Because Bush and the pro-ethanol environmentalists are a bunch of fucking idiots.

Comment by UCrawford — May 13, 2008 @ 4:21 pm

Good point Brad. I also never realized it was that intensive. Makes you wonder how protectionist the environmentalists have to be to not even consider using Brazilian sugar to make ethanol.

Comment by trumpetbob15 — May 13, 2008 @ 5:20 pm

trumpetbob,

It’s not the environmentalists who are protectionist…it’s Bush. He’s trying to protect the subsidies he gave the corn farmers by imposing a $0.51 tariff on the Brazilians so his critics can’t claim he’s subsidizing foreign industry (since Brazilian ethanol benefits from the same subsidies). Of course, he’s screwing over the taxpayer at the pump in the process but neither the Republicans nor the Democrats care about that because they think the people are too stupid to notice.

Comment by UCrawford — May 13, 2008 @ 6:30 pm

There might be a positive development here in Australia, since our new Prime Minister took office this year and he is looking into scrapping our very own ethanol subsidies in the coming weeks.

Comment by Jono — May 13, 2008 @ 9:46 pm

both environmentalists and the FedGov are protectionist, in that both are pro-regulation of all types.

free trade agreements are protectionist, irony and all.

Comment by oilnwater — May 14, 2008 @ 10:32 am

trumpetbob & oilnwater,

I view it more as a “Baptist and the Bootlegger” scenario.

The environmentalists aren’t necessarily protectionists, though some assuredly are. They have their own goal (saving the environment), and the protectionists use it as cover to further their own agenda.

It’s standard regulatory behavior. The group which has a high-minded agenda– saving the environment, protecting the children, protecting consumers– pushes for regulation they believe will further their ends. But they don’t understand the end results very well, and the regulation is then influenced by those who can use it to their own benefit: lobbyists for the affected industries. Thus, the regulation often fails to meet its intended goal AND creates economic incentives which reward those with political power while harming those without.

Comment by Brad Warbiany — May 14, 2008 @ 10:46 am

Brad,

Now that I think about it, the Baptist and Bootlegger seems more likely. After all, if environmentalists were true protectionists, they wouldn’t be blocking American drilling. However, they are protectionist in the most extreme sense if we are to believe in their “buy local to save the environment” idea (as this state of Florida website illustrates midway down its list).

Comment by trumpetbob15 — May 14, 2008 @ 11:42 am

trumpetbob,

Agreed. I think many environmentalists have some protectionist leanings, as the “buy local” movement expresses. I wouldn’t call it a central tenet of environmentalism, rather an accident of sloppy thinking.

After all, many environmentalists are in love with organic food, despite the fact that it is claimed to be only 50% as efficient as conventional farming. Thus, it requires double the farmland to feed the same population, and the only way that farmland can be found is to encroach and destroy other habitats.

I would say that most environmentalists see the “buy local” as a goal, not understanding that division of labor and economies of scale can actually make imported/mass-produced goods MORE environmentally friendly, despite the transport cost to the environment.

Comment by Brad Warbiany — May 14, 2008 @ 11:54 am

Brad,

After all, many environmentalists are in love with organic food, despite the fact that it is claimed to be only 50% as efficient as conventional farming. Thus, it requires double the farmland to feed the same population, and the only way that farmland can be found is to encroach and destroy other habitats.

That’s why I call them idiots. I grew up in a farming area, where I actually know people who own and operate farms, so I learned long ago that environmentalists tend to be very uninformed about how things actually work and why “non-organic” farming is important. I suspect that’s why their main constituency appears to be college students…their ideas are most attractive to people who don’t have much real-world experience.

Comment by UCrawford — May 14, 2008 @ 12:24 pm

oilnwater,

free trade agreements are protectionist, irony and all.

Yup…it’s sad how many people don’t understand the basic difference between free-trade and managed trade. People who fail to recognize that distinction annoy me almost as much as people who call government intervention in health care “market-based”. If something is really free trade or market-based, it doesn’t need the government to create it.

Comment by UCrawford — May 14, 2008 @ 12:29 pm

oilnwater,

For someone who doesn’t identify as libertarian, you do seem to embrace some of our most important arguments :)

Comment by UCrawford — May 14, 2008 @ 12:32 pm

UC,

Remember that there’s degrees of freedom of trade vs. protectionism. Yes, there are a lot of screwed up things built into some of those free trade agreements. But does that mean we should scrap them and go back to a less free trade scenario? Managed trade is more free than closed trade.

It’s like saying that the George Bush tax cuts weren’t set up properly, and although they lowered our taxes slightly, they were geared towards “the rich”. And thus, we should repeal the Bush tax cuts. The fact that the cuts were “non-ideal” is one thing, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should be pushing against those cuts, rather we should be pushing for more.

Likewise with trade. Are NAFTA or CAFTA truly free trade agreements? No. But that means we should EXTEND them, not scrap them. Ron Paul’s position (as I understood it) was that we should withdraw from NAFTA/CAFTA and completely renegotiate the agreements, making them truly free or not bothering at all. I don’t know that we’d have luck negotiating an improvement over those agreements from scratch, though (as most governments’ leaders tend to believe misguided mercantilist economic theories). I’d suggest that we simply try to push the envelope every little bit we can to expand those agreements, to extend freedom inch by inch, because each inch is an IMPROVEMENT.

Comment by Brad Warbiany — May 14, 2008 @ 1:33 pm

Brad,

I didn’t say that “free” trade agreements are bad things, because trade after NAFTA is certainly better than trade before it, only that they aren’t better than and shouldn’t be confused with actual free trade.

