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1. 

   TokyoTom Posted 9:46 pm
   05 Jun 2006

   Bradley's a so-called libertarian

   Bradley's op-ed was also posted on the libertarian website Mises, where I commented.  I've had an interesting time struggling with libertarians there, who are generally quite perceptive as to how corporations are corrupting and milking the government, but seem to buy hook, line and sinker the corporate hype that enviros are recycled commies out to ruin America.

   Please note that on the adpatation argument with RP Jr., what you have stated is absolutely the pure libertarian position - of course adaptation is necessary and will occur, but GOVERNMENT SHOULD DO NOTHING it will just get in the way, do it poorly, generate pork for favorites, etc.  A good summary is by respected libertarian economist George Reisman, who is responsible for my entanglement at Mises.  I apologize for a lengthy quote, but this is worth a gander because this is the pure rationale that so many of the skeptics who are/were industry shills (Bradley, Bailey/CEI folks) have corrupted:

   The question of how to deal with climate change, in turn, is subsumed by the broader question of how should human beings deal with physical reality in meeting their needs and wants. It is part of that question.
   And that question has already been answered--by the science of economics--and answered beyond all honest dispute. The only way for human beings to meet their needs and wants in an efficient and progressively improving way is if they produce under a system of division of labor and monetary exchange, which in turn rests on a foundation of private ownership of the means of production and economic freedom. The name for this system, of course, is capitalism. (A much smaller number of human beings than are now alive could survive without this system, as our ancestors survived, namely, as essentially self-sufficient farmers. But they would live in the poverty and misery of our ancestors, and, as stated, their number would be relatively small--a billion or so versus our present six billion or more.) For the present number of human beings to survive and to be able to enjoy the comforts, conveniences, and luxuries now found throughout the modern, industrial economies of the world, capitalism and its economic freedom are essential.
   Economic freedom is what is required to cope with global warming, global freezing, or any other form of large-scale environmental or social change. If global warming turns out to be a fact, the free citizens of an industrial civilization will have no great difficulty in coping with it--that is, of course, if their ability to use energy and to produce is not crippled by the environmental movement and by government controls otherwise inspired. (This applies even to responses to natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods, that allegedly will occur in connection with global warming. The response of a free market would be typified by that of the Biloxi, Mississippi gambling casinos in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. Within months of being freed of restriction to riverboats and being allowed for the first time to locate on land, they sprang into existence ready and eager for action, in the midst of otherwise unrelieved devastation and paralysis, as most property owners waited for government aid from FEMA. The casino owners were fortunate in being ineligible for such aid and so took immediate action on their own. On this subject, see my blog post of March 14, 2006.)
   The seeming difficulties of coping with global warming, or any other large-scale change, arise only when the problem is viewed from the collectivist perspective of government central planners. It would be too great a problem for government bureaucrats to handle, as is the production even of an adequate supply of wheat or nails, as the experience of the whole socialist world has shown. But it would certainly not be too great a problem for tens and hundreds of millions of free, thinking individuals living under capitalism to solve. It would be solved by means of each individual being free to decide how best to cope with the particular aspects of global warming that affected him.
   Individuals would decide, on the basis of profit-and-loss calculations, what changes they needed to make in their businesses and in their personal lives, in order best to adjust to the situation. They would decide where it was now relatively more desirable to own land, locate farms and businesses, and live and work, and where it was relatively less desirable, and what new comparative advantages each location had for the production of which goods. Factories, stores, and houses all need replacement sooner or later. In the face of a change in the relative desirability of different locations, the pattern of replacement would be different. Perhaps some replacements would have to be made sooner than otherwise. To be sure, some land values would fall and others would rise. Whatever happened, individuals would respond in a way that minimized their losses and maximized their possible gains. The essential thing they would require is the freedom to serve their self-interests by buying land and moving their businesses to the areas rendered relatively more attractive, and the freedom to seek employment and buy or rent housing in those areas.
   Given this freedom, the totality of the problem would be overcome. This is because, under capitalism, the actions of the individuals, and the thinking and planning behind those actions, are coordinated and harmonized by the price system (as many former central planners of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have come to learn). As a result, the problem would be solved in exactly the same way that tens and hundreds of millions of free individuals have solved much greater problems than global warming, such as redesigning the economic system to deal with the replacement of the horse by the automobile, the settlement of the American West, and the release of the far greater part of the labor of the economic system from agriculture to industry.

