Sudha Shenoy
Making use of the runs of these computer models, govt officials have (inter alia) subsidised farmers who grow crops for biofuels; companies that turn out biofuels & the vehicles that use them; & the price of biofuels at the pump. Officials have also ordered their subjects to use such fuels. Thus officials have done their job: they have spent tax revenues under the appropriate head & issued orders to their subjects.
Now, govt officials levy & spend tax revenues. Thus they are always insulated against the actual outcome of their spending & their decrees. The burden falls always on their subjects. Whatever happens, the tax-supported official juggernaut can & does roll on regardless.
Thus the costs of biofuels have fallen on the poorest populations -- mostly in the LDCs. Land & output are being diverted away from food. And the biofuels produced at such unconscionable cost add to greenhouse gases, on net. So objections to biofuels are now being raised from the most impeccable sources: Oxfam; FAO; senior scientists advising the Franco-German Empire (alias the EU); a Green Party (!) councillor from England; a Nobel-Prize-winning chemist; and so on. See the following.
From Der Spiegel (English edition online):
(A.) 16th April 2008 ‘Pressure Grows on EU to Abandon Biofuels’
‘With food prices skyrocketing and faith in biofuels plummeting, many are demanding that the European Union back away from its commitment to eco-fuel. Even the EU's own scientists are sceptical [….]
‘The development charity Oxfam on Tuesday blasted the UK regulation, saying that green fuels have the potential to do much more harm than good. The UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) argues in a paper released on Monday that biofuels negatively affect those in poorer countries. The paper argues that the growing biofuel industry competes directly with food crops for farmland, water and investment money. Food prices increase as a result and biofuels “put at risk access to food by the poorest sectors,” the paper says.
‘And even the European Union's own scientific advisory body has gotten into the act. “I see absolutely no reason to use a lot of energy, money and large swaths of farmland” to produce biofuels, Professor Helmut Haberl, a member of the European Environment Agency's Scientific Committee, told SPIEGEL ONLINE…’ [...]
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(B.) 23 Jan 2008 Critique Mounts against Biofuels
[….] ‘ “The biofuels route is a dead end,” Dr. Andrew Boswell, a Green Party councillor in England and author of a recent study on the harmful effects of biofuels, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “They are going to create great damage to the environment and will also produce dramatic social problems in (tropical countries where many crops for biofuels are grown). There basically isn't any way to make them viable.” ’
‘ “We are causing a climate catastrophe by promoting agro-fuels,” Greenpeace agricultural specialist Alexander Hissting told SPIEGEL ONLINE…. [....]
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(C.) 26 Sept 2007 ‘Biofuels “Emit More Greenhouse Gases than Fossil Fuels” ’
‘A team of researchers led by Nobel-prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen has found that growing and using biofuels emits up to 70 percent more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. They are warning that the cure could end up being worse than the disease.'[....]
Robert Higgs
Along the way, Keynes digressed to discuss why the European governments’ inflation of their money stocks during and after the war portended grave consequences. Although Keynes is not ordinarily cited as a strong anti-inflationist–indeed in important ways, his later views helped to create a well-nigh inevitably inflationary system of government macroeconomic interventionism–I know of no stronger statement against inflation
than the one he expressed on pp. 235-36 of his book. It reads as follows:
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers,’ who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.”
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
Crossposted at The Beacon.
Robert Higgs
The alternative, of course, the modern, sophisticated setup that hardly anybody can imagine doing without, comprises fiat money, legal-tender laws, fractional-reserve banks, a central bank, and a cornucopia of regulations on money, banks, and nearly everything they touch, which is now pretty much everything in existence.
And how cool is that? Why, without this modern monetary regime, we might never have experienced the grandeur of the Great Depression or the thrilling 95 percent shrinkage of the dollar’s purchasing power since the Federal Reserve System’s creation in 1913. We’d have been forced to forgo even the joys of stagflation in the 1970s, because we’d have had no serious inflation to combine with the real stagnation. Christ, Jimmy Carter might never have been elected, and—horror of horrors—we’d have had to endure four more years of newspaper stories about Gerald Ford’s stumbling over his own feet or hitting his head against something.