I simply take umbrage at the extremely common misconception that free trade and market-based solutions don’t occur unless the government creates a plan or signs a treaty for them.

Comment by UCrawford — May 14, 2008 @ 1:38 pm

UC,

In reality, then, my comment wasn’t really directed at you. But we have a lot of protectionists who wear libertarian clothing and fight against NAFTA and CAFTA under the grounds that “they’re not really free trade.”

When pressed, you find that they follow the standard mercantilist belief that we’re being made much poorer through our trade with these countries. Continue pressing, and you’ll get them to go on and on about trade deficits, how “we don’t manufacture anything and we’re just a service economy”, etc. I personally believe that if they had a choice between protectionist tariffs and truly free trade, they’d choose the former.

I’m not saying that applies to you, but it does apply to most WRT the free/managed trade debate.

Comment by Brad Warbiany — May 14, 2008 @ 2:42 pm

Brad,

But we have a lot of protectionists who wear libertarian clothing and fight against NAFTA and CAFTA under the grounds that “they’re not really free trade.”

Nope, I’m not one of those guys. I’m a believer that compromising for incremental freedom is much better than going down in the flames of ideologue futility and martyrdom just to make a point. The goal should always be to accomplish something positive, even if you don’t get everything you want. I just don’t believe in pretending that NAFTA and CAFTA are something they’re not.

And yes, many of the people who oppose NAFTA and CAFTA do so not because they think it doesn’t create enough free trade opportunities but because it creates too many that aren’t of the one-sided variety.

Comment by UCrawford — May 14, 2008 @ 4:35 pm

UCrawford, how about a synopsis of “how things really work”?. Some organic supporters, for instance, my wife and I, are of the opinion that if we don’t start re-adopting sustainable farming methods at some point, our agriculture system will collapse and we will have no food, or food so poor in nutrition that it will be worthless without being pumped full of gov’t-approved chemicals. This is easily verified on many non-looney websites. Topsoil loss and nutritional value of crops are what you’re looking for. Mostly old news since mid-20th century.

Comment by tfr — May 15, 2008 @ 9:30 am

Uhh..I’m not sure I understand how farming more crops on less land is somehow “unsustainable” in a way that organic farming is not.
I have no problem with people who think that organics taste better or who think they are healthier (which is debatable). But to claim that modern farming methods will ultimately lead to ruin and are “unsustainable” in a way that organics are not requires some serious fudging of the numbers.

Comment by Mark — May 15, 2008 @ 10:50 am

tfr,

Topsoil loss and nutritional value of crops are what you’re looking for.

The claim that organic food is more nutritional than “unsustainably produced” food is inconclusive at best, and cynical marketing bullshit at worst.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2000/aug/25/foodanddrink.foodtech

And topsoil loss? I’m guessing that you’re one of those who assume that farmers who don’t eschew all pesticides must be ignorant of basic techniques to prevent erosion.

http://www.ces.purdue.edu/extmedia/AY/AY-228.html

Farmland is an investment…people who mass produce crops are just as mindful of their investment as anyone else. Once they recognize that their yields are decreasing, they take steps to remedy it, same as any other farmer. In fact, they’re probably a bit better about it than organic farmers because they closely track crop yields.

Coincidentally, those “non-sustainable” claims you’re making don’t hold water. Thanks to improved farming techniques, many farmers don’t need the same amounts of land they had before so they’re letting it go back to forest.

http://phe.rockefeller.edu/SAF_Forest/

If you want to farm organically and inefficiently, that’s your own business…but save the crap about how organic farmers are the only ones who’ve got it all figured out. From what I’ve seen the only thing many organic farmers have figured out is how to sucker people into paying more money for pretty much the same food as the non-organic farmers.

Comment by UCrawford — May 15, 2008 @ 12:50 pm

yes, modern agriculture not only ruins topsoil over time, but also produces harvest significantly lesser in nutritional value as well as introduces far too much nitrogen and phosphorous into waterways that produce an imbalance of algae and other unwanted aquatic plant that chokes their ecosystems. these are all flat facts.

that said, i personally won’t ignore the fact that modern agricultural techniques are what produces the yield necessary to feed the Earth’s population. given the world’s energy environment (World Peak Oil being a reality or otherwise), however, modern agriculture will be hitting a brick wall and decentralizing our food chain will eventually be in our nation’s best interests. decentralization and reverting to semi-organic regional farming will be optimal in the future. this will become more and more apparent as fertilizer products get too expensive to produce for any farmer other than corporate/conglomerates.

reverting and re-inventing semi-organic techniques will be a vital component in untangling our complex food supply chains, as well as fighting off genetically engineered corporate self-terminating seeds produced by Monsanto et al. if i sound like a lame hippie by bringing these matters up, just know that i dont care an inordinate amount about the fishies in the brook and such, only about human survival away from the corporate yoke. and then if i seem too anti-corporate, in the case of Monsanto and their engineered terminating seeds this is a legitimate concern as termination genetics does indeed cross-pollinate to other crops and all of this information is quite public and extensive.

learning about the root problems of modern agricultural is one of the subjects touched on in “The Long Emergency,” an excellent book i recommend to anyone. being able to own your own food supply and organizing a food supply chain on a regional basis grants communities enormous power away from corporate and government means of control.

