion is not what you’re interested in. You need black and white versions of reality only and anyone not conforming to the group think must be labeled a blasphemer… an enemy…. a central planner, a socialist… a communist… a Stailinist!!”
NAILED it. And the ironic thing is that’s fairly… well… fairly Stalinist, really. It’s like when they go off on “system” too. There are buzzwords that you just can’t use because they automatically mean you’re a communist. I don’t get it.
Muirgeo, if “ignorance is strength,” then you’re a world-class body-builder.
You and your professors can call it whatever you want, but the bottom line is that you and your experts claim to know what is best for me and intend to make me do what you deem best for me – at gunpoint.
Forced planning. Central planning. It all looks the same from my end of the gun.
Ummm… do tell me why you’re not in error. You can’t just go around substituting words in other people’s posts and expect anyone to take you seriously.
“Error” as it was used by mommsen1625 IMHO is shorthand for “a rhetorical dead end”. I think you actually said “Do tell me why I am in a rhetorical dead end”. See… doesn’t work so well. Not to mention that it absolves you from any critical thought if you can just declare the words of who you’re arguing with to be something different.
Actually, I made a reasonable inference, IMHO.
The inability to see any shades of grey here is pretty tiring.
Oh that’s rich coming from you. Very rich indeed.
Hey – I live in the grey. People complain about it all the time. So take it from me – the inability to see any shades of grey here is pretty tiring.
Your inability to appreciate economic liberty is pretty tiring. Your ability to engage in discussion on this blog — and advocate for all things more regulatory and more intrusive — only to duck the difficult questions when you cannot hang in the discussion any longer, is very tiring.
Yet, you came back after a self-imposed exile. You didn’t have to come back, and none of us were losing any sleep over your decision to leave.
I don’t favor banning you, but if you’d like to leave again, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
You cannot be serious!
We should call it by its real name, ‘centrally controlled destruction.’
True it’s destruction of private enterprise in favor of the new Socialist Works. Just like in the Soviet Union, when they broke the kulaks.
more like centrally UNcontrolled destruction. If you ever have a chance to read about the gory details of the Soviet economy, your first thought will be “nobody would ever plan this“.
Yeah, because that’s exactly what I meant!!!
Ahh… but the promise of imminent disaster is such a useful tool for politicians to convince tools like Brian Czech to sacrifice not only his liberty but all sorts of things. Somebody handed American politicians the Politburo Handbook.
Note the unthinking ease with which he buys into the promise of eternal stability in return for all his liberty. And like any truly useful idiot, he is on a mission to lay out the psuedo-logic to convince everyone else.
Truly a deal with the devil. Just a little more of your freedom, my dear. I promise it will be worth it. No-one and nothing will ever hurt you again. Trust me.
You have to understand that freedom only matters to those of us who have it to lose. Many people feel they have more to gain with restricting other people’s freedom. It’s a very simple equation actually.
Your position makes it completely impossible to recognize a real imminent disaster. All such claims or even factual evidence are simply out of hand deemed attempts of more control by politicians.
>>Your position makes it completely impossible to recognize a real imminent disaster.<<
No way! You really believe that a very large group of people (a society: a supposed libertarian bad word?) without leadership cannot recognize real imminent disasters and respond to those disasters? That's foolish.
Perhaps most thinking people do not recognize that a disaster looms from what Chicken Little thinks is a real threat [thinking people generally do not fall for Malthusian-like bullshit]. No, perhaps what Chicken Little is calling for IS the real threat.
>>All such claims or even factual evidence are simply out of hand deemed attempts of more control by politicians.<<
Speaking of evidence…
“Speaking of evidence…” LCJ
Honest answer lcj… Do you ever pick up a copy of Science Magazine, Nature or Browse the AGU or AMS or CRU websites? Ever???
Not ever do I read those things. But I’ve seen the evidence that there are ideological forces that seem intent on giving politicians more control. THAT is was I was driving at, George.
“No way! You really believe that a very large group of people (a society: a supposed libertarian bad word?) without leadership cannot recognize real imminent disasters and respond to those disasters? That’s foolish.”
LCJ
Foolish? Families have leaders, sports teams have leaders, companies have leaders, expeditions have leaders, cities and states have leaders. No people acting individual will NOT always produce a better result then those acting together under a common rules and leadership. You’re just making up something that doesn’t exist in the real world. It’s not been the way to success of the human enterprise. You’re denying the very things that made us a success group planning, rules, laws and leadership. THAT’S foolish!