So, obviously, gold bugs are too old-fashioned for us to abide. Instead, we moderns vastly prefer, in effect, theft bugs, because the inflation that is inherent in the modern politico-monetary (dis)order entails, among other evils, a hidden tax on all those who hold assets denominated in dollars and who fail to anticipate the impending depreciation of the dollar and to rearrange their affairs to compensate for it. Stealing is good, of course, especially if you are a professional thief, as any politician can attest, and being able to pull off a heist without the victim’s even knowing that he’s been fleeced is fabulous, indeed.
As John Maynard Keynes wrote in one of his more insightful moments (The Economic Consequences of the Peace [1919], p. 236), “There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”
Mark Brady
Read the news story. And, if you'd care to read similar stories, get the book.
Sudha Shenoy
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According to a report in the Daily Telegraph [London] 19th April 2008, the iconic
Scots bagpipe as we know it, was only invented in the early 19th century. In other words, it could never have driven Scots into battle over previous centuries, or played laments over deceased Highland chieftains. This, from a new book by “a leading Gaelic historian and expert piper”, which will come out from the National Museums of Scotland.
Apparently we owe the bagpipe we now know, to rich, well-educated Scotsmen living in London from the late 18th century onwards. They founded the Highland Society of London in 1778 to preserve “the martial spirits, language, dress, music and antiquities of the ancient Caledonians”. This Society sponsored bagpipe competitions; the prizes were pipes manufactured by two “well-established pipe makers in Edinburgh” who between them had actually invented the […] instrument.
There is worse to come. This “Gaelic historian”-cum-piper has found that the “set allegedly played at…Waterloo in 1815” is in fact put together “from three or four pipes” and has -- “20th century parts”-- !! Similarly, he is doubtful “about the pipes allegedly played at…Culloden in 1745 and at Flodden in 1513.”
Never study history, unless you are prepared for constant disillusionment….
Aeon J. Skoble
In other "things to commemorate" news, it's Passover. You don't have to be Jewish, or even religous, to find it worth celebrating the liberation of the Jews from slavery, and by extension, the very idea of liberation from slavery and oppression. How nice that, this year at least, these two holidays coincide.
Roderick T. Long
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
Okay, I’m going to give myself a demerit every time I post about Mary Ruwart’s candidacy (starting now – my previous posts don’t count), as an (admittedly feeble) check against the tendency of electoral politics to infect my blogging’s mostly-anti-electoral perspective. But this post is also about me, so I don’t feel too guilty about this one.
Last week I grumped about the omission of Ruwart from Ken Rudin’s story about the LP presidential race. I also dropped a note to Rudin himself – who quotes from my note in his latest piece. So, see, this post was about me, like I said.
Agorist Demerit Count: 1
Roderick T. Long
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
Check out a great Albert Jay Nock piece from 1920, resurrected today on the Mises site. Here’s an excerpt:
The liberal believes that the State is essentially social and is all for improving it by political methods …. Hence, he is interested in politics, takes them seriously, goes at them hopefully, and believes in them as an instrument of social welfare and progress. He is politically minded, with an incurable interest in reform, putting good men in office, independent administrations, and quite frequently in third-party movements. … The radical, on the other hand, believes that the State is fundamentally antisocial and is all for improving it off the face of the earth; not by blowing up officeholders … but by the historical process of strengthening, consolidating and enlightening economic organization. The radical has no substantial interest in politics, and regards all projects of political reform as visionary. He sees, or thinks he sees, quite clearly that the routine of partisan politics is only a more or less elaborate and expensive byplay indulged in for the sake of diverting notice from the primary object of all politics and political government, namely, the economic exploitation of one class by another; and hence all candidates look about alike to him …. The liberal looks with increasing favor upon the socialization of industry …. The radical keeps pointing out that while this is all very well in its way, monopoly values will as inevitably devour socialized industry as they now devour what the liberals call capitalistic industry.
(Note: I don’t necessarily endorse Nock’s particular terminology. If we think about what the central principles of (classical) liberalism originally were, then a radical, in Nock’s sense, is just a consistent liberal. Herbert Spencer and Gustave de Molinari, for example, were surely both liberals and radicals; and the individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker described himself as an “unterrified Jeffersonian democrat” and a “consistent Manchester-man.”)
David T. Beito
I have joined the new blog of Historians Against the War. This blog is a rare opportunity to increase dialogue and debate between leftist and libertarian opponents of the war. Here is my first post.
Please consider making your views heard in the comments section.
Also, consider joining HAW. Membership is free. All you have to do is to sign the statement at the HAW site.Roderick T. Long
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
If anyone’s interested, I’ve just posted the PowerPoint presentations I’ve used for philosophy modules in interdisciplinary sciences-and-humanities courses like Human Odyssey and Ethics of Nanotechnology; several of them have libertarian content.