Comment by oilnwater — May 15, 2008 @ 9:07 pm

oilnwater,

modern agriculture not only ruins topsoil over time, but also produces harvest significantly lesser in nutritional value

This is why farmers rotate fields and let them go fallow for a season or plant crops that don’t deplete the soil…to regenerate. That’s a basic of farming and even “corporate” farmers know about it and practice it. “Environmentalists” and organic farmers often like to claim that isn’t the case, despite the fact that you can drive through any rural area of Kansas and see it in practice.

as well as introduces far too much nitrogen and phosphorous into waterways that produce an imbalance of algae and other unwanted aquatic plant that chokes their ecosystems.

I agree with you about fertilizer runoff from farms, it’s a problem. It’s not really an argument against farming technique, though, it’s an argument about common property land usage. As with most pollution problems, farmers dump runoff into rivers because nobody owns the rivers (being considered common property), very rarely are the people tasked with maintaining the rivers (the government) watching, so therefore runoff into streams is “somebody else’s problem”. Find a way to put the advantage (and burden) of ownership for the rivers on the farmer, you’ll eventually find that the pollution problems starts sorting themselves out. Unfortunately, most major environmental groups tend to advocate going in the opposite direction and want to strip away property rights.

They’ve done some stuff with water rights and usage out in western Kansas in regards to a long-running dispute with Colorado over the Arkansas River that may be relevant to the conversation but I’d have to dig into it a bit more to have a conversation about it.

Comment by UCrawford — May 16, 2008 @ 6:37 am

believe me i know quite a bit about said issues as it’s my major. under the Clean Water Act fertilizer runoff is considered a non-point pollution source and therefore unregulated. there are attempts to change the Act in that regard but it’s virtually impossible to regulate non-point agricultural sources and i would never agree with trying it, either.

i speak with ag majors on a regular basis and asked them about what they think and know about modern fertilizer and farm techniques with regard to soil and they tell me that fertlizer binds minerals away from the soil over time which leeches it and makes for both poor soil and lesser nutritional product, albeit very gradually and of course crop rotation and such can mitigate the effects.

as i said, of course i won’t underestimate what modern ag does to reliably feed the world, ever since Norman Borlaug modified wheat to feed twice as many people as it could before. but modern ag has the Achilles’ Heel of oil dependency and the food supply chains that support it are far too complex to remain reliable as procuring energy and raw materials are going to prove to be challenging. personally i’m looking at improving family land and starting a little bit of farming of my own in anticipation of uncertain times. that probably sounds quite a bit too Homestead/whacky Ron Paul mentality to many people, but so be it. food dependency is always one of the most immediate and effective forms of control and most people dont even know how food in the supermarket gets there.

as for the water rights topic i dont know that one specifically but a few years back Kansas private landowners were fighting a govt measure to place water meters on their private water wells and the Paragon Foundation tried to fight it off; dont know the outcome. at least over here we’re blessed with an abundant aquifer. the issue of the “Commons” and the history of legislation accompanying it will definitely become an important and closely watched branch of law.

Comment by oilnwater — May 16, 2008 @ 7:46 am

oilnwater,

that probably sounds quite a bit too Homestead/whacky Ron Paul mentality to many people, but so be it. food dependency is always one of the most immediate and effective forms of control and most people dont even know how food in the supermarket gets there.

That’s not wacky at all…my grandparents had a large garden and grew their own vegetables for many years (it’s where I picked up my love of tomatoes) and I knew quite a few people who weren’t farmers who did the same in the area where I grew up. I suspect that as food prices rise you’ll probably see quite a bit more of that…not so much because of people worrying about energy dependence or supply chain issues (because I think that’s way overblown and most people don’t look that deeply into it) but because it’s cheaper for them to do so and it can become a potentially profitable hobby. Left alone, the market will eventually sort things out on its own so I don’t envision a huge collapse unless we let the government start running things.

There was a really interesting article that I saw a couple of days ago about the proliferation of suburbanites turning their lawns into mini-farms and selling the produce to places like Wal-Mart. Wish I could find a link to the article.

as for the water rights topic i dont know that one specifically but a few years back Kansas private landowners were fighting a govt measure to place water meters on their private water wells and the Paragon Foundation tried to fight it off; dont know the outcome. at least over here we’re blessed with an abundant aquifer. the issue of the “Commons” and the history of legislation accompanying it will definitely become an important and closely watched branch of law.

I think the water meter thing might be related to that. The basic problem that Kansas was having with Colorado stemmed from Colorado diverting too much from the Arkansas River for irrigation and recreation, which left little for Kansas farmers, especially in western Kansas (every once in awhile, the river would actually go dry). The two states were arguing over this for about ten years because they couldn’t find consensus about how ownership of the river should work (i.e. do you have a right to take all you want if it leaves nothing for the next guy?). They came to a consensus about ownership a couple of years ago, but I wasn’t following it closely enough to know the details. Haven’t heard much about it since then so I’m assuming it’s worked out pretty well. Whatever they decided, though, didn’t do anything for the pollution issue because the Arkansas River still gets a lot of runoff. But I suspect there’s a free-market solution in there somewhere if we look at how to approach the ownership situation.

