The Oil Spill

doesn’t make the case for Big Government:

…the idea that because a person or thing can do some things brilliantly doesn’t mean they do everything well. Some writers can’t count past 10 without taking their shoes off; some artists are tone-deaf; some math whizzes cannot learn languages.

Franklin Roosevelt and Albert Einstein were exceptional talents, but asking them to trade occupations would not have been clever. Like Einstein and Roosevelt, markets and government do different things well.

Government is a big and blunt instrument, while markets are smaller and flexible tools. Government acts for the whole, and gives things one direction; markets react to and serve individuals, respond to a great many small discrete interests, and facilitate the pursuit of happiness by creating demands for a great many diverse and various skills.

The frustrating thing is that doing all sorts of things in which it has no business, and isn’t very good at, it’s neglecting the things that it’s supposed to be doing, and being even more incompetent at them in general.

17 thoughts on “The Oil Spill”

  1. The government sucks less at killing people and breaking things than anything else — and under certain circumstances that’s a useful skill. But aside from that…

  2. Einstein was actually offered the presidency of Israel. He seemed to agree with the above assessment, saying “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions.”

    I don’t really see what the author of the linked article thinks any of this has to do with the function of government to regulate industry in order to ensure that pollution remains manageable.

  3. Bob-1, Drilling in the gulf of Mexico is already highly regulated to insure that pollution remains manageable and BP maintains that it was in full compliance. Many now argue either that the regulation was insufficient or that BP was not in compliance. If it is the case that BP was not in compliance then that hardly bolsters the case that more regulation is required, since BP can, again, choose not to be in compliance. The cost of non-compliance is a fine. It is sometimes cheaper and a good business decision to be in non-compliance depending on the amount of the potentional fine.

    The future solution to problems like the oil spill lies not in weakening property rights with more regulation. The solution lies with stronger property rights. The spill created tortious liability for BP. With strong property rights and better tort law, affected stakeholders could pursue BP more vigorously for civil damages. For example, if fisherman had property rights in the gulf, they could pursue BP for damages. Not so under the present regime since the gulf is a government regulated commons.

    Currently, at worst, BP faces a fine, the cost of clean-up and some bad press. With strong property rights they would have been betting the entire company in civil court by their neglect. The calculation on how to work in the gulf might have been rendered differently.

  4. Well, the frustrating thing to me is how many of my friends are willing to nod their heads to the merest suggestion of the expansion of the power of government, as if we have not been down this road before. The very idea of “enumerated powers” is old-fashioned, 18th century thinking to them. They foolishly think we can reverse these bad decisions if it comes to that. Aggravating….

  5. Jardinero1, that was a pretty good answer!

    I think your answer neglects the interests of people who can’t afford property rights but who will be harmed by a spill, and I worry that BP could simpy buy-out the fisherman (which, again, would have negative effects on others, such as poor people who just want to eat pollution-free fish at an affordable price) but I still like your answer because it gives me something to think about.

  6. I think your answer neglects the interests of people who can’t afford property rights but who will be harmed by a spill

    How valuable are those interests? And how are they better served with today’s approach rather than one with firm property rights on fisheries and wetlands?

  7. The frustrating thing is that doing all sorts of things in which it has no business, and isn’t very good at, it’s neglecting the things that it’s supposed to be doing, and being even more incompetent at them in general.

    The bafflement at this (but not the frustration) goes away if you apply one simple hypothesis: government is essentially organised crime and most of what it does is theft.

    I can’t prove this hypothesis, but it provides a very simple explanation for many otherwise seemingly inexplicable phenomena.

  8. The doubling of the price of fish over the last few years seems to correlate with the ramp up in energy prices. The biggest single cost in bringing fish to the table seems to be energy — the fuel to power the boats, energy for freezing or refrigerators, the fuel to drive the trucks the long distances to market, or perhaps even airfreight it in.

    Yeah, I suppose you can’t eat the dead fish scooped off the water surface, but I don’t recall and long-term damage to the Alaskan salmon fishing grounds. And as to oil being “anti-fish”, yeah, go ahead and ban ocean drilling and fish will become even more expensive as we won’t be able to afford the fuel to run the fishing boats.

  9. Energy is of course a major factor in the cost of fishing. I think another factor driving up the price of fish is restrictions on the amount of fish caught each year. Reportedly, some types of fish have been severely depleted due to over fishing so quotas are in effect. Supply and demand does the rest.

  10. A comment attributed to Robert Heinlein (I don’t recall if it was one of the aphorisms of Lazarus Long) is “There are only two things government does well: Inflate the currency and make war.”

  11. Great idea. It will look nice right next to my Time Person of The Year award.

    Yesteryear’s “Person of the Year” is today’s Emmanuel Goldstein. You’ve come a long way, baby.

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