Here is a good example of a warmist really wanting to push social control and using global warming as the excuse.
Story submitted by John Kehr The Inconvenient Skeptic
I will gladly discuss the science of global warming with anyone. Interestingly enough there is a strong desire to avoid discussing the science from many warmists because they simply state that the issue is settled and it is time to act. With that mindset in place I am starting to see some disturbing attitudes developing. I recently came across an interview of Naomi Klein. She is an author and is a consistent social activist and strongly anti-corporate. Her work is consistently against the free market. Even with that in mind, her latest interview is rather disturbing. I will simply post the interview here.
The title sums it up well… Naomi Klein – Serious about climate throw out the Free Market Playbook.
After reading this article, ask yourself: Is her concern for the planet or for implementing social controls?
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Perhaps one of the most well-known voices for the left, Canadian Naomi Klein is an activist and author of several nonfiction works critical of consumerism and corporate activity, including the best sellers No Logo and Shock Doctrine. She is currently at work on a book about climate change.
Q. In your cover story for The Nation last year, you say that modern environmentalism successfully advances many of the causes dear to the political left, including redistribution of wealth, higher and more progressive taxes, and greater government intervention and regulation. Please explain.
A. The piece came out of my interest and my shock at the fact that belief in climate change in the United States has plummeted. If you really drill into the polling data, what you see is that the drop in belief in climate change is really concentrated on the right of the political spectrum. It’s been an extraordinary and unusual shift in belief in a short time. In 2007, 71 percent of Americans believed in climate change, and in 2009 only 51 percent believed — and now we’re at 41 percent. So I started researching the denial movement and going to conferences and reading the books, and what’s clear is that, on the right, climate change is seen as a threat to the right’s worldview, and to the neoliberal economic worldview. It’s seen as a Marxist plot. They accuse climate scientists of being watermelons — green on the outside and red on the inside.
Q. It seems exaggerated, but your piece was about how the right is in fact correct.
A. I don’t think climate change necessitates a social revolution. This idea is coming from the right-wing think tanks and not scientific organizations. They’re ideological organizations. Their core reason for being is to defend what they call free-market ideology. They feel that any government intervention leads us to serfdom and brings about a socialist world, so that’s what they have to fight off: a socialist world. Increase the power of the private sector and decrease the public sphere is their ideology.
You can set up carbon markets, consumer markets, and just pretend, but if you want to get serious about climate change, really serious, in line with the science, and you want to meet targets like 80 percent emissions cuts by midcentury in the developed world, then you need to be intervening strongly in the economy, and you can’t do it all with carbon markets and offsetting. You have to really seriously regulate corporations and invest in the public sector. And we need to build public transport systems and light rail and affordable housing along transit lines to lower emissions. The market is not going to step up to this challenge. We must do more: rebuild levees and bridges and the public sphere, because we saw in Katrina what happens when weak infrastructure clashes with heavy weather — it’s catastrophe. These climate deniers aren’t crazy — their worldview is under threat. If you take climate change seriously, you do have to throw out the free-market playbook.
Q. What is the political philosophy that underscores those who accept climate change versus those who deny it?
A. The Yale Cultural Cognition Project has looked at cultural worldview and climate change, and what’s clear is that ideology is the main factor in whether we believe in climate change. If you have an egalitarian and communitarian worldview, and you tend toward a belief system of pooling resources and helping the less advantaged, then you believe in climate change. And the stronger your belief system tends toward a hierarchical or individual worldview, the greater the chances are that you deny climate change and the stronger your denial will be. The reason is clear: It’s because people protect their worldviews. We all do this. We develop intellectual antibodies. Climate change confirms what people on the left already believe. But the left must take this confirmation responsibly. It means that if you are on the left of the spectrum, you need to guard against exaggeration and your own tendency to unquestioningly accept the data because it confirms your worldview.
Q. Members of the left have been resistant to acknowledging that this worldview is behind their support of climate action, while the right confronts it head on. Why this hesitancy among liberals?
