Papa Obama Knows Best

It’s a good thing we have President Obama leading this country. Without his enlightened guidance, ordinary little people such as ourselves would likely wander blindly, unsure of what path our lives should take.

But because we have Obama’s noble example to follow, we all know exactly what we should do.

To start with, school is important. As the president has said, dropping out of high school isn’t just a bad decision because it limits one’s options later in life. If people don’t live up to their maximal educational potential, they’re letting everyone down. And if one doesn’t live up to society’s expectations, how can one ever hope to have a fulfilling life?

Though studying the liberal arts or sciences at a four-year college isn’t for everyone, those who can excel at such pursuits are obligated to do so. An education isn’t just a way to expand one’s horizons and increase one’s earning potential. It’s a way to increase productivity.

Being maximally productive is key not because it allows a person to accumulate wealth that can be spent in the pursuit of happiness but because it benefits the whole community.

If a sharp-witted young woman is capable of success in law school, she possesses the ability to become a civil-rights attorney, a law professor, a legislator, or even president. In all of those positions such a person would be empowered to help those in need. Living as a public servant, she could attain the highest virtue, which is serving one’s fellow human beings.

And we all know that because Obama tells us so.

As he continually stressed during his campaign, the president knows in his heart that we are our brothers and sisters’ keepers. Logically, since we are obligated to provide for our fellow men and women, failing to choose the career that adds the most value to the economy is wrong.

For example, if our hypothetical young woman chooses to become a writer instead of a lawyer, she won’t be able to provide nearly as much practical assistance to her community.

If rather than studying political science and law, such a person were to study creative writing, she’d be unable to become a civil-rights attorney or law professor and far less likely to be in a position to even consider running for elected office. Especially if she never becomes a particularly popular author in her lifetime, such a woman would never produce as much tangible wealth for society through her labors. Perhaps working a simple service job to pay her minimal living expenses, our selfish writer wouldn’t end up paying nearly as much in taxes to her local, state, and federal governments. And without this much-needed tax revenue, those who, like Obama, have done the right thing and chosen to live the ideal life of public servitude won’t be able to help society as much as they could have if our hypothetical young woman had done her duty and worked herself into a higher tax bracket.

One may object that the young woman’s own satisfaction with her life would be greater if she were to live as she sees fit, but that would be missing the point.

The motivation to succeed ought not come merely from the desire to fulfill one’s own dreams. That’s just crass. As Obama has shown us, simply supporting oneself and refraining from harming others is not enough. Each and every one of us also has the moral obligation to serve the interests of humanity at large. And the best way to do that is unquestionably to be as much like the president as possible.

After all, reflecting on history, who is it who has done the world the most good? Is it service-minded politicians like Obama or self-serving writers, inventors, and entrepreneurs who strike out on their own individual paths and live by their own unique standards?

It’s not even a close contest.

(Cross-posted at the Daily Iowan's main site.)

F.H. Buckley On "Libertarian Paternalism"

From Reason:

Reason.tv caught up with F.H. Buckley of George Mason University to discuss his new book, Fair Governance: The Enforcement of Morals, and the appointment of "libertarian paternalist" Cass Sunstein as regulations czar in President Obama's administration.

Can certain rules make us more free? If opt-out rights are great, why not expand them? Are we becoming too risk-averse as a society? Is "libertarian paternalism" a dangerous oxymoron? Watch now for answers.

(http://reason.tv/video/show/711.html)

"Hell And High Water"

Here's an unnerving graphic from Climate Progress (click image to enlarge):

I highly recommend Joseph Romm's new post in which he makes a tight argument for immediate action to mitigate human-caused climate change. As a practical matter, one does not even need to be 100 percent confident that the numbers in this graphic are correct in order to recognize the need for concern about this issue. That's like being comfortable playing Russian roulette because there's only a one-in-six chance that you'll blow your brains out when you pull the trigger. And the "business as usual" option looks to be pretty much equivalent to humanity blowing all our brains out.

Click here for more Podium posts on climate change. Or click on a label at the bottom of any post to see more posts on that topic.