Families have leadersThis gets to the crux of our differences. Families with children have leaders. A husband and wife are a family. Who is the leader?I remember that socialist asswipe asking GHW Bush to treat the presidency as fatherhood and us as children. I don’t need a politician father. Politician Knows Best! Starring George Clooney as Politician. Brought to you by: Let’s Vote For Rape: If we vote for it, then it’s LEGAL!, and the SeeBS Television Network. Produced by Yasafi Muirdiot Productions.
You did not answer the question directly. But, you did conclude that leadership emerges in various scenarios — leadership where the membership arrangement is voluntary and there needs not be any political elections nor any democracy. These example that you have are the appropriate level of planning and not concentrated into the hands of asshats at the highest level of government. Hoe do you feel about that now, Doctor?
Cato’s most recent Capitol Hill briefing on climate change (which includes a IPCC member): http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6657
I agree with some muirgeo’s points right at the top – some of what we have isn’t magically ‘self-sustaining’ in a way that things will always be bountiful and we’ll never go backwards. As muirgeo rightfully points out: a lot of resource gathering is one way. (Where Don thinks Peak Oil has disappeared is beyond me.) After all, the fat-arse middle-class Western Teletubby lifestyle isn’t the global norm but represents but 10% of the world’s richest population. A global concensus of living condition of the whole 6.7 billion would be required to see if everyone’s really living high on the hog or if billions are still languishing in poverty while Westerners peruse home theatre catalogues.
Nobody said it was magic the way we sustain our economy. In fact if you choose to educate yourself, you’ll find out exactly how natural resources are exploited by industry for the betterment of mankind. The only magic is in the human imagination to do it constantly better.
I agree with Don’s post, and too many people underestimate what we’re capable of. But I think the sticking point for some people is your statement that we will “constantly do it better”. This is still a pretty brief experience with science, markets, and freedom – and in a lot of the world the experiment hasn’t even started yet. So far we’re been able to invent ourselves out of every problem we’ve created. I think there’s an excellent chance we’ll continue to do so. But I think it’s dangerous to act like that’s a foregone conclusion. The only reason why we did invent ourselves out of problems in the past was because we acknowledged and expressed concern over a problem. And it has always been the market in combination with the state that has done this. I’m happy to let the market rest on it’s laurels – I always have been. But pretending like the exponential development of the species over the last two, three, four (however you want to count it) centuries is due solely to the market DESPITE other institutions is a little naive.
The only reason why we did invent ourselves out of problems in the past was because we acknowledged and expressed concern over a problem.
Actually, in most instances problems were solved without very many people even realizing it, and it was solved by individuals working in the marketplace.
But pretending like the exponential development of the species over the last two, three, four (however you want to count it) centuries is due solely to the market DESPITE other institutions is a little naive.
Given how many people that the various states of the world slaughtered over the past five centuries – well, it seems that we’ve succeeded despite the state, not because of it. In other words, just sheer body account alone takes most of the luster off the state’s “contributions.”
Re: “Given how many people that the various states of the world slaughtered over the past five centuries – well, it seems that we’ve succeeded despite the state, not because of it.”This is a surprisingly simplistic interpretation for a historian to take. Some of the bloodiest wars have been to dipose emperor-gods, fascist ubermenschen, and self-proclaimed mouth pieces of dieties. Yes it has been bloody, but just like in the discussion about fiat currency and public finance – much of the blood has been spilt to erect and preserve a liberal democratic order. You wouldn’t have a market to speak of, in other words, if it weren’t for some of these state interventions. Your knee-jerk juxtaposition of state and freedom misses the whole point of much of 19th and 20th century history, and it’s exactly the kind of thinking that I’m saying we should avoid. And avoiding that knee-jerk juxtaposition in no way diminishes the market. In fact, it prevents the market from being a libertarian caricature.As for it being “solved without people realizing it” – I’m not sure what you mean. People realize it’s harder to provide enough food for the market, so they develop productive technologies so that we can produce more food per acre. People realize it’s getting harder to develop new oil fields so they develop new, more efficient technologies. These things emerge when individuals understand, accept, and address problems – not when they put their head in the sand and ignore problems.
