Comments falsecast has made

Picking up the check

Good suggestions Pat.
If I might add, the government could either provide or subsidize the private provision of secure parking areas, bike lanes,  etc. through revenue raised by congestion pricing. Why not make the motorists pay for their externalities rather than punishing those who suffer from them?

Melancholy is incompatible with bicycling.

Delay could be costly...

2005 Nobel prizewinner and game-theory guru Thomas Schelling on acting now and the need for public sector intervention/leadership:
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/schelling1

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

First, lets kill all the...

I'd say go for the tax first. Regardless of where the revenue goes, consumer behavior will change. As consumer behavior changes so to will the revenues of all carbon competitors, in favor of the low-carbon producers. It might be easier to sell the argument against tax breaks and subsidies (and grandfathers) after the tax regime has culled some of the more inefficient producers. Greg Mankiw on the carbon tax: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/16view.html?ex ...

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

Not, not exactly

1. Again, money creates nothing - what brings the workers in is what they can get with the money. The government can't just print however much they want (and get away with it indefinitely-case in point the US).
   
2. Do you make all of your stuff? Or pay for it in  yen or euros? If not, better act now: the dollar may not be the reserve for much longer(see #1).
   
3. Is anyone sending us anything (resource-wise)that we are not paying for?
   
4. And amazingly enough, the wealthiest 5% of our population still manages still have enough money left over to account for something around half of all Federal tax revenue (and quite a bit of state and local revenues also, at least here in MD). Politicians must be getting cheaper. probably something to do with oversupply.

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

The State

Colin,

I seems to me that you have Polyani right, although I probably not the best judge. Does this sound right: the State needs a larger more dynamic economy to enhance its own power, so it replaces the cumbersome traditional and decentralized market system with a state-enhanced market society, then benevolently intervenes to correct the excesses that this transition and its continuation impose on its citizens? If so, then the state's thirst for power is the driving force behind the transformation.

Would we necessarily have the problems that followed from the Great Trans without the initial motive for national power (and all that goes with that)?

As far as infrastructure is concerned, I think that localization is a viable alternative to privatization. One key to me would be divorcing government action from any sense of national purpose or glory. That may help to avoid some of the irrationality toward "them" that odograph spoke of in an earlier post.

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

OK Sam

"Printing money is the essential step in capital creation; someone uses the money to buy capital, and voila! capital has been created.  Keynes' main insight."

Not really: money hasn't created the capital at all, it is just the means by which it is  transferred from one holder to another. Not sure that I would look to Lord Keynes for insight, if that's what you are seeking.

Regarding the 1973 embargo, I believe that the Japanese were able to provide alternative technologies in the form of higher mileage cars, and other steps were taken. That the resulting fall in demand for crude lead to a breakdown of the OPEC cartel and brought the lower per barrel prices of 1980s got us in the SUV craze of the 90s is a fair point, but I think that could have been avoided.

How is voluntary exchange a straw man? I have no talent for making shoes. But I do need them. If I exchange something that I have of value, namely my labor, for a means of exchange (money) that I can then use to purchase my shoes, and these transactions are entered into by all parties voluntarily, rather than coercively, how have I increased inequality and power difference? Am I being naive? Preemptively: assuming that the workers who manufacture the shoes are not being kept at their machines at gunpoint, their employment is voluntary - as is mine(and if anything, it is easier today with all the information available, to make informed buying decisions). I am free to quit, but I am then no longer entitled to compensation for my labor. Or should we go back to making everything for ourselves? Really - blogging would be a lot less popular.

I never suggested that politics is, or was ever free from corruption - especially our system. But if I implied that I think that more could be done with our system to limit and control it, then I plead guilty.

How is it fetishistic to prefer voluntary exchange to coerced? Not to set up a false dilemma, are there other alternatives that I am missing? Being ruled from sun-up to sun-down, which I try to avoid, and well-connected greed heads who limit peoples' choices for their own shallow ends represent the antithesis of freedom that is the basis for voluntary exchange.

When you come up with a way of getting what you want but can't make for yourself without exchanging something that you have for it, without resort to violence or force, let me know. Even the Lord Buddha wore a robe and carried a bowl.

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

Money is not capital

Printing money is not capital creation. Also,

Not sure what you mean exactly by capitalism (Marx's original straw man). If by it you mean voluntary exchange, prices as signals between traders, a blend of private and public property, enforceability of contracts, arbitration and litigation to resolve disputes, and decentralization, I don't see what is unsustainable. If you mean the current regime [well-connected corporate greedheads+venal politicians-(humility+caution+prudence)] to which many of our fellow citizens have at least acquiesced, count me in.

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

For the defense

"Economics doesn't want to deal with the reality that our future prospects are for a much POORER world, to the point where environmental cleanups we fail to do today are probably never going to occur at all --- we'll simply say "too bad.""

Would it be rude to point out that "economics" doesn't "want" anything, any more than "science" "wants" anything, or "history" "wants" anything?

Economics is a way of looking at things, a set of assumptions, models, analytical tools, etc. As a field of study, it has no desired set of outcomes.

Someone, I forget whom, once said something to the effect that science is an approach, a method, a way of looking at the world. So to are art history, music theory, theology, and the rest. Specific economists might have certain goals in mind when they argue this or that point, but I don't think that you can reasonably advance the position that Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman, Greg Mankiw, Tyler Cowen, Joe Stiglitz, and George Stigler all want the same outcomes because they all hold degrees in the same discipline. There are at least one or two economists out there that do not believe in a)unlimited growth, b) that the future will necessarily be wealthier than the past, c) that comparative advantage is the basis for trade, or d)infinite growth of any money supply is possible or desirable. A straw man that big is a serious fire hazard.