Update:

TreeHugger: "Land Degradation Endangers Quarter of World Population"

Yikes. Add that on to the scenarios laid out in the Romm post linked above and our civilization's fragility really starts to become apparent.

Update II:

Here's an exchange about this article that I had on Facebook with a reader named Shawn.

Shawn:

As a libertarian, what are your thoughts on a cap-and-trade system many have proposed?

Me:

It looks to be a bureaucratic nightmare. I favor taxes aimed directly at emissions. The easiest way to do that is to tax all sales of fossil fuels. We could set up a system that increased those taxes by a set percentage annually while at the same time lowering other taxes so as to avoid any net increase in tax rates.

Shawn:

And offer tax credits/ rebates with the revenue raised? Alternative energy?

Me:

Well, that's one possibility. Or we could just use it to offset income taxes.

Shawn:

I'm no expert, but something obviously needs to be done.

Me:

Indeed. The extent to which most prominent libertarian voices continue to drag their heels in acknowledging the need for action is quite disappointing to me. If we don't recognize the problem and offer our own solutions, then the liberals/progressives will control the debate. And that wouldn't be good for anyone. Especially since the GOP is in almost complete denial about all of this.

Update III:

And David Goodner added:

I would support combining cap and trade with Patton's idea on taxing fossil fuels as well, and also throw in massive subsidies for solar and wind power, an end to subsidies for bio-fuels, and cannabis legalization (so we can stop cutting down trees to make paper).

I also think we need a cultural shift away from mono-cropping and meat. Farmers should only get government subsidies for increasing biodiversity, crop diversification, and lowering livestock while increasing plant production. Animals we breed for slaughter eat more of our farmed vegetables than humans do. Eating plants is more sustainable with less shit.

Global warming is not just industrial emissions, but also de-greening and concrete. Rain forests have to be protected and expanded. The earth basically needs to become a gigantic garden and farm so we can "carbon-sink" as much C02 as possible. We also have to stop creating dead zones in rivers, lakes, and oceans. That means no more plastic and drastic cuts in consumption.

Me:

The biggest problem with subsidies is making sure they are spent effectively. As a general rule, I think it's better for the government to provide disincentives for bad behavior and allow the market to take care of providing incentives for good behavior.

"Obama's Self-Immolating Capitalism"

Will Wilkinson writes:

There are two capitalisms. There is mundane market capitalism and there is political capitalism. Markets regulated by the rule of law and governed by a freely functioning price system are post and beam in the architecture of prosperity. You step into a grocery and there in the freezer are your coveted waffles waiting as if someone knew you were coming for them. But no one is looking after your need for breakfast treats. Each looks after her own needs by looking to the free play of prices and there emerges a rough-but-remarkable convergence of the waffles wanted and the waffles supplied. As the great Adam Smith noted, it seems like magic, but it's not. It's just amazing — in the way the evolution of the eye is amazing.

Continue reading.

Even though I regularly highlight excellent criticisms of Obama's economic policies here on the blog as well on the DIOpinions Twitter account, an increasing number of people who only seem to read the Daily Iowan's main website are asking that I pen a column on these issues. And I suppose I should--even though my field of expertise is not economics. I'll have to think about what specific angle to cover.

Social Security Is Welfare, Not An Investment

Dan Savage writes:

If we let the half of all Americans who want to opt out of Social Security opt out of Social Security, the ones who wind up destitute and starving in their old age won't just go plop their asses down on ice floes and float away. They'll insist on the rest of us bailing their asses out—they'll insist on getting the benefits from the system "opted out" of paying into when they were young and stupid. Every other senior citizen will be a potential insolvent bank. And we don't need anymore of those.

Personally, I'm in favor of the ice-floes strategy. It's not as though the elderly pose much of a physical threat to our society's stability. The retired can't exactly go on strike. Nor can the enfeebled riot. Thus, I just don't see a good reason for the federal government to be involved in subsidizing them at all.

But back in the real world, Savage's point doesn't really do much in the way of defending the current Social Security system. If we're going to have a welfare program for indigent elderly people, then we should just be more honest about it. Each year's payments should come directly out of tax revenues. Forcing prudent people to make bad retirement investments (paying into Social Security) just wastes resources.