Dude, all the self-hatred of your own posh-in-comparison lifestyle will not help the poor of the world. The people living in poverty today are their because their governments have emerged and organized with tyrannical leanings.
Why the self-loathing about how blessed you are and why should the guilt of being in a better position than someone else drive you toward being an advocate for a distributive equality of misery? Wouldn’t the logical approach be one where the feelings of guilt and injustice are replaced with a sense of wanting others that are less fortunate to enjoy the same opportunities (only through merit rather than compulsory aid)? One where they have the freedom to become more like us fat-arse middle-class Western Teletubbies?
“The people living in poverty today are their because their governments have emerged and organized with tyrannical leanings.” LCJ
Sounds like you are advocating what I’ve been saying all a long. Government matters… no?
IMO opinion tyrannical governments ultimately result when you try to have NO government.
Best to have a government by the people. And yes that will tend to be more socialist then you’d like. But it will ultimately be more liberating and efficient.
Government run by corporations will be tyrannical. Government run by people will produce the greatest liberty and progress.
Government run by people will produce the greatest liberty and progress.
No such thing has ever existed.
Who are “the people”?
There is no such thing.
Any government can be as tyrannical as any other government and a government of “the people”, likely even more so.
Why? Because it becomes a government by fads and opinion.
Who determines the fads and opinions?
The elites, same as always.
>>Sounds like you are advocating what I’ve been saying all a long…Government matters… no?<>IMO opinion tyrannical governments ultimately result when you try to have NO government.<>Best to have a government by the people.<>And yes that will tend to be more socialist then you’d like. But it will ultimately be more liberating and efficient.<>Government run by corporations will be tyrannical.<>Government run by people will produce the greatest liberty and progress.<<
Providing what I added to your sentence above and that government is divided up into multiple layers, with more decision-making authority at the lowest levels with free movement of people allowed for.
>>Government run by corporations will be tyrannical.<<
Explain how that works. I mean really explain how that works. Please do not duck this question. Think it through and detail how that (what you wrote above) can happen.
We fight wars for their oil. We pay for those wars with our kids and tax dollars.
We pay to bail them out when they crash the economy. We pay to make them stable so they can start lending but instead they take the money and invest it elsewhere and give themselves huge bonuses.
It's sad your so willing to lose your liberty to nameless faceless multi-national corporations and fear so much a government by the people.
I guess my earlier reply to this BS was too infanntile and melodramtic for you to bother yourself with.
Joe, the problem with that (excellent) post was, from Yasafi’s perspective, that you used big words like “constrained”, and “disenfranchised”. Yasafi is still having trouble comprehending words like “at”.
Gil: “A global concensus of living condition of the whole 6.7 billion would be required to see if everyone’s really living high on the hog or if billions are still languishing in poverty while Westerners peruse home theatre catalogues.”
I don’t think Don said “everyone’s really living high on the hog”. But relative to the humans who lived 250 years ago, almost everyone on the planet is.
Do you dispute that people on this planet are living much better lives than they did before the industrial age – about 250 years ago? Unfortunately photography was not invented back then, so it is not possible to show you visual proof. But historians have done an excellent job of providing and uncovering the truth about living conditions in the pre-industrial world.
Gil, the whole of the human population is living much longer and much better than 250 years ago. Why would you believe otherwise?
“Virtually all available evidence contradicts this doomsday claim.”
Don
Do you read Science or Nature magazines regularly?… Try walking down the hall and talking to some of your life science professors.
“For example, the earth’s population today is seven times larger than it was in 1800, and yet most people today live lives that are far more sanitary, healthy, long, and rich in experiences than were those of all but the most privileged potentates and pooh-bahs before the industrial age.”
Don
In 1800 there were not even 1 billion people alive. Today we have 2 billion people living in abject poverty. Your position requires you to ignore these 2 billion people who’d be better off living as an average person in the 1800′s.
“Each hectare of land now feeds more mouths and clothes more bodies than ever before.” Don
In the last 50 years 400 million people have died of starvation related deaths. That’s almost half of the population that lived in 1800. Modern agricultural practices have some very real concerns attached to them.
“Water and air in capitalist countries are cleaner than they were a century ago, or even just 50 years ago – and still getting cleaner. ”
WoW! thanks to the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and the government mandated catalytic convertor which private industry said could not be done.