A. There are a few factors at work. Climate change is not a big issue for the left. The big left issues in the United States are inequality, the banks, corporate malfeasance, unemployment, foreclosures. I don’t think climate change has ever been a broad-based issue for the left. Part of this is the legacy of siloing off issues, which is part of the NGO era of activism. Climate change has been claimed by the big green groups and they’re to the left. But they’re also foundation-funded. A lot of them have gone down the road of partnerships with corporations, which has made them less critical. The discourse around climate change has also become extremely technical and specialized. A lot of people don’t feel qualified and feel like they don’t have to talk about it. They’re so locked into a logic of market-based solutions — that the big green groups got behind cap-and-trade, carbon markets, and consumer responses instead of structural ones — so they’re not going to talk about how free trade has sent emissions soaring or about crumbling public infrastructure or the ideology that would rationalize major new investments in infrastructure. Others can fight those battles, they say. During good economic times, that may have seemed viable; but as soon as you have an economic crisis, the environment gets thrown under the bus, and there is a failure to make the connection between the economy and the climate crisis — both have roots in putting profits before people.
Q. You write in your article, “After years of recycling, carbon offsetting, and light-bulb changing, it is obvious that individual action will never be an adequate response to the climate crisis.” How do we get the collective action necessary? Is the Occupy movement a step in the right direction?
A. The Occupy movement has been a game changer, and it has opened up space for us to put more radical solutions on the table. I think the political discourse in the United States is centered around what we tell ourselves the American public can handle. The experience of seeing these groups of young people put radical ideas on the table, and seeing the country get excited by it, has been a wake-up call for a lot of people who feel they support those solutions — and for those who have said, “That’s all we can do.” It has challenged the sense of what is possible. I know a lot of environmentalists have been really excited by that. I’m on the board of 350.org, and they’ll be doing more and more work on the structural barriers to climate action. The issue is, why? Why do we keep losing? Who is in our way? We’re talking about challenging corporate personhood and financing of elections — and this is huge for environmental groups to be moving out of their boxes. I think all of the green organizations who take corporate money are terrified about this. For them, Occupy Wall Street has been a game changer.
Q. What comes after communism and capitalism? What’s your vision of the way forward?
A. It’s largely about changing the mix in a mixed economy. Maybe one day we’ll have a perfect “ism” that’s post-communism and -capitalism. But if we look at the countries that have done the most to seriously meet the climate challenge, they’re social democracies like Scandinavia and the Netherlands. They’re countries with a strong social sphere. They’re mixed economies. Markets are a big part, but not the only part, of their economies. Can we meet our climate targets in a system that requires exponential growth to continue? Furthermore, where is the imperative of growth coming from? What part of our economy is demanding growth year after year?
If you’re a locally based business, you don’t need continual growth year after year. What requires that growth is the particular brand of corporate capitalism — shareholders who aren’t involved in the business itself. That part of our economy has to shrink, and that’s terrifying people who are deeply invested in it. We have a mixed economy, but it’s one in which large corporations are controlled by outside investors, and we won’t change that mix until that influence is reduced.
Q. Is that possible?
A. It is if we look at certain choke points like corporate personhood and financing, and it makes sense for us to zero in on aspects of our system that give corporations massive influence. Another is media concentration. If you had publicly financed elections, you’d have to require public networks to give airtime to candidates. So the fact that networks charge so much is why presidential elections cost more than a billion dollars, which means you have to go to the 1% to finance the elections. These issues are all linked with the idea that corporations have the same free-speech rights as people, so there would also be more restrictions on corporate speech.
Q. Entrepreneur and writer Peter Barnes has argued that what’s missing is adequate incorporation of the “commons sector” in the economy — public goods like natural and social capital. “Capitalism 3.0,” he calls it, which we’d achieve not by privatizing these goods but by creating new institutions such as public-asset trusts. What’s your opinion of this approach?
A. I definitely think it’s clear that the road we’ve been on — turning to the private sector to run our essential services — has proven disastrous. In many cases, the reason why it was so easy to make arguments in favor of privatization was because public institutions were so cut off and unresponsive and the public didn’t feel a sense of ownership. The idea that a private corporation has valued you as a customer was a persuasive argument. Now it turns out both models have failed. So this idea that there is a third way — neither private nor state-run public — is out there.