Keith Halderman
Keeping people from playing the slots is not a proper role for government in a free society. This e-mail represents a very real destructive problem because it reinforces the pernicious idea that people are not responsible for their own behavior. And, that is the underlying philosophy of slavery, blacks were too childlike or worse to be trusted to govern their own lives, you just want to extend the principle to everyone. I strongly suspect that you do not particularly enjoy gambling on the slots, however, I also believe that you do enjoy doing something that carries as much or more potential for harm as does playing slot machines. Therefore, your ban is completely arbitrary. I think that sending your e-mail was an immoral act and I offer Lysander Spooner’s essay Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty to support this opinion.
Mark Brady
I'd have more respect for Obama if he would defend the Reverend Wright, his decision not to wear a flag lapel, and his connections with a one-time member of the Weather Underground. Or is it too much to hope that he would break with"the politics of the past"?
Roderick T. Long
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
Worth a look: Charles Johnsonvs.Tom DiLorenzo on Phillip Magness on Abraham Lincoln on colonisation.
Roderick T. Long
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
Discharge without justification, diagnosis without evidence, billing without shame: your army at work.
Robert Higgs
Once again, we may regret that Keynes’s German was so poor. Otherwise, he might have understood better and taken to heart what Ludwig von Mises wrote in his first book, published in 1912, Theorie des Geldes und der Umlaufsmittel (first English translation, The Theory of Money and Credit, 1934). In that event, the world might have been spared an enormous amount of unnecessary grief.
Or maybe not. We often suppose that but for the words or deeds of a particular “great man,” the course of history would have been different. But where there is one fool, there may be another. Without Keynes, someone else’s very similar ideas might have taken hold with equally unfortunate effect. Besides, ideas--good, bad, and indifferent--are always contending for acceptance and for influence over actions. Those who propound pernicious ideas deserve censure, but those who accept bad ideas must also bear a share of the blame for their evil consequences.
Crossposted at The Beacon.
David T. Beito
In case there is any doubt, here is who Makin supports in the election:
The policy alternatives in the post-housing-bubble world are painfully unpleasant. In my view, the least bad option is for the Federal Reserve to print money to help stabilize housing prices and financial markets. Yes, use reflation to soften the pain for Main Street and Wall Street. If instead we let housing prices fall another 25%-30% – as predicted by the Case-Shiller Home Price Index – it's almost certain that Washington will end up nationalizing the mortgage business.
Roderick T. Long
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
Jeremy Weiland has created expandable SVG versions of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left’s “ALL” logo, and they look great. I’ve added a link to them on the ALL page. Thanks, Jeremy!
Roderick T. Long
[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire]
“Bob Barr ... probably will seek and get the presidential nomination of the Libertarian Party,” opines George Will. (Conical hat tip to Lew Rockwell; italics mine.)
Is Will right about the “getting” part? Will the delegates in Denver really choose as squishy a libertarian as Barr (who, for example, has been saber-rattling over Latin America and favours banning drugs at the state level) over more consistently libertarian candidates like Ruwart or Kubby? I’m inclined to doubt it; I know that the LP has grown less radical over the years, but it’s not my impression that the corruption has progressed that far.
Of course I could be wrong; I’m not as involved with the LP as I used to be, so maybe I’m out of touch. And certainly one could point to the gutting of the platform as evidence of how far the LP has slid. But it’s my impression that the platform-gutting was put through as something of a stealth measure; moreover, the relative radicalism of the last two nominees, Browne and Badnarik, suggests that radicalism still sells in the Party. (Badnarik was less radical than Browne, but still more than Barr, and at least as much as the other major contenders for the nomination that year.) So although I wouldn’t have been surprised at Ron Paul’s getting the LP nomination if he were to seek it, I’m betting against Barr.
Incidentally, a question for my fellow Rothbardians: Ruwart is clearly the most Rothbardian candidate in the race, so why do I detect so little Rothbardian love for her candidacy? All the talk on LRC, for example, is about Paul and Barr; according to Google, nobody on the LRC blog has so much as mentioned her apart from Anthony Gregory. (The question I asked Walter Block at the end of this post still stands.)
Anthony Gregory
Eric Garris adds a critical clarification here, regarding Justin's article, Barr and the war on drugs.