Also, I have question for any and all trolls who like to rant in the comments about my supposed liberalism: How many liberals do you know who want to do away with Social Security?

Update:

Commenter jrshipley writes:

The trouble is telling who is and is not prudent. If the measure of success is the rates of indigence and poverty among the elderly, then SS has been a resounding success. I personally may or may not be able to get a better return on the money I pay in, but that never was the point of the system so the complaint seems odd to me. It's always been about reducing the morally shocking conditions of poverty that too many elderly Americans had to endure in the early 20th century, not about maximizing returns for optimally intelligent and prudent investors.

In an case, the dependents:producers ratio is going to increase in the US. The projected shortfalls in SS funds are a symptom of this. My understanding is that though currently insolvent SS can be made solvent by small but politically inconvenient changes: lifting the cap on how much income gets taxed into SS, raising the retirement age, etc. So lets just muster the political courage to fix the system. The poll numbers Savage cites just reflect the misinformation that the system is hopelessly broken. Of course people say they want to opt out when they think it won't be there for them.

IMO the larger problem relating to the impending dependent:producer shift is that per capita health care costs in the US are way out of line with our economic competitors. We need to find a way to bring that way down as the boomers retire. The SS shortfall is peanuts by comparison with the taxing effect on the economy of our current health care system.

My response is as follows:

But Social Security is sold as an investment system. As I said in my post, we should call it what it really is: a welfare system for indigent elderly Americans. And then we should use means testing to stop payments from going to people who don't need them. Ideally, I don't think the federal government should be involved with this at all, but I recognize that the federal-welfare-state genie is probably irreversibly out of the bottle.

Regarding sky-rocketing medical costs, I agree that this is a serious problem. But I'm far from convinced that the federal government is well-equipped to improve the situation by getting even more entangled in the health-care market than it already is. What I do know is that some amount of deregulation could lower costs by allowing people to fix "simple" problems like broken bones or standard bacterial infections without first forcing them to earn graduate degrees in general medicine. A more robust market for basic medical services would facilitate enhanced competition that would increase supply and decrease cost.

Again, if our real concern is people not being able to afford basic health care, then we should just have a welfare program that directly subsidizes the treatment of indigent patients. And, as is the case with Social Security, this is not something I think the federal government should be doing at all. Just about the only national health program I support is the CDC because preventing communicable epidemics is clearly a national security issue. I don't think spending huge amounts of federal money making sure that everyone gets the most advanced treatment possible for their cancer is appropriate.

Meeting Of The Matts, Liberal And Libertarian

(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/18272)

Topics covered:

Chas Freeman post-mortem: was China just a red herring?... Matt W. on which regime Freeman’s in bed with... Pork: the other right meat... Obama’s untransformative undermining of DC school vouchers... Matt Y. defends the Employee Free Choice Act... Should marijuana legalization be decided nationally or locally?...

Drug Prohibition's Role In Mexico's Violence

From the Cato Institute:



Check out Cato's YouTube channel for more videos like this one.

Free Will: Liberaltarianism Showdown

[Ed. note: The embedded video for this diavlog isn't working well. Just click on the link below if it doesn't play.]


(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/18066)

Topics covered:

Jonah to liberaltarians: Stimulus package! WTF?... Will the real left-wing establishment please stand up?... Is liberaltarianism a philosophy or a strategy?... Will’s insidious hyper-liberal agenda... Social conservatives’ excellence in do-gooding, baby-making... Why most political debates are meaningless...

War, Taxation, And Inflation Hinder Growth

From Cafe Hayek:

Robert Higgs -- who explains that the Great Depression was not cured by the New Deal or by World War II -- is featured here in this 30-minute-long video on war, taxation, and inflation:

The Confusion Doctrine

Naomi Klein revealed through her demeanor a solid sense of self-confidence as she took the stage to speak at the IMU on Wednesday. Proving her rhetorical prowess, she skillfully directed her audience’s palpable populist indignation against her carefully chosen target: free-market economics.