Markx, your observation about how big businesses can swallow little businesses is not faulty. This happens. Your conclusion that it’s because of free enterprise is wrong, though. There is no perfect full enterprise, so every situation is tainted.
Here’s an example: If you are hit with impossibly complex tax codes, high insurance fees to cover for contingencies in a litigous and over-lawyered playing field, with overly stringent environmental regulations, restrictive municipal by-laws and rising energy costs, you cannot survive as a small business, as the smallest set back, the first bureaucratic delay or routine revenue-grabbing fine will wipe out your investments and work. It is not free enterprise that’s creating this skewed situsation.
At the same time, many businesses cannot work well as small-scale enterprises without change and smart thinking. For example, “big box” stores threatened to kill all the little shops and at first it looked like that was happening. But all they did was to cull out the crummy incompetent ones, the ones whose owners put little effort into and felt secure and entitled to what they thought should be a guaranteed income, a life-long job security for them and their fortunate descendants. Now that the deadwood out of the way, and while there is still some “free” remaining in the enterprise formula, smaller operations are challenging the big ones with different strategies and services. It’s the way free enterprise can and should work…it has its in-built “regulatory” mechanism.
The other part of the equasion is competence and willingness to invest, rather than just pocket good profits and expect people to keep coming. More anecdotal amusements: In the geographically linearToronto community I live in, there’s been a lot of maudlin moaning and groaning about small kosher bakeries being pushed out by in-house kosher bakeries within large supermarkets. “Oy, did you hear X’s closed down, after thirty years in business? Remember when….blah, blah?” The smaller bakeries depended on a population of locals without cars and on customer loyalties which had to do with friendships and quaint histories, rather than quality and price of goods and services. As a consequence of this captive or loyal customer base, some slid down from their glory of the early post-War days and chose not to spend their good income on innovation and improvement; they are now small, dingy, over-priced holes. There is one in my neighbourhood which never posts prices on items, assuming that regulars know about them or that they don’t care because they are there to enjoy the company of the owner who is, admittedly a character. The younger crowd which shops kosher, doesn’t enjoy asking for item prices every few seconds and with the car double-parked, fidgety kids in tow, tired from the day’s work, would rather pass on waiting while everyone in the line-up has had an opportunity to exchange a joke. So, they’d rather prefer to drive half-way across town to the mall-based supermarket bakery where they can park for free, shop for other items and go for a coffee all in one shot. Sad, an end of a tradition, but there is nothing quaint about dysfunctional situations. It’s the way it is in a system where people are free to choose where to shop, free to decide how to operate their business, free to succeed and yes, free to fail when they drop the ball.
The consistently missing bit in your call for “fairness” is a definition and an indication of just what incredibly complex regulatory and managerial mechanism or model you would employ to make free enterprise fairer through restrictions. Who would you choose to arbitrate, make and enforce decisions? How do you prevent a business, even a small mom-and-pop operation from smartening up, growing and swallowing its competitors? By what moral and legal rationales would you do that? And at what cost to liberties?
otter17 says:
April 25, 2012 at 6:47 am
Oreskes didn’t ‘de-construct’ anything. She indulged in a monologue.
Anyway, no solutions are required since there isn’t a problem, except in the imagination of the catastrophists.
O, and Markx, just in case you think of me as a heartless utilitarian, I’m very much on the left when it comes to a decent social safety net and I’m proud that Canada does well in that respect, far better than our neighbours to the south. We have a manageable welfare system and universal health care, which aren’t grat for our tax rates, but which in spite of doom-sayers and complainers (some sponsored by the health services industries and private insurers), it is of top-notch quality. You may be a homeless person or a millionaire and you will get the same services and care…and the millionaires I know don’t bother crossing the border for ostensibly better or faster care. No offense to my American buddies here intended, as I think they have a great country, but when I did my first driving trip through the US, after a decade of travelling around Canada only, I was actually horrified at the levels of poverty, such as in the urban slums and the Apalachian mountain towns, I witnessed. We lack the massive and stupendous wealth I saw in the US, but also the depressing poverty and hopelessness.