“Available supplies of oil and most other raw materials show no signs of being depleted…” Don
There are no small number of specialist/ experts who state we are on the verge of peak oil.
muirdog – how are those deaths the responsibility of American capitalism? Please show me.
Not just American Capitalism. Capitalism concentrates wealth among individuals and among countries. Almost all of the worlds poor countries were colonized by wealthy countries and left to rot in perpetual cycles of debt along with social and political disruption.
Actually, capitalism disperses wealth. Let us compare the success of capitalist nations vs. non-capitalist nations. The former wins hands down.
Yeah as if the results are completely separate. Where’d you purchase those blinders? VERY effective… must create a field cut of some 15 degrees… impressive!
>>Today we have 2 billion people living in abject poverty. Your position requires you to ignore these 2 billion people who’d be better off living as an average person in the 1800′s.<<
Assuming that these numbers are correct, do these people live in locations around the globe where the governing elements of the society in question generally acknowledge private property rights and have economic liberty?
Tell me Muirgeo, are these (assumed) 2 billion people ever going to thrive while they have a smothering government on their backs — governments that are either siphoning off resources OR muting the much needed natural signals that push people to action and thereby replacing them with ‘learned dependence’?
Here, too, I’m guessing.
Here’s the bottom line on climate change.
During our lifetimes… at least for most of us. We will see a transition away from fossil fuels to renewables. It will be a result in large part from planning for the future and using markets to get to the desired result. Free thinking , forward thinking people with more then self interest and short-sighted stubbornness will be the authors. Ideologues will have little input but to slow the process and do the bidding of the corporate oligarchs to maintain their preferred status quo. Thus the process will not occur directed on the basis of markets alone. It’s impossible that it could. It will occur via pushes from democratically powered people and their NGO’s. It will occur from the obvious implication of publicly funded research and the solutions will in many cases come from the same. It will be people and policy and market directed.
The new growth in technology will spur NOT destroy the global markets. And the “horror of all horrors”… people will no longer be the mindless zombie-bots standing at gas station with no choice but to fill their cars with atmosphere destroying chemicals. They will not be adding pollution to the air for their children to breath. They will not be enslaved to the monopoly of war promoting companies needing the government to secure their products. Nor will they be owned by nor dependent on the local utility company monopoly. They will in fact generate their own energy as it falls on or blows in the air past their houses. It will be liberating NOT enslaving as things exist with current corporate oligarchs.
This is the world to come that hammers one more nail into the useless rigid thinking of the market supremacy ideologues. It will be the result of pragmatist and free thinkers unencumbered by oversimplified black and white group think of how simple the complex world should be.
Truly inane, and insipid, I might add.Just a few Grand Canyon-sized errors in your “thinking” –1) “It will be a result in large part from planning for the future and using markets to get to the desired result”No matter how you “plan” and what you “mandate,” the outcome will always be different than your stated intent, and at times diametrically opposed to it. This is why detailed centralized planning usually fails, as will this political movement. No amount of your simpleton wishful thinking will change that.2) “Free thinking , forward thinking people with more then self interest and short-sighted stubbornness”You have these people confused – the free-thinkers are here, and the backward planners are you (and the GSPs in Washington). Your plans are failing, and in many ways have already failed. 3) “The new growth in technology will spur NOT destroy the global markets”No, markets will transform your intended technological outcome into something very different (see above), but you will claim that you spurred them on, when it will be far more likely that any advances will result in spite of your interventions, rather than because of them. How’s that wind farm working out, Boone?4) This political movement is well on its way toward an ignominious end, having a somewhat noble and useful goal morphed into the worlds largest political power grab/lobbyist competition. Most people now see it as I describe.5) As evidence continues to pile up against catastrophic AGW, more evidence will mysteriously surface that the initial science used to start the movement was covered up, or intentionally botched. Global warming will be remembered 20 years from now as a misguided, dangerous, fraudulent exercise in Progressive Stupidity 101. (201 and 301 will be finance & healthcare, respectively).And what little science you reference is wrong.Other than that, your assessment is pretty accurate.
This is way more time than I usually devote to your staggeringly naïve childish musings, but this sentence is very instructive:
It will be the result of pragmatist and free thinkers unencumbered by oversimplified black and white group think of how simple the complex world should be.
