Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Space “Democratization”

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Ferris Valyn has some thoughts on that WaPo editorial on commercializing LEO transportation.

It’s kind of amusing to see him arguing with some of the lefty anti-capitalist loons who populate Kos. This was a little less amusing:

Competitive markets (and I stress the word competitive) can be very good at lowering price points. Sometimes they can get too low, and we end up with things like Wal-mart, but this is an situation that desperately needs its price points lowered.

I doubt if the millions of lower-income people whose lives have been improved by Walmart think that their prices are “too low.”

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

Global Warming

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…and the sun:

I applaud Meehl’s reluctance to go beyond where the science takes him. For all I know, he’s right. But such humility and skepticism seem to manifest themselves only when the data point to something other than the mainstream narrative about global warming. For instance, when we have terribly hot weather, or bad hurricanes, the media see portentous proof of climate change. When we don’t, it’s a moment to teach the masses how weather and climate are very different things.

No, I’m not denying that man-made pollution and other activity have played a role in planetary warming since the Industrial Revolution.

But we live in a moment when we are told, nay lectured and harangued, that if we use the wrong toilet paper or eat the wrong cereal, we are frying the planet. But the sun? Well, that’s a distraction. Don’t you dare forget your reusable shopping bags, but pay no attention to that burning ball of gas in the sky — it’s just the only thing that prevents the planet from being a lifeless ball of ice engulfed in darkness. Never mind that sunspot activity doubled during the 20th century, when the bulk of global warming has taken place.

What does it say that the modeling that guaranteed disastrous increases in global temperatures never predicted the halt in planetary warming since the late 1990s? (MIT’s Richard Lindzen says that “there has been no warming since 1997 and no statistically significant warming since 1995.”) What does it say that the modelers have only just now discovered how sunspots make the Earth warmer?

It says that there is some other agenda going on.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Delusional

9 Comments

Dana Blankenhorn misinterprets history:

The problem here for Republicans is their own past success. President Clinton failed to get a health bill through in 1993 and Democrats were hammered the next year, especially their more conservative members. It took them over a decade to win back the majorities they had then.

This may make threats to wreck the careers of those voting “aye” less potent, with conservative Democrats figuring that if they can’t win they might as well stand for something.

The bottom line. If Democrats can’t agree on a proposal given their substantial majorities in both Houses of Congress, they face a generation’s exile in the political wilderness, no matter how many crazy pills some Republicans take.

Emphasis mine. If the last graf is true, then they’re damned either way, because if they ram through a bill that all the polls show is very unpopular, they’ll be hammered like they were in 1994 by angry voters. The key that Dems (and I think that the Blue Dogs) understand it is in the false causation implied in the highlighted statement. Yes, the Dems failed to pass health care in 1993 and yes, they got hammered in 1994. But one didn’t cause the other. What happened in 1994 was due to several things — “don’t ask, don’t tell” as one of the first things out of the box, the mishandling of health care, with Hillary (the most brilliant woman in the world) sent off to draft a big-government bill behind closed doors, passing the “assault weapons” ban, a failure to pass the promised “middle-class tax cuts.” Failing to pass the health-care monstrosity wasn’t the cause of them losing the Congress — it was the very attempt to pass it. Actually passing this bill will be disastrous.

Oh, and the fact that “conservative Democrats” lost seats disproportionately simply means that they were in marginal, unsafe districts. It certainly wasn’t because they failed to vote for a big-government bill. The Dems don’t have any good choices at this point, but passing a Dem-only bill will be Armageddon at the polls for them next year.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Good News, Bad News

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The good news is that the editorial board at the WaPo seems to recognize the potential for commercial space in addressing NASA’s needs, much more so than NASA has to date. The bad news is that they remain incoherent on the purpose of sending people into space. They also (like FL Today) seem to think that the problem is simply not enough money:

If the committee’s public comments are any indication, its findings will be grim: NASA’s recent budget cuts render the current manned mission plan impossible. This is not the first time NASA’s plans have suffered from lack of fiscal foresight: Once the international space station is completed next year, the current budget calls for deorbiting it by 2016. Maybe it’s time to take a step back to assess the right role for a manned space program that requires billions of dollars annually — and for what? Certainly, boldly going where no man has gone before is an American creed. But with the advent of increasingly complex and precise instruments, science in space requires less and less input from astronauts. Groundbreaking research can occur without humans — witness the Mars Rover and Hubble telescope. NASA should not have to sacrifice programs that are truly ground-breaking — researching dark matter, black holes and gravitational fields of space objects — to keep the international space station manned and supplied.

So they have a recommendation:

Now that the station is nearly complete, this might be an optimal time to open space to entrepreneurs. Many companies claim they possess the capacity to transport humans and payloads into space; the review committee found their reports convincing enough to suggest that these space entrepreneurs could take over the transport of astronauts and supplies to the space station after the shuttle program ends.

The problem is that they seem to have no vision for space beyond LEO, or a commercial role in it. Partly because they fall into the standard mental trap of thinking the primary purpose of human spaceflight is science. So we still have a lot of persuasion to do. But hey, even if it’s for the wrong reasons, if they have some good advice, why complain? After all, when government occasionally makes a good decision, it’s often for the wrong reasons. You take what you can get.

[Update mid afternoon]

The Commercial Spaceflight Federation piles on. Is Congress listening?

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

More On Rationing Confusion

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(Dr.) Paul Hsieh: The free market is not another form of rationing:

Supporters of the free market should not allow opponents to characterize the marketplace as a form of rationing, let alone an unjust one. Instead, supporters should defend the free market as morally just because it respects individual rights.

Respect for individual rights is in pretty short supply in Washington these days.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

That Laissez-Faire Herbert Hoover

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One of the nutty myths of the left is that the “right” reveres Herbert Hoover because he was pro-business, and didn’t interfere in the economy. They fantasize that these supposed policies caused the Great Depression, which was rectified by their savior, Franklin Roosevelt. Well, they’re wrong on both counts. I don’t know any conservative or libertarian who defends Hoover, and the reason is that they agree that he caused the depression. The nutty part is that he did it with statist policies, not just by signing Smoot-Hawley and raising taxes, but by indulging in devastating pro-labor interference in the market:

“These findings suggest that the recession was three times worse — at a minimum — than it would otherwise have been, because of Hoover,” said Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics.

The policies, which included both propping up wages and encouraging job-sharing, also accounted for more than two-thirds of the precipitous decline in hours worked in the manufacturing sector, which was much harder hit initially than the agricultural sector, according to Ohanian.

“By keeping industrial wages too high, Hoover sharply depressed employment beyond where it otherwise would have been, and that act drove down the overall gross national product,” Ohanian said. “His policy was the single most important event in precipitating the Great Depression.”

Expect the leftist myths to continue, though. They have decades of intellectual and emotional investment in them.