And I’m not a quaint, small store hater either. There is a small, rickety and not to well-run store owned by a charming Survivor who made it out of Treblinka while a young girl, where I used to go just out of sense of community and solidarity. After she passed away, the business when to her son-in-law and his wife, who thought they could keep the place the way it is and live off the “established” clientele. I see the place is for rent now. The point is that small, semi-functional enterprises have their place too; they connect us to our past, bind our communities and give us a good feeling…but that’s a “service” in competition with others as well.
She’s honest about her left wing ideology and socialist agenda but she tells (or promotes) the same lies the left has been pushing for a very long time to justify their goals. The two biggest ones are that collectivism works and, more recently associated with the environmental movement, that sustainability or no growth is a viable long term goal. The history of the last century effectively refutes the first lie as collectivism has been tried and has failed again and again. The laws of entropy generally applied refute the second. You’re either growing or you’re dying. In fact you’re dying even as you’re growing but by growing you put off death at least for your particular system. Socialists, especially those of the environmental variety belong to a death cult and should be treated as such.
@ur momisugly Peter Kovachev says:April 25, 2012 at 8:05 am
Yes, I agree the theory is fine, and in the old days it did self regulate very well and worked just as you say, as ‘big’ tended to turn into ‘dinosaur’ and the head eventually ended up not knowing what the tail was doing (a bit unfair on dinosaurs, but you know what I mean).
Now, with computers, high speed communication, electronic money transfers, etc that part is well under control. Nothing can stop the big guys except some very poor management decisions, and corporate governance is getting to the point that rarely happens.
Now, the younger generation don’t only go across town to the mall because they don’t like the old shops any more. The main reason is they are going there anyway, to buy something else, so why not get everything at one stop? It’s probably cheaper anyway. And that becomes the habit.
So who fights hardest for the rights of the ‘average citizen’ to compete in free markets? Big business, because they need the foot soldier in there casting votes and keeping the politicians on track, and they know should anyone get out of hand, he will be squashed like a bug.
Laws? We already have antitrust laws now, rarely enforced. A simple approach is needed. It does not need to be done by a myriad of regulations making life more difficult, and as you so ably point out excessive regulation (health, QC, etc) favours “big business’: in spite of their fake squeals, they love it.
So here we have the situation where all the foot soldiers will come rushing out of trailer parks and ghettos to fight to the death to protect ‘their’ rights, but in truth these rights only practically apply to big business.
Australia is a nice example of where it goes if you really give it free reign (and you should see the giant computerized warehouse/distribution centres the supermarkets have!) :
Scratch a reactionary leftist, find the fascist writhing underneath.
(1)”So I started researching the denial movement and going to conferences and reading the books, and what’s clear is that, on the right, climate change is seen as a threat to the right’s worldview, and to the neoliberal economic worldview. It’s seen as a Marxist plot. They accuse climate scientists of being watermelons — green on the outside and red on the inside.”
(2) “If you take climate change seriously, you do have to throw out the free-market playbook.”
So the “neoliberals” are right. Thanks for clarifying.
Peter Kovachev says: April 25, 2012 at 8:34 am
“….We have a manageable welfare system and universal health care, …. it is of top-notch quality. You may be a homeless person or a millionaire and you will get the same services and care…… the US… I was actually horrified at the levels of poverty, such as in the urban slums ….”
Peter, we agree on so much, and I had exactly the same experience driving in the USA (getting lost on my way through average looking towns, and finding myself in backstreets that looked like some apocalyptic movie set)… I too was astounded.
But surely that reinforces my point. In the midst of the very bastion of free enterprise, free market systems, THAT is what happens. I think that trip may have been the tipping point in my pure capitalist thinking ways.