We [Café patrons] don’t need any further example of your flagrant, overt, billboard-sized stupidity, but this statement pretty well illustrates the depth of your galactic doltishness. It is precisely the black-and-white group thinkers in charge right now in front of your face, for all to see (except you, apparently), forcibly enacting a mind-blowingly large central planning and entitlement disaster, while we “free-marketeers” rail against their (and your) incredibly foolish ignorance of true emergent complexity.
We understand complexity, enough to understand we can’t understand it. You don’t, but think you do.
That is why you are an idiot.
When you reference the “current corporate oligarchs”, do you mean corporate oligarchs like General Motors, Chrysler, Citigroup, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Bear Sterns, The Rocky Mountain News, Enron, Fanny Mae, Freddy Mac, etc.? The last I knew, the free thinking, forward looking types were propping them up just as quickly as they could. The problem with your view is that you advocate the corporatist state – where the political class works arm in arm with the largest and most influential corporations to assure that the political class and the large corporate players prosper. I’ll take the vicissitudes of the markets every time – let the large collapse, and let creative destruction proceed. I wonder why 13 of the last 30 Nobel prizes in medicine have gone to Americans? Is it because competition is keener here?
I have one other question – how can hundreds of daily decisions made independently by over 300 million individuals, each seeking to optimize his own well-being, be characterized as “rigid thinking”? I would think that such a phrase better describes a one size fits all, top down solution for the whole population.
Dear Don,
Past performance is no indication of future results.
Dave Gardner
Producing the documentary, Hooked on Growth
I think you mean that past performance is no *guarantee* of future results. If it provides no indication at all, we might as well ignore everything that happened yesterday.
Yes, thanks for the correction, I think. For past performance may in fact provide no indication at all in this case. Liquidating the planet of fossil fuels, biodiversity and fertile soils has allowed us to so far grow our economy and population. The fact we found technofixes in the past is in my view a pretty shaky footing on which to bet the future of our children. We may have run out of miracles.
Check out Julian Simon on this topic.
You’re responding to what he said on this page, Arrowsmith. I didn’t realize you were dredging up years of repressed emotion over him.
It’s all about branding, Arrow!
That’s true we’ve not hit the tipping point, but we are reaching it. All that the Dems really need to do is convert another 2 million people and they’ve got victory.
I think they’ve calculated the cost/benefits quite well. Don’t underestimate them.
Yeah, it’s about who has the better marketing/propaganda machine. Silly me that I thought we would just have a Socratic circle.
Except markets don’t plan. Individuals and companies plan. The fallacy of the central planners is they think they have enough information to successfully plan out an economy for 300 million people.
Some people think that the only way to determine the “public interest” is via elected officials and government bureaucrats; the voluntary project of individuals and groups in society just don’t count to them. Of course it should come as no surprise that the least free societies are the ones which have the lowest levels voluntary activity – be it economic, social, religious, etc.
I reviewed the post… he didn’t seem to mention CEOs. I’m not sure you can ascribe that position to him.
I didn’t read any idealism into what he was saying – he’s just not reading dire doomsday pessimism into the political process. He thinks a republican form of government, while never ideal, can plan things without being communist. That’s really not the crazy proposition that people on here make it out to be.
Stalinist? Really? Have you been purged yet?
Look, it’s fairly simple. Most people that drop their comments here are pro liberty as a default. True, words mean something. Also true that many people have a personal desire to catagorize and assign labels to others; sometimes these labels hurt feelings.
So, would you like to label yourself how you see fit and ask us to adhere to the label you’ve given yourself (i.e. you wish to be labeled a ‘champion of liberty’ and ask that we correctly identify you as such? Or would you prefer a ban on others labeling you? Something else, perhaps?
Stalinist?Pretty obviously you’ve never lived under a communist or totalitarian regime. At this point you’re like these people who claim that working for Wal-mart is a kind of slavery. My suggestion is this: read Hannah Arendt.
Libertarian bad words;
Planning
Society
Social
Democracy
Majority
Equality
Tax
Environment
Union
Worker
There’s better ones but they are just not coming to me.
No ban necessary. And I could care less about muirgeo’s feelings. As someone who is pro-liberty myself, it’s more just an instinct to call out people who hide bad interpretation of a post behind being “pro-liberty”. I don’t care how “pro-liberty” you are – muirgeo wasn’t talking about central planning.
