Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Climate-Change Gravy Train

How well paid are the warm-mongers? Looks like nice work to me, if you can get it, and all you have to do is go along with the politically correct status quo. I don’t know of anyone who’s done as well by scepticism. But then, the latter are being true to standards of science.

[Update a few minutes later]

The EPA person responsibility for regulating CO2 levels doesn’t know what the current level is. The country’s in the very best of hands.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

A Harsh Assessment Of The Past Half Century

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…in space. I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say that we’ve pi**ed away fifty years — we did lay a foundation for what’s to come, but we certainly could have been a lot further along with smarter policy, actually focused on opening up space (something that US space policy has never been). Several people at the suborbital conference here have commented (as I often do) that there is very little happening today in the newspace world, at least suborbitally, that we couldn’t have been doing twenty, or even thirty years ago (though modern computer and manufacturing technology has certainly made things cheaper and faster). But we have another half century to start getting it right. I hope.

Economics, Political Commentary, Space

Why “Progressives” Like Trains

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Thoughts from George Will:

Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.

To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.

Stupid proles.

By the way, just to preempt any further commentary along these lines, comparisons between my opposition to government-subsidized high-speed rail and my support for smarter government spending on space transportation are spurious and idiotic. Not that this will prevent them, of course.