Comment by UCrawford — May 16, 2008 @ 8:29 am

UCrawford,

Erosion? Nope. Farmland, besides being an investment, is a crop-producing organism, for lack of a better term. In nature, plant and animal materials are continually recycled through the soil automatically, providing the building blocks of the next generations. This process has been fine-tuned to high efficiency by millions of generations of living and dying organisms. True enough, we found a way to temporarily speed things up: inject large amounts of chemicals, some of the same chemicals which nature is continually producing with the breakdown of previous generations of biological materials, and disturb the soil in such a way as to deliver all of this to the plants’ roots as fast as possible. However, nature continues to operate - the organic content of the soil continues to decline with the normal ongoing breakdown of organic material, and in fact declines at an increased rate under these conditions of cultivation. If that were all there was to it, perhaps we wouldn’t care - we could supply, chemically, everything the plants need, and the soil would be merely an inorganic means of holding the plants in place. However, organic material in the soil performs other functions than feeding of plants through release of its inherent chemical makeup through breakdown. It holds water and fertilizers, lightens the soil structure, buffers toxins, a host of things that we must provide chemically or otherwise as the soil continues decline. As long as we can continue to cheaply and easily produce chemical or mechanical means of providing everything the plants need, we can maintain an artificial bubble of very high production. How long do you think we will be able to do so? That is how “sustainable” the current method is.

Call me somewhat amazed that you guys, who seem to be long-term thinkers extraordinaire in regards to economics, are so short-sighted elsewhere.

If you want to get into nutrition:
http://www.soilassociation.org/Web/SA/saweb.nsf/9f788a2d1160a9e580256a71002a3d2b/de88ae6e5aa94aed80256abd00378489/FILE/foodqualityreport.pdf
The evidence is admittedly rather meagre but is growing.

oilnwater,
I’ve also been expanding our veggie garden this year, and anticipate more later. Nope, not 100% organic! It’s not clear at this time what’s ahead, but it’s good to be ready.

Comment by tfr — May 16, 2008 @ 9:20 am

tfr,

the organic content of the soil continues to decline with the normal ongoing breakdown of organic material, and in fact declines at an increased rate under these conditions of cultivation.

Most, and usually all, of which is offset by crop and field rotation. And you conveniently ignored the link I sent earlier about farmers allowing their land to go back to forest. If the crop quality and yields were actually irreparably decreasing as a result of land overuse, you’d see more acreage being used as farmland, not less, so farmers could make up for lost productivity. Your position is unsubstantiated and ignores basic realities that should be clearly visible to even the most casual observer. Oilnwater’s discussion of crop problems had merit to it because he was pointing out rising transportation and fuel costs as a negative factor for the agricultural sector, and I agree with him it will probably lead to an increase in home farming. But you’re just bashing farms that mass-produce crops, which smacks more of personal preference on your part rather than an actual problem with what they’re doing.

The evidence is admittedly rather meagre but is growing.

Which is why I call your position “unsubstantiated” and “speculative”. Long-term thinkers don’t tend to demand action over “problems” that haven’t been proven as such…that’s for commodities brokers, psychics, and people prone to overreactive panic (who are usually wrong more than they’re right).

Comment by UCrawford — May 16, 2008 @ 9:43 am

tfr,

P.S. Your link is broken.

Comment by UCrawford — May 16, 2008 @ 9:44 am

And here’s a piece from the Mayo Clinic on organic food…where they note that there is no substantiated difference to the consumer between organic and non-organic, except in the customer’s personal preferences.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/organic-food/NU00255

Comment by UCrawford — May 16, 2008 @ 9:58 am

UCrawford,
I don’t think you read my last post.

Try this:
http://www.soilassociation.org/sa/saweb.nsf/9f788a2d1160a9e580256a71002a3d2b/de88ae6e5aa94aed80256abd00378489

Comment by tfr — May 16, 2008 @ 11:08 am

tfr,

The link in your first post didn’t work. I was able to access your re-posting of it, and it backed what I (and you) have already said about your position…there is no definitive evidence that organic food is any more or less safe for human consumption than non-organic, nor is there evidence of organic food being a better product (merely a more expensive one). Organic v. non-organic is an issue of personal perception and choice at this point…not science. And your claims about farmland depletion are speculative and seem to be contradicted by current farming and land use trends.

http://phe.rockefeller.edu/SAF_Forest/

Comment by UCrawford — May 16, 2008 @ 1:23 pm

i’m all for increased energy independence in the form of drilling our own oil and using alternative energy grids where wind, solar, and tidal systems make sense and can be applied to an economy of scale. no gov funding of that would be necessary if the planning was logical. most people just have a naive idea of energy independence a la “going green” via all forms of economically losing methods e.g. ethanol, hydrogen, and solar/wind planning on an illogical scale vs. the population density to be served. most people simply don’t understand that there is no answer to the Energy Returned Over Energy Invested (EROEI) of petroleum (currently). solar and wind could provide a significantly high EROEI if you factor in time. but these grids can only service a relatively light population density.

it will be an economic incentive to actually drill our own oil once foreign oil finally gets expensive enough and regulation declines sharply.

as for the idiotic argument of “funding alqueda,” to that i say why do we fund pakistan, or dump pallets of cash money on iraq, or directly arm militias in baghdad? why do we extend every courtesy to S.Arabia which harbors some of the most well funded alqueda and the Wahabi sect that spawns rich alqueda? why is our President’s extended family such long standing friends of Saudis? why did the Pentagon contract with BinLaden Construction to build our military’s barracks in Saudi in the 90s? why did our govt fund the entire precursor to alqueda in the 70s and 80s? i’d like to see the country come to grips with these facts, fully accept them, digest them, and learn from them before discussing the inevitable consequences of doing legitimate business.

Comment by oilnwater — May 1, 2008 @ 11:34 pm

tarran–I get the idea that your problem is more with how government is involved in trying to wean us off of Middle Eastern oil, and not the idea of energy independence itself. Would it not be a great thing if we didn’t need oil as an energy source anymore and could tell the Mid East to go screw themselves?

