Category Archives: Business

A Feature, Not A Bug

Privatizing liquor would increase revenue and decrease consumer costs, but it would result in government layoffs:

As I noted in August, privatization advocates also have been known to argue, with a logic familiar to fans and foes of President Obama’s stimulus package, that the business of distributing alcoholic beverages should be designed to maximize jobs—i.e., to be as inefficient as possible.

Why do we have to be ruled by economic ignorami? And why is it that only places like Reason point things like this out? Why can’t the lame-stream media think, just a little, when they report this stuff?

On Conservative Skepticism Of Climate Policy

I’m pretty much on the same page as Jonathan Adler:

Hendricks’ effort to scare conservatives into supporting big government now to avoid bigger government later rings particularly hollow. Why is it that everything requires bigger government? Climate change is a threat? Extend government tentacles throughout the economy. Climate change is already happening? Ditto. Adaptation is necessary? More of the same. Were climate change not happening at all, I suspect Hendricks would still endorse a substantial expansion in government power.

Admittedly some on the right are equally reflexive, assert government is never the answer, and go to lengths to deny climate change poses any threat whatsoever. Yet there are also plenty of conservatives and libertarians who are deeply skeptical of government intervention, but are nonetheless willing to believe global warming might be a problem. It’s perfectly reasonable to believe that reducing greenhouse gas emissions does not require the enactment of monstrous, pork-laden, regulatory statutes like Waxman-Markey. And it’s not at all clear that climate adaptation necessitates a massive expansion of government power. In many areas, such as water, climate adaptation requires more reliance on markets, not less. Climatopolis author Matthew Kahn also blogged here about how successful climate adaptation will be driven by market forces, not government planners.

I share Hendricks’ and Farber’s frustration that more conservatives don’t take climate change or other environmental concerns seriously. But I also believe some of this is the environmentalist movement’s own doing. If everything calls for the same big government solution, why does it matter what the problem is?

Concern about the environment has always been hijacked by socialists, going all the way back to the early “progressive” movement, and the trend just got worse with the end of the Cold War, and socialism discredited, after which they changed brands and became watermelons. Policy has to be based on a rational calculation of the costs and benefits, rather than simply using every perceived crisis as an excuse for further accumulation of government power.

California

…the Lindsay Lohan of states. One of the many good things about Tuesday’s result is that there is now no prospect for the state to be bailed out by the federal taxpayers. The moronic electorate here is about to have a hard collision with reality.

[Update early afternoon]

What happens when a state goes bankrupt? I guess we’re going to find out, because California (and other states, such as Illinois) are essentially already there.

I Don’t Want A Government That Is “Pro Business”

I want one that is for the free market.

Yes, I know that I’ve been complaining that the administration has been anti-business, and it has been, particularly with all of the uncertainty that it’s engendered, with businesspeople not knowing what new atrocity and attack on profits it’s going to commit. But that doesn’t mean that I want it to be subsidizing politically favored business (including energy businesses, of all flavors) either.

Thoughts On Facts And Science

…from an unwashed hillbilly:

Those words mean two things to this unwashed hillbilly: (1) I have doubts that Obama is “the smartest guy ever to become President,” and (2) he lies.

When Obama was trying to sell the plan, he said it would bring the cost curve down. Once his plan was signed into law, he said he knew that it was “going to increase our costs.” At least that sure looks like a lie to this ignorant know-nothing. Maybe there’s some nuance I don’t understand. Or does “down” mean “up” in actuarial science? Maybe Katie Couric could enlighten me; she knows pretty much everything about climate science.

I guess I’m an unwashed hillbilly, too.

California, Too Far Gone

We seem to have reached a tipping point here. Too many Californians think that they can have both lunatic environmental and economic policies, and a viable economy. Almost every initiative went the wrong way, as did the gubernatorial and senatorial elections, though the former was partly a result of an awful Republican candidate — Jerry Brown might have been beatable by Chuck DeVore.

It’s a positive feedback situation with increasingly negative results. The economic ignorami in the electorate vote for idiotic propositions, and send economic ignorami to Sacramento in the legislature and governor’s mansion, resulting in flight by the sensible, continuing to distill and concentrate the idiocy in the electorate. It will end in bankruptcy (the state is basically already there), and then they’ll demand a bailout from the rest of the country. Fortunately, with the new Congress, they won’t get it. But I don’t know if the state is salvageable at this point. It’s some of the best real estate on earth, but its current inhabitants don’t deserve it, and have squandered a great legacy.

It’s an opportunity for other states to poach a lot of space companies, I think.

[Update early afternoon]

California, winner of the Dumbest State Award, by a landslide.

Great Election News For Space

Jim Oberstar has lost. Not just lost his chairmanship of the House committee that oversees the FAA, but he’s completely gone from Congress.

What does this mean? It means that there’s a reasonable chance of getting an extension to the moratorium on FAA-AST regulation of passenger safety, which was due to expire in 2012. The suborbital industry hasn’t advanced as much as anticipated when the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act was passed in late 2004, so eight years wasn’t enough. The new chairman will probably be current ranking member John Mica of Florida. His district runs from the northern Orlando suburbs up to the coast from Daytona to St. Augustine, which isn’t really part of the space coast, but it’s just north of it, so I imagine he’ll be amenable to legislation that will help business there.

The Aviation subcommittee, currently run by Russ Carnahan of Missouri, will probably go to ranking member Tom Petri of Wisconsin. From his profile:

A persistent foe of government waste, Petri has repeatedly earned high marks from such organizations as the National Taxpayers Union, the Concord Coalition, Citizens Against Government Waste, Americans for Tax Reform, and the Watchdogs of the Treasury. Over many years he has repeatedly been named a “Guardian of Small Business” by the National Federation of Independent Business, and has won the “National Security Leadership Award” from the American Security Council.

Petri is known for his efforts to apply innovative solutions to problems, with a firm commitment to cost-effectiveness. Accordingly, Norm Ornstein, a prominent political scholar and expert on Congress, has called Petri “one of the most thoughtful members of Congress, filled with lots of ideas about how to make government better,” while senior Washington Post columnist David Broder has called him “a notably independent, creative legislator.”

Seems like he’d also be amenable to sensible legislation that promotes commercial spaceflight, which will also help NASA save money.

It’s really hard to appreciate what great and unexpected news this is. There were a lot of indications that Oberstar was in trouble, but it was still hard to believe that he could actually lose his election. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation should plan on trying to move some legislation this year. It’s hard to believe that the administration would be opposed, given its commercial-friendly space policy in general.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I just realized that I didn’t explain why Oberstar was so bad. Go read this article from 2005 at The Space Review.

[Update a while later]

Here’s a little disappointing news on the space front. I was hoping that Gabbie Giffords would lose in Arizona, and she almost did, but it looks like the libertarians kept her in office, by a couple thousand votes. But at least she’ll no longer chair the space subcommittee. Same thing happened to rocket scientist Ruth McClung. If those libertarians had voted for her, they’d have defeated (Arizona-bashing) Grijalva.

I often, even mostly vote libertarian in elections, to make a political point, but never in one that tight. I do prefer the lesser of the two evils, and it was particularly important in this election to remove as many Democrats as possible.

[Update early afternoon]

The Arizona races are still too close to call.