But beneath their pseudo-intellectual facade, Klein’s central theses are cynically hollow and propped up primarily by blatant equivocation. However, that makes no difference to her. Her aim in her presentation is not to persuade through logical argument but to mobilize ideological foot soldiers to join her faction in the class struggle she advocates. And at that, she is a master.

Roughly halfway into her talk, I realized it was wrong of me to approach the experience as I would a lecture by a serious scholar who engages in rigorous empirical analysis. It’s far more useful to think of her as a performer in a spectacle, like the matador in a bullfight. However, in this case, the audience also plays the role of the bull.

Just as a matador excites a bull by flapping his red cape, Klein brings her crowds to a slow boil with torrid tales of corruption and malevolence in right-wing governments. In both cases, the feelings are well-deserved. Bulls instinctively attack the matador’s flapping cloth as he uses it to harass them.

And people would have to be devoid of common decency not to be enraged by the wantonly cruel policies of fascist and quasi-fascist regimes whether they be seated in Santiago, Chile, or in Washington, D.C. But the matador tricks the bull, getting it to charge through his cape and into thin air. Likewise, Klein’s fans end up channeling their righteous anger in the wrong direction. In both cases, it’s a bait and switch.

During her presentation at the UI, she focused on three uniquely horrific examples of the Bush administration’s many misdeeds.

In the international realm, she laid out a damning argument regarding the neoconservatives’ bad faith in pushing for the invasion of Iraq and the abysmal job they did in supposedly attempting to reconstruct the Middle Eastern country after deposing its previous leadership. Also, she used New Orleans as a case study in the inability of the Bush administration to even provide effective disaster relief domestically. Finally, she focused in on the ongoing federal government’s bank-bailout programs, which she accurately identified as a massive plutocratic raid on America’s treasury.

There’s really no question that her arguments against neoconservatism are dead-on. But after she’s laid all the groundwork necessary to thoroughly skewer quasi-fascist, corporatist thugs such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, she engages in a quick sleight of hand. Rather than delivering the much-deserved coup de grâce against the craven war criminals whose actions she has spent so much time exposing, Klein suddenly shifts the blame to the ideas of free-market economists. And, just as she intended all along, her audience lunges forward like an angry bull and blames them as well, not seeming to notice that the corporatist crimes she has been using to rile them up are in fact diametrically opposed to actual free-market principles.

But why the act?

Though I can’t read her mind, her goals aren’t too hard to guess. As a left-wing statist ideologue, she isn’t interested in limiting government power. Instead, she just wants to co-opt it for her own purposes. She doesn’t believe that the neoconservatives made such a mess of the world because they attempted unrealistic top-down social engineering. Rather, she just seems to think that they pursued the wrong ends. Thus, she has no interest in taking seriously the idea that state power is inherently dangerous and problematic.

By directly discrediting right-wing statists such as the kleptocrats who ran the Bush administration into the ground and then proceeding to assert that free-market advocates such as libertarians are equally to blame for the current disaster simply because Bush’s cronies made tortured use of some of their ideological jargon, Klein seeks to kill two birds with one stone. And, she seems to presume, succeeding in sufficiently conflating libertarianism with neo-conservatism will leave the masses thinking their only remaining option is her brand of left-wing statism.

But those who truly pay attention can see what she’s up to. So don’t be fooled. She is absolutely correct that corporatism is destroying America, but socialism wouldn’t serve us any better. The real solution is to empower people to determine their own destinies. And the best way to do this is to expand liberty in all aspects of our lives — both social and economic.

***

For a detailed take-down of Klein's work, check out the Cato Institute's response to her fanciful anti-free market claims:

Naomi Klein's popular book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which claims to expose the truth about capitalism, is based on misconstrued statements, a misunderstanding of economic and political philosophies, and a misleading interpretation of economic history, contends a Cato Institute White Paper.

"To make her case, Klein exaggerates the free-market reforms that take place in times of crisis, often by ignoring central events and rewriting chronologies. She confuses libertarianism with corporatism and neoconservatism," writes author Johan Norberg, Cato senior fellow, in "The Klein Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Polemics."

Continue reading.

