Category Archives: Economics

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

Climaquiddick 3.0

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The password has been released:

If someone is still wondering why anyone would take these risks, or sees only a breach of privacy here, a few words…

The first glimpses I got behind the scenes did little to garner my trust in the state of climate science — on the contrary. I found myself in front of a choice that just might have a global impact.

Briefly put, when I had to balance the interests of my own safety, privacy\career of a few scientists, and the well-being of billions of people living in the coming several decades, the first two weren’t the decisive concern.

It was me or nobody, now or never. Combination of several rather improbable prerequisites just wouldn’t occur again for anyone else in the foreseeable future. The circus was about to arrive in Copenhagen. Later on it could be too late.

Most would agree that climate science has already directed where humanity puts its capability, innovation, mental and material “might”. The scale will grow ever grander in the coming decades if things go according to script. We’re dealing with $trillions and potentially drastic influence on practically everyone.

Wealth of the surrounding society tends to draw the major brushstrokes of a newborn’s future life. It makes a huge difference whether humanity uses its assets to achieve progress, or whether it strives to stop and reverse it, essentially sacrificing the less fortunate to the climate gods.

We can’t pour trillions in this massive hole-digging-and-filling-up endeavor and pretend it’s not away from something and someone else.

If the economy of a region, a country, a city, etc. deteriorates, what happens among the poorest? Does that usually improve their prospects? No, they will take the hardest hit. No amount of magical climate thinking can turn this one upside-down.

It’s easy for many of us in the western world to accept a tiny green inconvenience and then wallow in that righteous feeling, surrounded by our “clean” technology and energy that is only slightly more expensive if adequately subsidized.

Those millions and billions already struggling with malnutrition, sickness, violence, illiteracy, etc. don’t have that luxury. The price of “climate protection” with its cumulative and collateral effects is bound to destroy and debilitate in great numbers, for decades and generations.

Conversely, a “game-changer” could have a beneficial effect encompassing a similar scope.

If I had a chance to accomplish even a fraction of that, I’d have to try. I couldn’t morally afford inaction. Even if I risked everything, would never get personal compensation, and could probably never talk about it with anyone.

Anthony has already found a couple amusing bashes of Mann by his colleagues:

No justification for regional reconstructions rather than what Mann et al did (I don’t think we can say we didn’t do Mann et al because we think it is crap!)

But we do, don’t we?

I hope that history will view this person as a world saver.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Fossil Fuels

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Gaia loves them:

In the end, Japan’s work in this field is good news. This is still a very new technology, and it is likely to become significantly safer the more we learn and study it. More R&D needs to go into the technology supporting offshore drilling for methane hydrates before we can seriously consider doing this, but the potential is certainly there.

The energy revolution just keeps getting better.

But it makes Baby JeebusAlgore cry.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

My Corporate Dystopia

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What the heck happened to it?

At its best, science fiction imagines a future that illuminates the present, but on the subject of the social role of the corporation, science fiction has long been backward-looking, out of touch with the reality it would analyze. The cultural imagination at large shares this error, though it is difficult to say how much this defect in science fiction is a result of the cultural error and how much it is the cause. But it would be difficult to overstate how deeply the specter of the villainous corporation shapes American political thought. The influence is more visible the farther to the left one moves along the political spectrum. Occupy Wall Street was probably at least as much influenced by science-fiction visions of corporate dystopias as it was by any kind of organized political thought. There were unmistakably Maoist elements to Occupy, but the sinister connotations of the very word “corporation” are by no means heard by only those ears attached to the addled heads of committed leftists.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was set in 1992, Blade Runner in 2019, yet here we are, well into the 21st century, and there is still no colossal Tyrel Corporation bestriding the globe, and nothing like the corporate sovereignties of Jennifer Government. As myth, the corporate dystopia remains undiminished in its power. But the function of myths is to illuminate reality, and the reality is that there is no Tyrel Corporation today, and none on the horizon. If you want to know what the corporation of tomorrow looks like, don’t think Cyberdyne — think Groupon.

…The fetishization of the political through regulator-heroes such as Jennifer Government relies on the point-counterpoint of corporation and state; without the threat of the monolithic, immortal, all-powerful corporation hovering silently in the cultural background, the rhetoric and philosophy of (for instance) Elizabeth Warren is faintly ridiculous. Which is not to say it is entirely indefensible in every particular — Senator Warren is right in demanding to know, say, why nobody at HSBC has been charged with a crime as a result of the bank’s money-laundering case, which involved such worrisome entities as Mexican cartels and Saudi financiers of terrorism. (Senator Warren might think about addressing some of her questions to the president rather than browbeating his underlings at a politically safe arm’s length.) But the overarching narrative — if not for the far-seeing, brave, and selfless heroes of the political class, we’d end up living in the world of Jennifer Government — is a fantasy, and a childish one at that.