As for Stalinist – that probably was over the top. My criticism remains, of course, but I’ll take that back. Thanks for pointing it out.
>>No ban necessary.<>And I could care less about muirgeo’s feelings.<>As someone who is pro-liberty myself, it’s more just an instinct to call out people who hide bad interpretation of a post behind being “pro-liberty”.<>I don’t care how “pro-liberty” you are – muirgeo wasn’t talking about central planning.<>As for Stalinist – that probably was over the top. <>My criticism remains, of course, but I’ll take that back. <>Thanks for pointing it out.<<
If this is actually genuine on your part…[apprehensive] you're wel-come.
He thinks a republican form of government, while never ideal, can plan things without being communist.
And that is simply not the case. You have to ignore the iron rule of oligarchy in order to come to another conclusion. Planning by government invariably devolves into planning by a small group of people with little to no input by anyone else.
An excellent example of planning can be found here:
http://reason.com/blog/2009/11/09/new-londons-carefully-consider#comments
Yes, and I took back my use of the word “Stalinist” – but before you accuse someone else of being “like those people who claim working for wal-mart is like slavery” – you might want to review your own references to Communism and Stalin, and then pick up Arendt again yourself.
They are perfectly acceptable.
…much of the blood has been spilt to erect and preserve a liberal democratic order.
Against tyrannies.
You wouldn’t have a market to speak of, in other words, if it weren’t for some of these state interventions.
Yet these state interventions were the result of state interventions. Just because the devil can be useful does not change the nature of the devil.
As for it being “solved without people realizing it” – I’m not sure what you mean.
Most of what makes the world work is unseen; it is one of Bastiat’s most powerful insights.
Your level of faith in the global warming religion is nearly identical to those who practice creationism, doctor “I thought the hockey stick was real” moron. I’d STFU if I were you.
Not to mention the irony. You’re what we call a negative indicator.
God, I wish you were a trader, you’re the closest thing to a sure bet in a long time.
And he picked up that canard from some other intellectual black hole leftidiot who got it from some other leftidiot and around it goes as they labor under the illusion that they are uberintellectuals while casting aspersions on the smartest segment of the population.How clever they seem to themselves to compare AGW skeptics to creationists.The are intellectual black holes destroying any rational thought that enters their event horizon.
You’d pick him off once. He’ll blow up in his first trade and that’ll be the end of him. That’s why I love trading. The stupid don’t last long.
In case you had not noticed, no one is allowed to be skeptical about climate change, either you are on board with the doomsday scenario or your liable to be called a denialist or compared to creationists.
OK, then you’re trivializing real suffering.
Re: “Yet these state interventions were the result of state interventions. Just because the devil can be useful does not change the nature of the devil.”
No, it’s not just that “it happened to do something good this time”. Liberal democracies and republicanism goes hand in hand with a free market. Much of the spilt blood, particularly since the late 18th century, has been spilt to protect freedom and you’re acting as if it’s proof that the state and freedom are incompatible.
Re: “Most of what makes the world work is unseen; it is one of Bastiat’s most powerful insights.”
OK, but when Bastiat said that he was describing the loss of wealth that a guy with a broken window was experiencing. I don’t know what Bastiat was thinking when he chose those words, but the way I see it, that guy realized quite clearly the problems he faced. It’s the only way to solve problems. People see that food is scarcer because prices are rising, so they innovate. That’s the way we get ourselves out of these problems.
Actually, I’m not.
Liberal democracies and republicanism goes hand in hand with a free market.
Actually, there are dozens of historical examples where the free market existed without a liberal democracy (e.g., Hong Kong under the British). Political freedom is not the handmaiden of economic freedom, it is the other way around.
Much of the spilt blood, particularly since the late 18th century, has been spilt to protect freedom…
No, most of it has been spent to protect the resources, etc. of one state from being disparaged by another state – sometimes a byproduct of this has been beneficial. The case of Nazi Germany has been used by you – well, we wouldn’t have had fight them if the state didn’t exist as it currently does. This of course means that the Nazi isn’t an outlier, but is part of the spectrum of results we should expect of modern state formation.
…and you’re acting as if it’s proof that the state and freedom are incompatible.
They basically are as the state exists today. There isn’t a state on this planet which isn’t monstrous – which doesn’t have its own gulag – which doesn’t commit numerous acts of human rights abuse.