Comment by Ben — May 2, 2008 @ 8:48 am

Ben,

Would it not be a great thing if we didn’t need oil as an energy source anymore and could tell the Mid East to go screw themselves?

The point at which the market determines that oil is less economically viable than some other energy source is the point at which our dependence on foreign oil will disappear…not before. Tarran’s argument, from what I’ve read, isn’t that he has a problem with developing new sources of energy, but that the government is the worst possible tool to make this happen because they invest our money and effort into utter scams like ethanol which is isn’t more energy efficient, isn’t more environmentally-friendly, and isn’t better for us economically. All they’ll tend to do is make us a lot worse off in other areas…like driving up the costs of basic foodstuffs by paying farmers to grow non-food crops for an inefficient energy product.

This government “energy independence” drive is all being done to perpetuate a fear of the Middle East that exceeds the reality of the situation by utilizing “solutions” that won’t actually help us.

Comment by UCrawford — May 2, 2008 @ 9:38 am

oilnwater,

why did the Pentagon contract with BinLaden Construction to build our military’s barracks in Saudi in the 90s?

Because Bin Laden Construction was, and still is, one of the most successful and reputable construction companies in the world, and they’re the preferred contractor of the Saudi government (who we were doing business with). They were the best option to do business with.

A better question would probably be, “Why were we building bases in Saudi Arabia in the first place?”. And the answer to that, of course, is that our government likes getting their oil at below market value (or in government doublespeak, “…keeping our oil supply stable”) by helping prop up scumbag dictators who will reward our generosity with a discount…because low oil and gas prices keep the U.S. voters happy and voting for the incumbent. It’s the same reason Dubya subsidized corn farmers for ethanol crops…because it helped to win him votes.

Comment by UCrawford — May 2, 2008 @ 9:44 am

Tarran:

I ran across this video on the Cato website which bolsters your point. I’ve long been in the “oil independence” camp but both you and Robert Bryce (the author of “Gusher of Lies” and featured guest in the video) have forced me to check my premises on this issue and do further research.

http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=4516

Comment by Stephen Littau — May 2, 2008 @ 4:08 pm

Wow Stephen, I hadn’t seen that video. Thanks!

Ben, we could tell them to go screw themselves now! Let’s say that we told the Saudi king that we would no longer prop up his monarchy what could he do?

He wouldn’t keep his oil off the market; he still has to sell oil to get the money he needs to purchase food from Australia, nice cars from Europe etc.

He would probably announce that he would no longer accept dollars for oil. This would, of course, make U.S. dollars worth a lot less in one fell swoop. This would be disastrous for Americans; U.S. citizens are not permitted to ditch the dollar thanks to legal tender laws and the laws requiring them to pay taxes in dollars. However, this sort of tsunami can happen at any time - the inflationary policies of the Greenspan era have made it almost inevitable.

At this point, though, the monetary policy forced upon the U.S. government in order to fund the Iraqi occupation are pretty destructive too. I think the damage done to the dollar by the U.S. government’s defense of the Saudi monarchy is worse than what would happen if we abandoned the Saudi king to his fate.

Comment by tarran — May 2, 2008 @ 7:13 pm

lolz, SA will always be able to sell their oil, that’s what China is for now.

Comment by oilnwater — May 3, 2008 @ 8:01 am

oilnwater,

I hope you are not loling at my comment “He wouldn’t keep his oil off the market;“, since Saudi Arabia does not sell oil to the U.S. right now. Oil is fungible. If the a producer stops selling his stock, the price goes up. If he merely refuses to sell to a particular customer, on the other hand, that customer will pay a little more for oil from a less picky producer, while the picky producer will have to settle for a little less money the average price, though will remain unchanged..

Comment by tarran — May 3, 2008 @ 10:01 am

wow.

The guy with the pink sunglasses almost sounds like he’s speaking directly against Hayek.

Comment by John V — May 7, 2008 @ 1:56 pm

Thank you for the informative post, I wasn’t aware of this practice by airlines and its pretty interesting that the service they get in El Salvador is superior to that here in the US. Unions have long gone from being a champion of the rights of the working man to being just another mafia-like gang.

Comment by Ben — May 1, 2008 @ 12:39 pm

Do they have the discipline or will to do so?

Is that a rhetorical question?

Comment by Brad Warbiany — April 29, 2008 @ 11:09 pm

Its the punchline!

Comment by underground — April 30, 2008 @ 3:53 am

Brad -

What do you think? ;-)

Comment by Quincy — April 30, 2008 @ 7:17 am

since Washington is still stuck in Keynes mode like it’s been for over 50 years, there can be no “remedy” sincerely given by an administration or Congress. Keynes clearly laid out that government spending was integral to a stable economy and that’s how our central planning has operated since, with a corresponding expansion of the Fed Gov.

what you’re seeing today is something that is actually now almost out of the Federal Reserve’s control, especially since the usual mechanism of T-bill used for both expansionary and contractionary monetary policy is getting close to exhausted. fiscal policy for increased government spending/purchases/tax cuts is not an effective option now either now that our national deficit is at a level where a government response (Bush,Congress)would do little to nothing. our national banking system is virtually non-functional at the moment and more at risk to global forces than ever before, in the form of global commodity demand competition.

the USD reserve currency status is not the same as it used to be, and its decline in global circulation is forcing this nation’s population to actually pay for its own government largesse and regulation. this trend will accelerate. i truly believe this country is going to choose the acceleration of socialism as a route to escape this crisis and that it will happen soon.