And you are dead right about over-regulation. While we don’t want to get into the current Chinese state of affairs where your food may poison you, western health regulations are chasing a never attainable goal. The less exposure we get to bacteria, the more vulnerable we become. (I’ve spent most of the last 20 years in Indonesia, travel at least two weeks per month to any of Malaysia, Thailand , Vietnam, China, Philippines, etc, I eat anything, and I never get sick (well, very occasionally, but very minor, and half day maximum). (India might be a challenge, but I don’t get that far!)
That leads me to an anecdotal tale: Singapore – a bastion of capitalism too – contrary to belief, has a cleverly constructed social support system of sorts. Small food stalls in food courts can only be owned and run by lower income nationals. Big business can’t buy them up and make a chain. Foreigners can’t buy them. They are not regulated to death in the areas of health and procedures. Result. A living for a lot of lower income earners, and anyone can buy a cheap meal. In Singapore I can go out and buy a meal for three dollars. In Australia a (usually) far less edible takeaway will cost me $15.
markx says:
April 25, 2012 at 8:52 am
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But Markx, by your very own description of ignored anti-trust regulations you indicate that there may be other stuff going on than free-enterprise gone bad because of the freedom part. This is something I can only take guesses at, and it’s all beyond my paygrade, but I’ll wager that this is the result of decades of liberal, statist policies which always tend to favour big, established businesses…the cronies who pick and feed governments. In some respects the stuation is akin to Canada’s although you don’t have a massive economic engine a few kilometres to the south of you. Why aren’t Asian or even US chains investing in Oz? Could it be that your silly Julia and company with their carbon credits schemes have put a damper on things? Again, I barely understand my country never mind an island which is really a continent with its people strung along the coastlines and a resource-rich, but deadly desert in the middle.
Hey, I’d say throw that debate into Bunyip’s corner (http://bunyipitude.blogspot.ca/) and see what the Prof and the regulars there will come up with. That deservedly lazy, but inimitable Bunyip of yours…I think he’s retired to the Emeritus status…is chasing the little balls at some Melbourne golf course as we speak, but invite him here for a peek. I’m a great believer in friendly skeptics’ inter-blogular relations, seeing how Big Oil never came through and no PR firms are out to help us.
i love to break it to you, Peter Kovachev: canada is not a real country.
it began out of royal lust for tall hats. tall furry hats made short tyrants feel very important.
thus, hudson bay company grew and prospered. 155 years later, the hudson bay co. magazine, which was there before canada was invented, changed its name from The Beaver to The New Canadian. (they changed the name cuz of spam filters and the freaks.who.fear.naughty.pixels.
So, canada is not a real country; it is the company store to which you owe your soul.
canada is also the nosocomial capital of the western world. every year every graduate of mcmasters leaves. that’s why you have medical deities with dots on their foreheads who can’t sterilize a prostate biopsy needle between uses for 150 patients cuz the instructions were in english. sars could only make it in the chinese slums and canadian hospitals.
collectively, canadians are dissolute and feel zero responsibility for any damage when they get drunk and run over the neighbor’s kid – the government will take care of it.
never try to hold canada up as an example to which anybody should aspire. collectivism kills. if canada didn’t have natural resources to sell, they surely could never make it by adding value as is done in an industrial nation. but they feel entitled to so much. they feel enfranchised. they are large children, still and ever dependent. it’s nanny nation. you’ll never hear them shouting about liberty. you’ll hear honking in the middle of the night and the drunken cries of ‘go leafs’, though.
to misquote MIB- a canadian is ok; canadians- not so much.
but the cia needs the fiction for the sake of recruits who haven’t mastered any language but english…lol – canada has its uses for real players as a proxy.
That’s pretty funny as a comedy act in Vegas, which Canadians help to keep going thanks to our voyouristic fascination with the American fascination with cloying, over-the-top cheese, gnomish.
Except for the nasty tone, the made-up bits and some of the fall-flat hyperbolae, you could take it on the road. Really. Even to Canada. We can actually laugh at ourselves and will buy you a real beer, the kind you can actually see and taste and get drunk on without downing a whole barrel…not the canned pale pee you’re used to… and we won’t shoot-up the place as you guys would.