I’ve never understood the “progressive” mindset that fears big corporations more than it fears big government.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Five And A Half Trillion

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That’s how much additional debt the nation has amassed since the Senate last passed a budget:

If you want a sense of just how massive the nation’s debt problem is, consider this: The U.S. added $226 billion in new debt in just the 35 days since President Obama missed the legal deadline to submit his budget.

That’s more than the government will spend this year on education, homeland security, law enforcement, housing aid, energy and the environment, combined.

A 1921 law requires the president to submit his budget plan to Congress on the first Monday in February, but Obama so far hasn’t produced one, and the White House says it won’t release its plan to get the nation’s deficits and debt under control until sometime in April.

Laws are for the little people. Hey, did I mention that the Senate was controlled by the Democrats that whole time?

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

SLS, The Backup System

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This sort of stupidity is on a par with calling it an “insurance policy.” Dana has it right:

Last year’s request for this “back-up system” was more than 300% of the appropriated level of the primary system. By acting on this type of faulty logic, we have created a national debt as large as our GDP and still our nation refuses to take its foot off the deficit spending accelerator. SLS is unaffordable, and with relatively modest expenditures on specific technology development, we do not need a heavy lift vehicle of that class to explore the Moon, Mars, or near-Earth asteroids.”

Of course, it has nothing to do with “exploring” any of those places. It’s pork and workforce preservation.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Green Cars’ Dirty Little Secret

20 Comments

They’re not very green. All they do is move the emissions to a different location.

The electric car might be great in a couple of decades but as a way to tackle global warming now it does virtually nothing. The real challenge is to get green energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels. That requires heavy investment in green research and development. Spending instead on subsidizing electric cars is putting the cart before the horse, and an inconvenient and expensive cart at that.

It’s not about the economics. It’s about feelings, which are of course the highest value.

Business, Economics, Education, Political Commentary

The Blue Civil War

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The battle for California:

For decades, Democrats have straddled a divide: they sought to represent both the producers of government services and the low and middle income citizens who depend on those services. Democrats want the votes and the contributions of teacher unions, and they want the votes of the parents whose kids attend public schools. As long as the blue model worked, the contradictions could be managed.

Increasingly, however, the contradictions have come to the fore. Teacher unions want life employment for incompetent teachers; their representatives negotiate farcically unsound pension arrangements with complaisant politicians and want taxpayers to pony up when the huge bills come due. Other producers of government services also have their sweetheart deals.

The result is that the consumers of government services, many of whom of course are Democrats, are getting a raw deal. They are paying too much money in taxes to support a system of government that, however outstanding and dedicated some people in it may be, simply cannot deliver acceptable services at a reasonable cost. The Democratic claim to represent both sides fairly is getting harder to sustain.

What can’t go on, eventually won’t.

[Update a while later]

Beautifully medieval California.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

How To Grow The Economy

87 Comments

Cut spending, stupid:

Barack Obama has been trying to stimulate the economy with record-high government spending funded by higher tax rates and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s low interest rates.

But as Stanford economist Michael Boskin points out in the Wall Street Journal, “Japan tried that, to little effect, in the 1990s.” Slow growth has become the new normal there.

There are alternative policies. One is to cut government spending, or cut it more than you raise taxes. As Boskin points out, the Netherlands in the mid-1990s and Sweden in the mid-2000s “stabilized their budgets without recession [with] $5-$6 of actual spending cuts per dollar of tax hikes.”

And he notes that Canada reduced government spending in the mid-1990s and early 2000s by an amount equal to 8 percent of gross domestic product.

Those cuts weren’t painless, but they put Canada on a trajectory different from ours. Canadian voters value budget surpluses, and Canada managed to avoid almost all the bad effects of the 2007-09 recession.

I think that Keynes himself would be appalled to see the things being done in his name.

Business, Culinary, Economics, Political Commentary

The Pizza Police

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Example 1,876,342 of why there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats:

So, as usual, what has Republican leaders grumbling is not the principle that free people ought to be at liberty to conduct routine business without federal mandates. What irks them is that Obama bureaucrats are marginally more domineering than, say, Bush-era light bulb bureaucrats. (By the way, Daniel Horowitz of RedState reminds us that Rep. Upton’s light bulb ban “made its way into the 2007 energy bill [signed by President Bush], which turned out to be the Obamacare of the energy industry.”) Upton and Rodgers object to what they call FDA’s inflexible “‘my way or the highway’ approach” to the imposition of government standards. That the imposition itself, quite apart from its obnoxious manner, is offensive never dawns on them. And speaking of offensive, how’d you like this Upton-Rodgers line: “In fact, Congress has previously partnered with the restaurant industry to improve consumers’ access to information.” Michael Bloomberg and Debbie Wasserman-Shultz wouldn’t have written it any differently.

As he notes, this is why Obama managed to win again with four million fewer votes than the last time.