Comment by oilnwater — April 30, 2008 @ 9:57 am

olinwater -

Now that you bring it up, I’ve got to absolutely agree with you. In sniping at the big guys, I’d almost forgotten about the mid-level bureaucrats who really run things and who remain from Congress to Congress and President to President.

No matter what the higher-ups do or say, short of axing entire department’s (which ain’t gonna happen), these folks will be running the show. Since Keynesian thinking is the very reason for their livelihood, they won’t give it up. Ever.

(OK, that was a buzz-kill!)

Comment by Quincy — April 30, 2008 @ 12:33 pm

i see that the tendency for organizational self-preservation and expansion as a part of the reason why FedGov will never be given up. but in this current era, a larger part of the reason why we’re trying to keep and/or expand all arms of the FedGov system is that so much of the population is now fully and crucially invested in them: from pensions & retirement structured securities paid to those who work for them, as well as states and cities whose budgets are invested in bonds that are in a current crisis (look at CA). wish i had the numbers to show what govt debt/investment as a % of GDP, but my guess is that it’s far too high to give up without serious political and social pain.

but in exchange for avoiding the serious pain, our country is sacrificing our access to true risk/reward (freedom) as well as innovative potential. this goes hand in hand with socializing both the banking system and the real domestic economy without pause or end. there’s almost nothing that can be done about this process and it’s very painful and sad to see it happening.

Comment by oilnwater — April 30, 2008 @ 1:09 pm

Do they have the discipline or will to do so?

HAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAH

oh man, you kill me…..

Comment by MikeF — April 30, 2008 @ 1:31 pm

that was weird, sorry about that. I closed off the blockquote, not sure where the tanspace came from….

Comment by MikeF — April 30, 2008 @ 1:32 pm

Quincy,

oilnwater’s got it completely right.

This Monday I had to sit through a speech at Rotary given by a bureaucrat working for the state of Kansas on health policy (i.e. socialized medicine). She gave a long speech about hard financial times and how the key to fixing our nation’s “health-care problem” was simply to raise taxes on smokers (who she claimed were leeching up all the resources) and greedy companies (the audience was a group of businessmen, bankers, and people who actually understand free-market economics). Then she tried to gain the audience’s sympathy about how her daughter’s health care was expiring because she was a full-time graduate student and almost 24 so if she didn’t find affordable coverage she might have trouble still going to school. My boss’ face went about 12 shades of purple when he heard that one…I think he was half-reconsidering his ban on me asking our speakers questions when I wondered out loud to him why taxpayers should have to subsidize her master’s degree and why she couldn’t work out a better budget or get a fucking job like billions of people who don’t expect the world to give them a living do.

Of course she loved the idea of more taxes, though…that money insured her office would get more funding. And keep in mind that it was the bureaucrats who gutted Milton Friedman’s proposal for a negative income tax because they saw it as a threat to them. To bureaucrats, the answer will usually be more government.

Comment by UCrawford — April 30, 2008 @ 5:57 pm

Yet another article that shows that libertarians clearly have not developped mentally enough to grasp the concepts of Civilization.

Comment by Jean Naimard — April 24, 2008 @ 11:42 am

Wow, Mr Naimard, what a substantive rebuttal!

So, where did I go wrong?

Was I wrong when I said that there should be freedom of association? Should you be forced to hire skin-heads? Room with neo-nazi’s?

Was I wrong when I said that governments shouldn’t artificially limit the number of doctors in order to keep their wages artificially high?

Or was I wrong when I argue that tax laws that compel people to depend on their employers for medical coverage should be repealed because it harms both the employer and employee?

Or am I being uncivilized when I argue that we should not have laws on the books that are largely unenforceable, are easily evaded by the politically connected, but provide yet another club with which political appointees can harass businesses and organizations that oppose the dominant political party’s political aims?

Where, pray tell, did I go wrong?

Comment by tarran — April 24, 2008 @ 12:01 pm

Yet another article that shows that libertarians clearly have not developped [sic] mentally enough to grasp the concepts of Civilization.

I love it when statists try to insult our intellectual capacity while filling their comments with typos, non-sequiturs and grammatical errors. It’s like having a four-year old tell you he can beat you up. :)

Comment by UCrawford — April 24, 2008 @ 1:50 pm

I will never mock anyone for type-o’s; people in glass houses, you know.

Comment by tarran — April 24, 2008 @ 3:27 pm

Normally it’s a short-sighted strategy…blogs just sort of invite hasty typing, which leads to mistakes (I’ve made more than a few myself). However, people who call other people stupid in a comment that looks like it was written by a guy who slept through high school English class never fail to amuse me :)

Comment by UCrawford — April 24, 2008 @ 6:48 pm

This looks like a privacy issue to me. No one has the right to invade another persons privacy.

Comment by uhm — April 24, 2008 @ 10:38 pm

uhm,

The government shouldn’t have a right to invade your privacy. When you get into private individuals and private employers, however, it’s a much grayer area.