Peter Kovachev
“This is where people here with economics backgrounds should comment, but my impression is that it is only regulations which can concentrate monopolies into the hands of the few. In a true, or at least justly set-up free market arrangement, the competition can always find ways to compete and makes such concentrations all but impossible.”
Cartelization is another method, although it is illegal. Legal methods of forming a monopoly rely on economics of scale (to form a natural monopoly) or first mover advantage.
The most obvious occurances of these are in power and water utilities (so they tend to be run or regulated by the government) and due to patent law (which consistently runs into less of evils and unitend consequences).
I should note that cartelization and cheating, while generally unstable, can occur and, more worrying, can be innocuous. A good example is store guarentees to match prices- aside from good business sense, it is a method that allows stores that have all agreed to raise prices to protect themselves from cheaters.
markx
“I’ve also observed how free trade agreements usually only favour one party in spite of the theories.
Major hole in that theory? It is based on paired commodities, presumes equal unemployment in both countries, and assumes complete portability of labour! (hence the clowns advocating the idea that trade skills and professional organisations are a barrier to free markets).”
Free trade doesn’t rely on those assumptions- it depends merely on comperative advantage.
Sam says:
April 24, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Sweden gets about half its power from hydro and half from nuclear, with Norway having a similar mix. Netherlands and Denmark have both invested in wind power, but they both have the ability to import electricity from their neighbors. It seems much more likely that local conditions and not mixed economies are responsible for their results.
That is a somewhat inaccurate description. The Scandinavian countries are rather different from each other when it comes to energy. It is true that Sweden has a mix of hydro and nuclear power. Norway, on the other hand, has absolutely no nuclear power but abundant hydro power. Norway is a major oil&gas exporter, unlike Sweden and Denmark.
“You have to really seriously regulate corporations and invest in the public sector. And we need to build public transport systems and light rail and affordable housing along transit lines to lower emissions. The market is not going to step up to this challenge. ”
This is happening in my town as I write this. I live in Kitchener/Waterloo Canada and for the past five or so years we debated a new LRT (light rail transit) transit plan. The initial economic assessment (you know, the actual feasibility, viability and sustainability) done by consultants (who know how to do these things) proved that this plan was a loser. The Regional Government obviously did not like this answer so they dreamed up a new way to make the numbers work called Multiple Account Evaluation (MAE);
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/11/09/peter-shawn-taylor-slapping-lipstick-on-a-money-losing-pig/
So now the numbers work because you make up savings that are dubious at best and down right fraudulent at it’s worst. The Regional Government refused to have a referendum because the prevailing public perception was negative. Governments at all levels have jumped in with other peoples’ money (you know yours and mine) to fund this money losing pig. So now what happens, other cities in Canada see the hay being made here and are jumping in as well;
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/23/light-rail-disease/
You see if the private sector won’t do it then it must be a winner and I (taxpayer) should pay for it. No matter that this LRT will be going from one mall (A end) to another mall (Z end) and I would have to DRIVE 5kms (or take a bus that is there today) to the station so that I could NOT save myself an hour of transit time. And K/W is not a large population spread out over a large area. No density, no sustainable manufacturing or business hub along the LRT route but we do have students (two universities and a college). So I should feel overjoyed that I am saving the planet here in K/W even though my pocketbook is being raped. The answer I get from these econuts are the same as in Field of Dreams, if you build it they will come. So you see Naomi’s words I quoted above is happening in spades where I sit.
Peter Kovachev:
You sound angry at my post. Not sure why–maybe you misunderstood me. Trying to make it plainer, I think politics, on the whole, stinks, whichever flavour it is. There has to be a way in which humanity can proceed without politics, or, if there is politics, of a kind that it is pragmatic and subservient to something higher, like the pursuit of truth and the recognition that we are ignorant of most things.
As I see it, our current problems are a lot to do with the fact that we are divided into camps, each of which is quite sure it possesses the one and only truth. On the contrary, while there may be a degree of truth in most ideologies, they are flawed and partisan, designed mainly to make their adherents feel safe and comfortable. In many cases, this necessitates making those with different viewpoints feel unsafe and uncomfortable. Political conflicts involve generating and/or being the subject of fear, and it is very difficult (albeit not impossible for a few enlightened souls) to be truly free in such circumstances.