People see that food is scarcer because prices are rising, so they innovate.
No, a few people see that. Why innovation happens, etc. is a fairly complex issue.
1. I never said markets could only emerge under liberal democracies – I said the two go hand in hand.
2. So let me get this straight – because Nazism is one political system we can expect out of sheer probability that is entirely different from a liberal democracy, Nazism taints liberal democracies? Wouldn’t the corrollary be that since Communism is one economic system that we can expect out of sheer probability (despite the fact that it is entirely different from capitalism), so that somehow taints capitalism? That doesn’t make any sensee. The fact that there are a variety of forms of states doesn’t damn all states any more than the fact that there are a variety of forms of economic organization damns all forms of economic organization.
3. Of course only some people will see problems and respond. I never said everyone would. The point is someone has to. People have to recognize a problem and see reason for opportunity or concern.
1. I never said markets could only emerge under liberal democracies – I said the two go hand in hand.
Quite obviously they don’t. There are a number of examples of liberal democracies today where economic freedom is scant. This is Friedman’s basic insight – that economic and social freedom support political freedom, and not the other way around.
2. So let me get this straight – because Nazism is one political system we can expect out of sheer probability that is entirely different from a liberal democracy, Nazism taints liberal democracies?
Actually, Nazism isn’t entirely different from the liberal democracies we see today; they share much in common in fact. All states as they exist today can rather quickly become totalitarian, which in significant part means that we need a rather different theory of the state.
Wouldn’t the corrollary be that since Communism is one economic system that we can expect out of sheer probability (despite the fact that it is entirely different from capitalism), so that somehow taints capitalism?
Because Communism is a political system, not an economic one.
Thanks for the honest answer.
You should browse them once in a while. Most of the professional journals require subscriptions but you can read the abstracts and get an idea of what’s in the actual science literature.
Here… this from the American Geophysical Union;
http://www.agu.org/cgi-bin/asla/asla-list?read=2009-19.msg
If you live in this country you are voluntarily consenting too constitutionally limited leadership via elected representatives.
If you don’t like that you should move or start your own country. You should not try to change the agreements previously made about how we run this country because your “by force” and “barrel of a gun” arguments are tiring, infantile and melodramatic at best.
>>If you live in this country you are voluntarily consenting too constitutionally limited leadership via elected representatives.<>If you don’t like that you should move or start your own country.<>You should not try to change the agreements previously made about how we run this country…<>because your “by force” and “barrel of a gun” arguments are tiring, infantile and melodramatic at best.<<
You've just projected on to us most of the things that many of us here feel about and toward you.
Do you really view liberty as infantile?
I have nothing to hide and pride myself on being honest. And honestly, I will not be readily convinced that mankind is the cause of of any future Chicken Little scenario that some scientist will use to obtain taxpayer funding grants. I will not even read this piece because I do not trust the source or the motives of the source.
OK, I read the article on the other end of this link. I noted that the American Chemical Society was one of the signatories. The ACS, on its own site, describes itself as “a congressionally chartered independent membership organization which represents professionals at all degree levels and in all fields of chemistry and sciences that involve chemistry.” I won’t suggest that congressionally chartered and independent are incongruent because that will only start a fight.Before I get to the quote in the article, I just want to point out that “consensus” is a political (in the loosest sense of the word) conceit, not a scientific one. I don’t require the consensus of leading scientists to assert that the Heliocentric Theory of the Solar System is fact, or that the speed of light in a vacuum is 186 thousand (and some change) miles/second. These things are not only provable, but demonstrable. Regardless of the consensus, I have yet to encounter a sound piece of science that causes all other interested scientists to challenge or prove the hypothesis in question. Which brings me to the strangely vague quote from the so-called consensus letter…“Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science.” Gosh, where to begin. “Rigorous scientific research” has been done on cancer, but there are no absolute proofs of (all of its) causes (as seen in the “consensus” science of nutritionists, who have given the FDA ill guidance for decades), with notable exceptions like the demonstrable presence of radiation. What’s worse is that there is still no cure. But we are to believe that science — suddenly and magically funded by advanced Earth governments — will solve problems involving millions of variables from solar activity to methane from dog poop?Whenever you hear “contrary assertions are inconsistent” from a so-called consensus group, what they are telling you is that they are better organized than their opposition and are drawing a rhetorical line in the sand. Those four simple words are inconsistent with the natural humility that stems from the practice of real science. Every scientist worth his degree will tell you he’d love to be proven wrong, but that until he is, he’s right. Proclaiming that opponents are wrong in the absence of an informed (i.e., non-political, non-hysterical) dialog with them is not scientific. It’s political.So, I join other skeptics about climate change and am not interested in letters to Congress from its supporters. I’d rather see the science.