Comment by UCrawford — April 25, 2008 @ 5:31 am

Tarran wrote:

Dr Collins has identified yet another aspect of the complete mess government intervention has made of the medical industry. People cannot afford to pay for their own medical care out of pocket, primarily because state governments unconscionably reduce the number of practicing doctors to a fraction of what would be provided in a free market, and because of federal tax laws encourage people to purchase socialized medical care from their employers, resulting in a form of the tragedy-of-the-commons where people are encouraged to over-consume medical care. We should be condemning the way the U.S. and state governments have cartelized the medical industry; it is this cartelization that causes people fear that without these nondiscrimination policies that they couldn’t afford to have their broken bones treated. Rather than calling for yet another unenforceable law, it would be better for Doctor Collins to lobby for the dismantling of Medicare and Medicaid, the repeal of tax laws that encourage employer funded health coverage, and the numerical caps placed by state licensure boards on the number of students medical schools graduate and the number of doctors who are allowed to practice medicine within each state.

Excellent points. I completely agree. Larger, freer markets are a consumer’s best friend. They always mean the best possible goods and services at the lowest possible prices.

As far as employment…

How many of us have been asked by a prospective employer to pee in a cup? I have always agreed, but known I could decline to offer that information when entering the employment contract if I chose. I can contract with another employer if it’s a deal-breaker for me.

I ask the employer questions about their financial solvency, management principles, and turnover. So far, they always choose to answer my questions as well. They can hire another employee if my questions are too intrusive.

I am not forced to give more information than I choose, nor are they. I am not forced to ignore aspects I uncover about the company that are unfavorable, and they…hmmm. Well that’s probably going to change now, isn’t it?

For me, this is more a question of information privacy, not discrimination.

As far as anti-discrimination laws, I’ve never been a fan of any government intrusion into willing agreements (or disagreement) between private citizens.

Comment by Akston — May 2, 2008 @ 4:32 pm

So you would rather be pure with association than pure with someone taking care of a perfectly capable person with a genetic disease weather they were sick or not. There would be no associations that could care for everyone in that situation, so would it be the impure government who would take care of them or the moral purity of death for those persons.

Comment by VRB — May 7, 2008 @ 4:56 pm

I’m sorry, but I am not certain what “pure with association” and “pure with someone taking care of a perfectly capable person” means.

The points that I am tying to make are:

1) The laws prohibiting discrimination based on certain criteria are immoral.

2) These laws are largely unenforceable.

3) People would be more eager to be tested if the government weren’t making medical care unaffordable.

4) Employers would not care about a person’s predisposition towards genetic illness if it was easier to fire sick people and if they weren’t paying medical insurance premiums for their employees.

I have no problem with people hiring people who are predisposed to suffer from genetic illnesses. I have no problem with people taking care of sick family members, in fact I encourage it. just because I don’t think something should be prohibited does not mean I think it should be mandatory.

Comment by tarran — May 7, 2008 @ 7:41 pm

As always with so called gun control; it’s not about guns, it’s about control.

Comment by Chris — April 17, 2008 @ 1:54 pm

I agree that bans are not workable and I demand the right to carry a gun. I dont agree that lack of legal jobs is the reason somebody is commiting crimes. I came from government housing and 16yr parents and did not get involved. It is a choice and I can tell you there is alot going on and it seems like the thing to do but most of my classmates are dead or in jail. Not to mention alot of my family is too. Its a choice and its not an excuse.

Comment by LBest — April 17, 2008 @ 2:36 pm

Your argument doesn’t exist without assumption #2. Most urban dwellers don’t think of bank robbery as ordinary gun violence. Most people don’t advocate prohibition. It would appear to me, that to you there would never be an illegal gun. No restrictions at all, then I can see why you would think any need to have any laws or government, so why is there an argument.
Go live in that society. My version of love it or leave it.

Comment by VRB — April 17, 2008 @ 9:13 pm

Re: “Go live in that society [one with no restrictions on guns].”

That isn’t much of an argument. It seems “the love it or leave it” approach would be better taken up by those advocating gun control — there are a lot of existing countries with much more restrictive gun laws than the U.S., and those countries must be better places to live, right?

I have never understood the fear that most gun control advocates (I don’t know if this includes you, VRB) have towards guns — guns are simple tools, easy to understand, and very safe when a few simple rules are followed. A car is more complex, requires just as much (or more) skill to operate safely, and is potentially just as lethal. Yet most of us are happy to cruise along at 65mph in the middle of a 4-lane freeway, with little worry about the risks involved, but the thought of a guy in the next lane with a gun underneath his seat is more worrisome than the same guy driving distracted while he talks on his cell phone.

All violence, gun related or not, is a problem that can only be solved by addressing much deeper issues in our society. And I find that I am not very interested in talking about those issues when the gun-grabbers start by portraying guns as some evil scourge upon society that only backwards-thinking barbarians would want.

There are some objective principals behind the “gun culture” in America, such as the desire to defend one’s life and property. These kinds of principals should not be abrogated simply because it might be an expedient way to mitigate the symptons of a larger problem.

Comment by Steve S. — April 18, 2008 @ 1:22 pm

I don’t fear guns.
“There are some objective principals behind the “gun culture” in America, such as the desire to defend one’s life and property.”
Steve S. does this preclude having regulation. I can never figure that out, how it would, unless guns were outlawed. To me have some restriction on how you would buy a gun is not the same as outlawing guns. If one could not buy a case of the same gun for personal use on that day, but purchased one gun, would that not be enough for you to defend your person or property.
OK, maybe two, because you have two hands.

Comment by VRB — April 18, 2008 @ 5:09 pm

Steve S.
I do believe that certain so called law abiding gun buyers dump guns in certain neighborhoods. Gun are too easily assessable to people who aren’t even able to get a drivers license. It is a temptation. It only takes one wrong choice for a person to be murdered or accidentally killed. I think if they had to actually go to the trouble to purchase one legally, that is if they were old enough, that sometime that choice would disappear.
Quite a few of these illegal guns are not purchased by previous felons. But that is a statistic that is floated by people who really don’t have a clue; those that do not know personally people that have been murdered or where murder is almost like a genetic disease in a family. They are not the ones that know the details. The victims don’t deserved to be viewed as “you reap what you sow.”