The enlightened souls of which I speak are individuals, who think their own thoughts, and insofar as is practically possible, act on them. Where that is not possible, they nonetheless do not succumb to fear. If we had a world full of such individuals, politics in its current form would be redundant. That wouldn’t mean that there wouldn’t or shouldn’t be means of effecting collective action.
I’m saying that most of us are a little bit (and a few a lot) crazy and incapable of envisioning a world without tribalism. Our very concept of freedom is tribal, consisting in our being able to act within circumstances that make us and like-minded others feel safe, be that, for instance, adherence to a free-market economy, or statism. I think there’s something to be said for having elements of both, and in fact can’t think of any country which is or ever has been completely devoted to only the one, though it is true some countries lean more one way than the other on ideological, and sadly not purely pragmatic, grounds.
A third way of some kind is going to emerge because the Ponzi politics all western governments have followed ever since WWII is coming apart. The benefits, horridly watered down to keep the game in play, are not attractive to new punters, the willingness of bankers to fund it is failing as the likelihood of their not being paid back increases. And yet the ‘political elites’ hahaha all over can think of no alternative to promises for votes, knowing perfectly well they can’t fund the new promises. Their business model is finished, bust, redundant. So it will be replaced. They might keep it going for a bit through force in one way or another, but its time is up. Shame that its passing will take your pension, give your kids worthless education, and leave your grandkids footing a huge bill but hey, that’s how it is.
Gunga Din says:
April 24, 2012 at 8:20 pm
and
Michael Larkin says:
April 25, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Gunga, somehow missed your post and Michael, I’ll have to find mine to see why I might have sounded angry, which is rarely personal. In any case, I was enjoying posting and I’ll have to catch up on work, but will be back later.
Michael Larkin,
Took a qiock peek because I don’t want anyone to feel slighted for no good reason. Sorry, wasn’t mad at you or your post, it’s that central European thing about getting worked up over ideas and concepts, forgetting they come from people usually. Bbl.
Mickey Reno says:
April 25, 2012 at 7:08 am
Leftists and communalists always forget the one fact that destroys their entire argument, that taxation to pay for their grand schemes must always come from a healthy, productive, private economy.
_____________
I don’t know who said this first. “A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to their fellow man and is determined to pay that debt using your money.”
Helping someone in need can be very rewarding on many levels. When any government tries to do that through taxes or other methods of coercion, they’ve robbed the individual of the joy of giving and opened the door for those who would rather be a leech than earn a living.
John Marincic says: April 25, 2012 at 11:30 am
“…we debated a new LRT (light rail transit) transit plan. The initial economic assessment (you know, the actual feasibility, viability and sustainability) done by consultants (who know how to do these things) proved that this plan was a loser. The Regional Government obviously did not like this answer so they dreamed up a new way to make the numbers work called Multiple Account Evaluation (MAE)..”
John, one thing my many years in Asia has taught me is when some apparently ludicrous decision making is going on in spite of obvious clear and numerous objections being made, somewhere, someone is making a lot of money.
This has so far proven to be ironclad, both in regard to government and private business. I certainly look at Australia’s governments in a new light now, especially local government, and especially in relation to planning and re-zoning decisions.
Re Free Trade (and for that matter, other ‘established’ theories of economics!)
Krugman – (winner of an ‘Economic Nobel’ for his work on free trade – comparing his 1996 thoughts with his 2007 thoughts….Krugman won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (informally the Nobel Prize in Economics) for his contributions to New Trade Theory):
He puts forward arguments in his 1996 essay championing Free Trade “RICARDO’S DIFFICULT IDEA”. He starts out by saying it is a concept that seems simple and compelling to those who understand it, but then writes many pages explaining why nobody seems to understand it, and why many oppose the idea. His argument:
1. Free trade has an iconic status, so some simply oppose it to appear “daring and unconventional”
2. It is VERY difficult for those without knowledge of the art to understand. “As it is … part of a web of a dense web of linked ideas” He worries that “intellectuals, people who value ideas …somehow find this … idea impossible to grasp”. (Apparently therefore concluding they must be stupid, not for a moment that he may be wrong).