From The Muir(stu)pidity of the (Muir)duck:
3. “Suffice it to say individualism where ever it surfaces is ultimately self-destructive.”
Posted by: muirgeo | Mar 15, 2008 11:29:41 AM”
He also believes that only the State can determine how much liberty a man needs in order to be free.
But he’s not a socialist!
Wow. That’s pathetic. The country’s and the worlds premier scientific organizations and your not good with them as sources. People like you are undeserving of the fruits of science. You don’t even deserve to be typing on this internet. Ideology before science… really sad.
>>Wow. That’s pathetic.<>People like you are undeserving of the fruits of science. You don’t even deserve to be typing on this internet.<>Ideology before science… really sad.<<
Liberty before tyranny is not so sad in my book.
He really wrote that? I must find it and attach a link to all future replies to him.
I think that is one of those “simultaneous discoveries” things – he didn’t necessarily pick it up from someone else. It’s the first reaction a lot of people have talking to climate change skeptics – the feeling that:
“wow – these people are like those creationists I used to know… they ignore the preponderance of scientific evidence, cling to one or two genuine scientific findings that they feel brings down the whole eddifice of climate change science, put on the veneer of scientific respectability themselves, and get deeply personally offended when anyone suggests that there’s good reason to think that they’re wrong – it’s like creationism!”.
I haven’t noticed that. I’ve never been on board with the doomsday scenario and nobody has criticized me for that EXCEPT for here on Cafe Hayek and one other outspoken friend. No liberal friends, no liberal blogs have called me anything for my “this is a major concern and it’s real, but we really don’t know what’s going to happen or how bad it’s going to be – a lot of that is speculation, and we do a good job at inventing ourselves out of these problems”. That position has been called “alarmist” here on Cafe Hayek and by a friend on facebook that’s a fairly outspoken skeptic too. I’ve never been accused of anything by people who have a more dire view of climate change than I do.Now – if I claimed that humans aren’t doing anything to change the climate and a carbon tax is going to wreck our economy rather than make it more efficient at allocating resources, then maybe I’d be called a denialist or compared to a creationist – and perhaps rightfully so.
Of course it’s genuine – don’t be so suspicious! I disagree with you, it’s not like I’m not out to get you!
Re: “This is Friedman’s basic insight – that economic and social freedom support political freedom, and not the other way around.”
I have to cringe at that. If Friedman had a basic insight it was that inflation was a monetary phenomenon. If you’re going to narrow it down to one basic insight, forget his forays into political economy.
You don’t have to to worry about my patients. My practice is evidence based and relies on the latest science and peer reviewed literature to make treatment decisions.
Where are you getting your leeches from?
And you believe it’s that corporations who are running the show here? I honestly do not see how you arrive at the corporation-controlled government when even the examples you have cited show who’s really making these decisions. Are you physician diagnosises this horrendous?
No, you’re not. You’re not by pointing out that we’re headed down the same path to tyranny.
Those who trivialize real suffering are the Useful Idiots who breathlessly support totalitarian ideas and regimes and become apoplectic when you call a spade a spade because they insist on slightly different terminology.
Rebranding the same ideas and selling it to us is bad in enough. The fact that they sold themselves on it is truly pathetic.
Do you know what the EVIDENCE is? How many people who have that reaction have no clue as to the actual evidence, but assume that the repeated meme “scientists believe” (ALL scientists?) blah, blah, blah.
Do you get that the so-called “consensus” is based upon several significant assumptions and on models that failed to predict the last decade climate?
Do you know that there are some very prestigious climate scientist who challenge the AGW theory as currently being sold to the public?
Do you know any of this?
And yes, everybody knows that there have been several decades of warming.
Your friends don’t take offense at you because you express the sharing of the assumption that climate change will be bad, as expressed in “but we don’t know how bad it will be”.