I didn’t mention “gun culture” but you imply there is another.

Comment by VRB — April 18, 2008 @ 5:32 pm

VRB,

The bottom line for all crime is human intent. For those intent on performing a crime, they *will* acquire the tools deemed necessary to perform the deed.

My supporting data for this are the 1940’s and ’50’s. Not just rifles, pistols and shotguns could be obtained via mail order with nothing more than sufficient funds, but surplus military arms were readily available for nothing more. Yet, violent crime as reported today was very rare.

I can very easily sympathize with your view of ‘reasonable’ regulation. But, there is a question. For anyone who can so easily violate the law of murder, just how effective will a law banning and/or controlling firearms will be?

The CDC gives us a hint.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

Comment by Harry Rossman — April 19, 2008 @ 11:50 am

Regarding firearm regulation:

First of all, most people and organizations advocating for increased firearm regulation do not support the right of individual firearm ownership. A great way to determine real the intent of such people is to look at their position on DC v Parker/Heller – do they recognize an individual’s “right to self-defense”? Or do they believe that any regulation is justified as long it has the possibility (real or imagined) of reducing gun violence?

In fact, most gun-control proponents believe that gun ownership is an antiquated practice that has little place in modern society, and even if not their stated goal, they would generally admit that they would have no problem with the complete elimination of private firearm ownership in America.

This ambivalence (or outright hostility) towards the rights of gun owners is revealed in the proposed regulations. Take the popular one-gun-a-month laws: Why is the quota one-per-month instead of one-per-week? If the goal is to constrain gun-trafficking, where is the data that suggests one quota is better than the other? Or is it possible that the gun-grabbers, who consider all gun ownership to be a luxury, find it completely inconceivable that there is any legitimate reason to even own 12 guns at a time, let alone purchase that many in a year?

So, given all this, I tend to look rather poorly upon any new firearm regulation. This does not preclude regulation entirely, but when the Brady Campaign uses the phrase “sensible gun laws”, I know what they really mean is “whatever the hell they think they can get away with” in terms of restricting or eliminating my right to own firearms.

s.s.

Comment by Steve S. — April 19, 2008 @ 12:47 pm

VRB,

I do believe that certain so called law abiding gun buyers dump guns in certain neighborhoods.

What are you suggesting with this statement. Who do you suspect is ‘dumping’ guns in these neighborhoods?

What, do they drive by and toss them out the window? Do they go out to the ‘burbs and buy expensive guns, then resell them in the bad neighborhoods at a loss? Who’s “dumping”?

Comment by Brad Warbiany — April 19, 2008 @ 4:10 pm

Brad,
If you lived where I have lived, you would know the answer. That scenario is hilarious.

Steve S.
I am not most people or a lawyer. I do think there are more people like me than the ones you mention. Many like me that have practically had murder on there door step.

To Harry Rossman, If we wait for that perfect society, it would have evolved upon too many bodies for my taste. One other thing, a response like yours never spells out just what is your responsibility is. Is it that those people should do something. Do what? What I believe to be done take hands on and not one hand. The individual one at a time is the one that produces change, not the one who pontificate about his personal responsibility. It is aways someone else’s fault and not yours. That’s why I said love it or leave it. America can not exist without effort.

Comment by VRB — April 19, 2008 @ 5:21 pm

Brad,
It just popped in my head what you were saying. I still say that the scenario isn’t what I had in mind; but when I used the word “dump”, I forgot that this word acquired an additional meaning in the last fifty years. I was not using it exactly the same way you were.

Comment by VRB — April 19, 2008 @ 9:26 pm

VRB, For the benefit of our readers who haven’t lived “where you lived”, wherever that may be, what do you mean?

As I see it, there are three scenarios:

1) A guy buys firearms on the legal market and smuggles them into the inner city and sells them at a profit.

2) A guy buys firearms on the legal market and smuggles them into the inner city and sells them at a loss.

3) A guy buys firearms on the legal market and trows them away in the inner city.

In scenario 1), the man is a smuggler, like Joe Kennedy or John Hancock and is a boon to society.

In scenario 2), the man is a charitable smuggler, kind of like a mixture of Joe Kennedy and his gradnson of that same name.

In scenario 3), the man is a litterer, and possibly crazy.

And yes, I don’t believe any weapon should be illegal, as I discuss in my first post at the Liberty Papers.

Comment by tarran — April 21, 2008 @ 8:03 am

To Harry Rossman, If we wait for that perfect society

What perfect society?? My points are the limits of law and personal responsibility to yourself, family and community.

Food for thought question: Assume for the sake of argument that you are an armed police officer in uniform. You walk around a corner straight into a holdup. While the crimininals are busy taking your possessions, how much law is at that exact place and time????

One other thing, a response like yours never spells out just what is your responsibility is.

I do not entirely see what you mean by this. However, the basis of my actions are civics and government 101. All of us must begin with definitions and structures we can initially agree with: if not how to implement them.

it would have evolved upon too many bodies for my taste

Not that I am advocating anything at this point in history, but the question comes to mind: would the American Revolution have been “…too many bodies…”??

Comment by Harry Rossman — April 21, 2008 @ 12:39 pm