3. He feels those who oppose the concepts of free trade have an aversion to mathematics and mathematical models. He then goes on to refute an argument by Sir James Goldsmith against the validity of free trade ideas by telling us Goldsmith simply did not understand the “pauper labour fallacy”, which Ricardo dealt with “refut(ing) the claim that competition from low-wage countries is necessarily a bad thing” .
Krugeman does not bother to explain that further in the 1996 essay, but in a 2007 essay his own view towards that issue seemed to have changed: “But for American workers the story is much less positive. In fact, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that growing U.S. trade with third world countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade very difficult.”
He concludes
“It’s often claimed that limits on trade benefit only a small number of Americans, while hurting the vast majority. That’s still true of things like the import quota on sugar. But when it comes to manufactured goods, it’s at least arguable that the reverse is true. The highly educated workers who clearly benefit from growing trade with third-world economies are a minority, greatly outnumbered by those who probably lose.
As I said, I’m not a protectionist. For the sake of the world as a whole, I hope that we respond to the trouble with trade not by shutting trade down, but by doing things like strengthening the social safety net. But those who are worried about trade have a point, and deserve some respect.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/opinion/28krugman.html?_r=1&ex=1356584400&en=502cb187aec80250&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&oref=slogin
Michael Larkin says: April 24, 2012 at 8:34 pm
…..If a “third way” ever emerges, I think it will do so spontaneously, despite and not because of right- or left-wing ideologues. It will just emerge and become the de facto reality, in much the same way that the Internet has (and indeed, the Internet may have a role to play).
Michael puts forward an optimistic thought, and I think his “Third Way” does exist:
But unfortunately it is a delicate balancing act somewhere in the middle. If we can make it work it will be because of communication (the Internet!) and transparency.
However, I am a pessimist and think those who would control us will move to curtail the freedom of flow of ideas the internet brings, especially after the imminent and soon to be forever famous ‘Failure of the Great Global Warming Scam’, and FOI laws will gradually disappear or become ineffectual.
The Golden Rule: He who has the gold, rules! (Wizard of Id, Parker and Hart?)
But (as usual) Bob Dylan said it all better:
And the masters make the rules, for the wise men, and the fools.
Regulating the corporations makes it more expensive for them to produce whatever it is they produce. They pass that extra cost on to the consumer in order to preserve their profits. This makes the cost of living go up, having more of a negative effect on poorer people. Isn’t that exactly the opposite of what ‘social activists’ want? They are mad.
There’s little new in the communist playbook, Ms Klein is using any event dissonant to capitalism to further central control of society. One of the best ways to convince society to choose the path you espouse is to take away all other choices. If that tack is too slow, simply eliminate those who oppose your approach. Communists like Ms Klein have chosen anti-capitalism and climate change dogma via CAGW to gain control—never let a controversy go to waste.
Carsten Arnholm, Norway
“That is a somewhat inaccurate description. The Scandinavian countries are rather different from each other when it comes to energy. It is true that Sweden has a mix of hydro and nuclear power. Norway, on the other hand, has absolutely no nuclear power but abundant hydro power. Norway is a major oil&gas exporter, unlike Sweden and Denmark.”
My mistake. I looked at the wikipedia page and mistook energy consumption with energy production. The actual number wiki gives is almost all their power from hydro.
markx on trade
Uh that isn’t a surprise. Net benefit to the country counts GDP gains, what you are complaining about is distribution. Or you could be complaining about the Ricardian paradox which is that long run economic growth depends on productivity gains and the fields that most easily experience productivity gains is manufacturing, so that exporting manufacturing should, in theory, reduce long run growth. Not sure how well that holds up in practice though.
Also why do people keep using the term “third way”? Don’t you guys realize that was one of the labels fascism billed itself as?