   This is not to deny that important problems of adjustment would exist if global warming did in fact come to pass. But whatever they would be, they would all have perfectly workable solutions. ...
   For densely populated, impoverished countries with low-lying coastal areas, like Bangladesh and Egypt, the obvious solution is for those countries to sweep away all of the government corruption and underlying irrational laws and customs that stand in the way of large-scale foreign investment and thus of industrialization. This is precisely what needs to be done in these countries in any case, with or without global warming, if their terrible poverty and enormous mortality rates are to be overcome. If they do this, then the physical loss of a portion of their territory need not entail the death of anyone, and, indeed, their standard of living will rapidly improve. If they refuse to do this, then nothing but their own irrationality should be blamed for their suffering. The threat of global warming, if there is really anything to it, should propel them into taking now the actions they should have taken long ago. ...
   Whether global warming comes or not, it is certain that nature will sooner or later produce major changes in the climate. To deal with those changes and virtually all other changes arising from whatever cause, man absolutely requires individual freedom, science, and technology.

   In short, libertarians want the government out of the way.  Those so-called libertarians who are calling for government to be involved in adaptation should have this thrown in their faces, because it displays an inconsistency that reveals they are simply protecting vested interests, and are not really concerned about whether the government gets involved in doling out more money to favored groups.
   

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2. 

   amazingdrx Posted 10:05 pm
   05 Jun 2006

   Corporatarians

   Call 'em "corporatarians" Tom, it really fits.  And gives them fits.

   They believe in the rights of corporate "citizens" over the rights of the individual.  And government of, by, and for corporate power, the same guys who fund their "think" tanks.

   I think they like their corporate jet lifestyle just as congressmen like Delay do.  A top tripster enabler?  The Nuclear Energy Institute.  That's the latest on why nuclear power is being revived.

   http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003042150_tripmain06.html

   http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

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3. 

   caniscandida Posted 12:21 am
   06 Jun 2006

   straw man

   George Reisman's libertarian recommendation is frightening, for at least two reasons.  First, as though this were an argument for sweeping away government and governmental regulation and direction everywhere, he erects a straw man, giving us some examples of notoriously bad government: FEMA, Bangladesh, and Egypt. (Nigeria, another poorly run country with a populous river delta, ought to be included in that category; but Reisman cannot do so, because in fact it has been open to "large-scale foreign investment," in apparently one and only one industry, with very unhappy social consequences.)  But everybody already recognizes the need for radical reform in those places.  To suggest that they are somehow typical of government in general is disingenuous.

   And then, in connexion with this, there is that breathtakingly heartless sentence: "If [the inhabitants of these countries] refuse to [sweep away government corruption and irrational laws], then nothing but their own irrationality should be blamed for their suffering."  Wow; so all they have to do is get out of the closet those power-brooms of theirs; what are they waiting for?

   Secondly, whether or not Reisman has a mature understanding of the common good (and his remarkable instance of the post-Katrina reconstruction of Mississippi Gulf Coast casinos as an example of the success and happiness that await us, if only we give ourselves entirely to self-centred capitalism and throw off government regulation, strongly suggests he does not), he offers us a remarkably pollyannish vision of a secure and happy society in which everyone is (by implication) wise, prudent, disciplined, resourceful, market-savvy, competitive and aggressive.  Well, such a society is simply never going to exist, in any political arrangement.  And that is for varied reasons, including physical deficiency, native disposition and conscious choice.

   Government most certainly has a true and good purpose.  There are many desirable things that individuals would like to accomplish, and which they can never accomplish on their own.  And it would not help a jot toward these ends to know that our neighbors are a gang of unregulated capitalist self-interested competitors.

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4. 

   TokyoTom Posted 12:46 pm
   06 Jun 2006

   Government as a vehicle for theft

   ad, I agree that many libertarians end up as apologists for corporations, and ignore how it's mainly the corporations who are abusing the state.  There is a fair point to be argued that environmentalists would receive more sympathy if they understood more about market failure and how bureaucractic solutions are frequently excessively expensive (while a boon to bureacracts, politicians and to large corporations in avoinding liability even while raising barriers to entry).

   cc, your response is quite perceptive, even though I actually quoted the least frightening part of Reisman's essay.

   Reisman does in effect wash his hands with trying to solve the problem of failed development in precisely those countries that will bear the greates brunt from climate change.  I would say that it is our complicity with the kreptocratic elites in these countries that has itself hindered development, which requires clear property rights and firm enforcement of them, and that confronting this task head on will be a much less expensive approach than continuing to let problems fest and spin out of control (and to allow the rampant destruction of "public" and common resources to continue unabated).

   I agree with you that "Government most certainly has a true and good purpose."  However, I do think that the libertarians have a good point in noting how government interference is extremely suceptible to abuse by rent-seekers, tends to compound problems and lead to further interference.  Just look at the Great Robbery now underway.

   Regards,

   Tom

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