Still Sick

I still feel like shit. And I'm heavily enough self-medicated that productivity of any kinds is basically impossible. But I'm still making it to the Naomi Klein lecture at 7:30 tonight in the IMU's main ballroom.

And here are some quasi-random videos.

Milton Friedman vs. Naomi Klein (via Jeff Yager):



Utah remains full of anti-gay crazies (via Towleroad):



And, finally, Huck Finn told with lego characters in four minutes (via the YouTube corporate blog):

Event: A Prebuttal Of Naomi Klein

From the UI Advocates of Liberty site:

Speaker: Will Wilkinson
Tuesday, February 17th
7 pm, 1505 Seamans Center

Co-sponsored by Advocates of Liberty and U of I Department of Economics

Naomi Klein will be on campus giving a UI Lecture Committee speech in February where she will be talking about her book "Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism". This book attempts to tie Bush's corporatist big-business economic policies, the Iraq War, and most other bad things to the free market ideas of Milton Friedman. Will Wilkinson will defend "neo-liberal" free markets, defend Friedman against Klein's scurrilous attacks, and reveal the many errors, factual and logical, in Klein's bestseller.

In a lecture one night before Naomi Klein's appearance on campus, Wilkinson will give a talk co-sponsored by the Advocates of Liberty and the UI Department of Economics. Let the fun begin.

Learn more about Wilkinson at his blog.

Pirate Power: Libertarian Internet Activists Stand Tall

Wired reports:

STOCKLHOM – Hours away from their landmark criminal trial in Sweden, the men behind the world’s most notorious BitTorrent site are showing no sign of regret.

Pirate flags flew above a scrapped bus from Stockholm's public transport system. The bus was parked outside the National Museum of Science and Technology as a command center for the Pirate Bureau, a loosely organized network of activist youth. The Pirate Bay was one of their experimental projects, which then grew to become the world's most famous file-sharing site, now run independently.

On Sunday this history of The Pirate Bay was flaunted in front of a large media crowd in a museum auditorium, while children discovered the play-friendly side of technology with their parents outside. The press conference was held the day before the scheduled opening of court proceedings against four individuals involved in running the site.

Continue reading.

These guys remind me of the society Cory Doctorow envisioned in his novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, which is available as a free download. And, given the insanity of the "intellectual property" law the United States has been strong-arming the rest of the world into adopting, I am very much sympathetic to their cause. So fight on valiant pirates, fight on--I believe the future will belong to you.

Capitalism Is More Gay-friendly Than Democracy

I love capitalism. Anyone who disses our economic system while at the same time extolling the virtues of our political system ought to consider the case of gay rights. Businesses are generally happy to cater to gay people because we're a great target demographic for many specialized services. Most business people thus leave any prejudices they might have against gays at home and do what they can to get money from us at their workplaces. Democracy, on the other hand, has delivered the gay rights movement numerous defeats in jurisdictions throughout the United States.

Given that my sexual orientation is listed on my Facebook profile, that company targets ads at me based on the fact that I'm gay. Here are two examples:

Only if you are gay

If you are gay and proud of who you are, we would love you to join our new social network gays.com. Check it out now - it is free!

Win A Massachusetts Trip

Enter for a chance to win a trip to the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. It's all here for everyone.

In addition to ads that target gays as a unique demographic, there are others that simply offer a gay twist on otherwise mainstream phenomena:

Find Your Perfect Partner

Join today! myPartner.com is offering new members until Valentine's Day a free 3 month membership ($89.95 value) with coupon code: LW4N

Intimate Gifts for Him

Save on sexy gifts for him at our huge Valentine's sale.Hundreds of items on sale: All your favorite new underwear and swimwear styles.

The message these ads send: Hey, gays, you don't want to be alone on Valentine's Day either, do you? No, you don't! So use our site to meet a partner. And then check out this other site where you can buy your new boyfriend some sexy underwear for the special night! We don't care in the least what you guys do after that underwear comes off, we just want you to buy that underwear from us.

But there are also some ads that simultaneously irritate and amuse me--especially those hyping gay cruises:

All-Gay Mexico Cruise

Discover Mexico's best beaches with RSVP on our biggest gay cruise of the year. Non-stop fun from just $799!