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

HaHaHa?

The fun cops may have got around to banning it, and I just haven't noticed, but isn't the stuff in the cream whippers nitrous oxide? No worries about the small carbon release here: just say NO2!On Umbra on seltzer bottles posted 2 years, 5 months ago 5 Responses

One eye open?

    "Republicans always benefit from increasing public fears, whether about gays, terrorism, illegal immigration, or anything that activates authoritarianism. It makes people who only have a little authoritarianism share the preferences of those who have a lot.

Or as Kevin Drum puts it: "Fear is the conservative's friend, never the liberal's."

- Puh-leeze! Scaring retirees about Social Security reforms, riling up the liberal base with inflammatory rhetoric about the reversal of Roe v. Wade, privatizing public services and schools, yammering about greed and the evils of the profit motive and the filthy stinking rich corporations,
opportunistic drum beating for more gun control?
While there are legitimate points at the cores of these statements that need to be discussed and debated,the argument from fear is an inductive fallacy that has no place in reasoned and civil discourse. Has scoring points on the political leaderboard completely replaced any concern for careful and critical reasoning?
 To maintain that the Left does not engage in fearmongering is just silly. The liberals (modern American usage) understand Hume just as well as conservatives, it's just that they have not been positioned philosophically in recent years to make as much hay from 9/11 and its aftermath as the authoritarian right. To suggest that advocates for climate change action should travel down more or less the same path that led us to the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo, Iraq, and who knows where risks a dangerous confusion of ends and means. If we become the problems that we see in other people's logic, we have stood Ghandi's maxim on its head.

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

fair enough

SS,
Good points. How about western expansion, the related atrocities committed against indigenous peoples, the dead zones in our rivers caused by government subsidized agriculture, WWI, Iraq,next Iran? ethanol, dams...need I go on?

I'm not sure that we can push harder than those who are already pushing with lots of $$$. The corporations will spend as much to game the system as they think they will gain from rigging it in their favor. Simple economics: MC=MB.

With our present government, that the people have the power is an open question. I'm not sure that warlords and corporations (the MI complex that Ike warned us about) aren't running the show already.I know that it is early, perhaps too early to tell, but has anyone noticed anything different from Blue DC beyond some changes in the window dressing? The exciting things seems to be coming from the state and local levels these days. A change for the better - please sir could we have some more?

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

Two cheers?

GlobalMakeover:
"But I think that the gravity of the problems we face indicates that we need to construct an entirely different energy and transportation infrastructure, which cannot be done except collectively via governments, at as local a level as possible."

Wasn't the government, in unholy alliance with the car manufacturers, the road builders, the developers, etc, etc, that gave us the interstate system, and the suburbs, and the suburban industrial park, and the commutes, and the strip malls, and the new developments, which led to the hollowing out of our urban centers and the paving of rural America? I agree completely with point that anything that is to be done ought to be done at the most local level possible, but I'm not sure that I would trust any level of government to reverse 60+ years of complicity in creating and promoting the car culture.

"Even suggesting government programs seems to off-limits after 26 years of conservative rule, I realize, but the sooner we realize this is needed, the better."

Not to get into a roll about labels, but as a person who would still describe himself as a conservative (albeit a highly qualified species: conservatism as a disposition, rather than as a position, or a collection of political views - pace Michael Oakeshott), I find very little about the rule of the Republic since 1981 that would qualify as either conservative or anti-government in any meaningful way. Certainly the rhetoric of the Reagan/Bush I administration and that of W that I can comprehend is occasionally anti-gov, sometimes stridently so. But, what about the reality beyond the rhetoric: massive increases in the size, scope, and spending of the government, particularly in the areas that some libertarians would call the welfare/warfare state. Bill Clinton may one day be viewed as a president who governed more "conservatively" the either of his immediate predecessors and his successor, despite the fact that he would probably describe himself as some sort of progressive or another, and the others all claim or have claimed the mantle of conservative- whatever that means.

All I know is that when I think of turning to the government to solve problems, at any level, I look at the nightmares in Iraq and Afghanistan (and South America, etc), I look at the mess multiple states have made and continue to make of the Chesapeake Bay, and the ongoing inability of my own county to operate something as simple as a public school system, and I wonder why we trust these clowns with anything, let alone the critical process of transforming the relationship between the people of this country and the environment in which we exist.

I think it needs to start with people choosing, rather that having their choices made for them.

"The conjunction of ruling and dreaming generates tyranny."

Yeah, but...

I seem to remember that Denmark scored very well on last year's WSJ/Heritage Foundation (gasp!) Index of Economic Freedom. Top five, if memory serves, with the US tied for ninth. The index measures a wide range of indicators including tax burdens, regulatory environment, banking practices, etc. At any rate, it hardly sounds as though the Danes have abandoned the market, the profit motive, and economic growth in favor of a heavily regulated and centrally planned state - though it is true that they have chosen to maintain a substantial social welfare system. What is remarkable (and maybe instructive) is that, for the moment, they appear to have squared the circle to accommodate these two elements that were long thought to be antagonistic.

Denmark is also raking in so many petrodollars that the government has actually hired a philosopher to advise them on the morality of various investment opportunities available for the state pension system. As long as the North Sea remains relatively stable in a geopolitical sense, the Danes may be able to have their growth and redistribute some of it, too. On Denmark is a model of energy independence posted 2 years, 7 months ago 3 Responses