Atlantis Cruise From $999

Atlantis presents the world's largest all-gay cruise. Sailing from Miami January 25. Now from just $999!

Urgh. As much fun as hanging out with a bunch of other gay guys at a bar once in a while can be, an all-gay cruise would likely drive me insane. For the most part, I prefer to spend my free time around people with whom I have more in common than sexual orientation. Sure, it's almost certainly ridiculously easy to get laid on such a trip, but engaging in that sort of behavior is also a great way to catch a nasty disease or three.

However, if people really want to go on such cruises (and, given the ads, some must), more power to them. And regardless of how the executives managing the corporations that run these gay cruises feel about the activities that go on during such ventures, they really don't mind as long as they get their money. Unsurprisingly, the thought of a boat loaded with gay men butt-fucking each other with wild abandon for days on end becomes a lot less troubling to the average American businessman when the money those men give him for the use of his ship pays his mortgage and puts his kids through college.

Whereas democracy is a zero-sum game in which those who win elections generally advance their favored policies at the expense of those who lose, capitalism is not zero sum. The gay cruise ships' owners, workers, and passengers all benefit from these specialized cruises. The owners and workers use the resources at their disposal to earn a living while the passengers spend the money they've earned elsewhere in order to have enjoyable vacations. It doesn't really matter how anyone feels about gay rights. Rather, everyone involved works together for common benefit without worrying about other people's personal lives. That's a truly beautiful thing--and it's a major reason why I am a libertarian. Politics isn't half as noble a pursuit as business.

Questioning Obama's Economic Claims

From the Cato @ Liberty blog:

On economics, the president made claims such as “I can tell you with complete confidence that a failure to act will only deepen this crisis.” Yet how can he have “complete confidence” when the economics profession is divided on the stimulus issue, and when we have seen policymakers and top economists making continual mistakes with their policies and predictions over the last year?

On economists, the president opined “although there are some politicians who are arguing that we don’t need a stimulus, there are very few economists who are making that argument.” Mr. President, please look at the Cato list of more than 300 university economists who oppose a big stimulus spending bill. Please have your advisers call these experts to get an independent outside-the-beltway view.

Continue reading.

Though I agree with the new president on many issues, I remain highly skeptical of his economic policies--particularly because his statements on his proposed stimulus plan are so lacking in nuance and, frankly, honesty. Thus, I'm glad that organizations like Cato are out there to keep me informed about the other side in these debates.

Perhaps the best thing about these libertarian writers is that they were equally critical of Bush's economic liberalism. Unlike most members of Congress, these guys aren't just a bunch of partisan hacks. They actually offer principled reasons for opposing Obama's economic plan. Most Republicans are in no position to do so because of their complicity in Bush's wild spending over the last eight years.

Ron Paul is, refreshingly, a notable exception:



If only Paul (minus his disappointing coziness with some disgusting bigots) and Obama (minus his willingness to claim false certainty on complex economic issues) really represented the true nature of their parties. A choice between these two would at least leave us with decent stances on civil liberties regardless of who won. But the rank and file office holders in both parties are far worse than either of these mostly respectable men. At some point, we have to find a way to fix our absurdly corrupt party system.

Toward A Fractal Globalization?

Read John Robb's blog entry "DESIGN GLOBALLY, PRODUCE LOCALLY." It concludes as follows:

While this approach won't become common accepted for another decade, it will eventually happen. In fact, my personal experience building and running companies shows that it is ALREADY possible to use the design globally and produce locally model to great success.

For example, while I was the CTO of a start-up a couple years back, my team built a decentralized manufacturing system that produced products from digital designs that used a standard format. To make this possible, we virtually grafted our centrally controlled production process onto small manufacturing lines at companies (usually small companies with <$5m in revenue) located in thirty different countries to ensure precise quality control and rapid runs. This allowed our customers maximal design flexibility, since the design work was done centrally through a flexible Web site, without regard to the location of the actual physical production.

The result: as companies adopted our system, their production runs got much shorter. There was little waste (no over production or excess inventory that needed to be stored in a warehouse). Designs were updated frequently (more customization and more precise reflection of current needs) since large production runs weren't required. Transportation costs dropped to a small fraction of previous costs since the point of delivery was local rather than global. There was also a corresponding drop in time needed to deliver the product. In effect, we saw STEMI (space, time, energy, mass, and information) compression across the board that added up to a plethora of benefits for our customers.

This could result in a radically decentralized political system. And that certainly seems like a good idea to me, both in terms of resiliency and in the possibility of freedom from many hierarchical social dynamics.

A Humbler Stimulus?

(http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/17578)

Topics covered:

Are shovel-ready projects just unworthy projects?... Megan accuses stimulus advocates of dangerous overconfidence... The libertarian stimulus package... Megan to Paul Krugman: Put up or shut up!... Is America heading for junk-bond status?... Brian wonders where the serious GOP counterproposals are...

Stimulis: Reason.tv Mocks The Stimulus

Libertarian Science

Jeff Yager writes:

The Google Gang is at it again. Yesterday, they, along with the X Prize Foundation and NASA, have announced plans to form the coolest sounding university ever, the Singularity University.

...

What exactly does that mean? Basically, the aim is to perfect how scientists go about doing science. Not the actual scientific method, but instead how scientific research is funded and how it is shared with the world. How exactly should this interest the liberty-minded person? Well, for that, you need to go back to one of the founders of this new university, The X Prize Foundation. You probably heard about them first a few years ago when they offered a $10 million prize to the first private team to build and launch a spacecraft into orbit. It was a smashing success, as the SpaceShipOne team claimed the prize on Oct. 4, 2004. Since then, the X Prize Foundation has created several different prizes to conquer the next great challenges of science and engineering. The next most notable prize is the Google Lunar Prize.

...

By offering these prizes, a radical new approach to the way science and engineering project is being explored. Right now, research priorities are largely set by the governmental funding agencies. Besides government research priorities, the incentive to do research is generally to discover something new, and then be able to patent that product. Take the pharmaceutical industry, for example. If they discover a new drug and they patent it, they have a legal monopoly on that drug that can be worth large sums of profit. They get these profits, because governments keep other competitors from reproducing similar products based on the science the researching company discovered. Without these legal protections, there may be little incentive to pour vast amounts of money into research and development. However, what if the incentive was a prize instead of a legal monopoly?

Continue reading.

Is Revamping The Power Grid Necessary?

Reason asks:

What's So Smart About Investing in the Smart Grid?

Smart grid technology is all the rage. General Electric just paid $2.4 million for a Superbowl ad featuring an animated scarecrow singing "If I Only Had a Brain" to promote its smart grid initiatives. IBM, meanwhile, is running full page "Smarter power for a smarter planet" ads in major newspapers like the New York Times. These corporations are in perfect sync with the new administration in Washington.

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama promised to retrofit America by "updating the way we get our electricity, by starting to build a new smart grid that will save us money, protect our power sources from blackout or attack, and deliver clean, alternative forms of energy to every corner of our nation." To that end, the House version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act authorizes the Department of Energy to spend $4.5 billion dollars to stimulate the deployment of smart grid technologies.

Continue reading.

Ultimately, the article concludes:

In 2004, the Electric Power Research Institute calculated that it would cost $165 billion over the next 20 years—about $8 billion per year—to build out the smart grid. And one of the first challenges is mobilizing sufficient investment. But that problem won't be solved by throwing $4.5 billion at the electric grid as a sop to the environmental lobby—even if it does stimulate the bottom lines of favored corporations.

I agree completely. But due to my deep concern about climate change issues, which comes largely from reading the always informative Climate Progress and RealClimate blogs, I reach the opposite conclusion. We should drop enough non-green infrastructure from the bill to allow the $8 billion per year funding required to update our power grid.

The Reason article makes clear that there are plenty of collective action problems, perverse incentives, etc. at work here that prevent the market from facilitating developments that could help the United States cut back on its CO2 emissions. And the externalities associated with climate change are yet another massive market failure. I'm all for allowing the market to solve any problem it can, but this is an extremely clear case of it not being able to solve a problem. Thus, the government has to intervene. That's a major part of what the government is for.