RobDownSouth
BoycotDivestSanctio
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Green Jobs and a centrally (govt) directed economy
- Thread starter RightField
- Start date
RightField
Literotica Guru
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You REALLY miss the Cold War, don't you.
No, some of my best friends are former Russian and other iron curtain country citizens.
RightField
Literotica Guru
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This is an amusing story of green jobs and the current administration. It gave me a good laugh, but is poignent also.
Feeding The Masses On Unicorn Ribs
Walter Russell Mead - Today.
Besides healing the planet and returning the rising seas to their natural beds, then-Senator Obama promised that his administration would create beautiful green jobs: well paid, stable, abundant jobs, unionized, with full benefits and making the earth healthier and the American people richer. As President, he stayed on message: even after the truther-enabling “green jobs czar” Van Jones left the administration, green jobs have been one of the President’s signature policies for putting the American people back to work.
I’ve posted about this failing strategy before; it’s nice to see (h/t Instapundit) that the New York Times has also figured it out that the administration’s green jobs initiative is an embarrassing mess.
As the paper of record reports,
"Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter…"
The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.
The belief that green jobs would drive a new era of American prosperity was — like the large majority of green policy chat — intellectually incoherent. The goods that drive renewable energy industries, like so much else in this world, are far cheaper to construct in Asia. As the NYT piece describes, SolFocus, a widely-celebrated solar power company based, only has 90 employees at their San Jose headquarters. The solar panels are assembled in China. Whether a product is an ordinary t-shirt or an admirable piece of world saving green technology like a wind turbine has zilch, zero, nada influence on the mind of the manufacturer trying to decide where it should be made.
There are perhaps some green jobs that would be exceptions; we could eliminate all forms of welfare and food stamps and offer the unemployed minimum wage jobs pedaling stationary bicycles hooked up to electric generators, solving our budget, poverty, obesity and energy independence problems all at once — but these are not the jobs either the President or his supporters have in mind.
It’s understandable and even forgivable that a political candidate would talk about green jobs on the hustings, especially when the Democratic Party is divided between job hungry blue collar workers and fastidious greens who break out in hives in the presence of coal. What worries me isn’t that the President’s team advised him to make a few speeches on this subject; if a candidate can’t throw chum to the base now and then what’s the point of having elections? What worries me is that they didn’t understand that making something this bogus a central plank of his actual governing plan on an issue as vital as jobs would have serious costs down the road.
Many liberals want green jobs to exist so badly that they don’t fully grasp how otherworldly and ineffectual this advocacy makes the President look to unemployed meat packers and truck drivers.
Let me put it this way. A GOP candidate might feel a need to please creationist voters and say a few nice things about intelligent design. That is politics as usual; it gins up the base and drive the opposition insane with fury and rage. No harm, really, and no foul.
But if that same politician then proposed to base federal health policy on a hunt for the historical Garden of Eden so that we could replace Medicare by feeding old people on fruit from the Tree of Life, he would have gone from quackery-as-usual to raving incompetence. True, the Tree of Life approach polls well in GOP focus groups: no cuts to Medicare benefits, massive tax savings, no death panels, Biblical values on display. Its only flaw is that there won’t be any magic free fruit that lets us live forever, and sooner or later people will notice that and be unhappy.
Green jobs are the Democratic equivalent of Tree of Life Medicare; they scratch every itch of every important segment of the base and if they actually existed they would be an excellent policy choice. But since they are no more available to solve our jobs problem than the Tree of Life stands ready to make health care affordable, a green jobs policy boils down to a promise to feed the masses on tasty unicorn ribs from the Great Invisible Unicorn Herd that only the greens can see.
Here in particular Senator Obama as he then was would have benefited from a less gushing, more skeptical press. If his first couple of speeches on this topic had been met with the incredulous and even mocking response they deserved, he probably would not have married himself so publicly to so vain and so empty a cause.
The cost is not simply the stimulus funds wasted on “investments” that don’t produce any jobs. It’s not just the opportunity cost as more practical and reasonable job creation agendas were shoved aside to make room for the unicorn hunt. It’s the credibility cost. The President cannot successfully make the case for stimulus so many of his supporters would like him to make when the opposition can cite figures like $2 million a job, or point to jobs shipped overseas and companies shut down. Worse, the failed unicorn barbecue undermines the President’s ability to convince the American people that he knows how to create jobs. Thirty months of poor job numbers while the White House was off chasing unicorns and hyping green jobs as a national strategy means that the administration has forfeited public confidence on the jobs issue. That is no small handicap in times like the present.
The green jobs fiasco is not the only failure sapping the President’s credibility as an economic policy maker. The administration was clearly caught off guard by the weakness in the economy this year, and only belatedly discovered how poorly constructed its stimulus really was. Not even administration spokespersons attempt to defend its housing policy when it comes to topics like mortgage relief.
A quick return to economic growth would put all these concerns in the background, but on the more probable assumption that the economy will still be struggling well into if not all the way through 2012, the White House needs to figure out how to change course — and how to communicate that change of course to a country that has come dangerously close to tuning out the President when he talks about jobs.
Feeding The Masses On Unicorn Ribs
Walter Russell Mead - Today.
Besides healing the planet and returning the rising seas to their natural beds, then-Senator Obama promised that his administration would create beautiful green jobs: well paid, stable, abundant jobs, unionized, with full benefits and making the earth healthier and the American people richer. As President, he stayed on message: even after the truther-enabling “green jobs czar” Van Jones left the administration, green jobs have been one of the President’s signature policies for putting the American people back to work.
- Obama promised to create 5 million green jobs within ten years. Investors’ Business Daily has a list of that plan’s successes so far.
- On his recent jobs tour Obama stopped at a Johnson Controls plant in southern Michigan, which received $300 million in green grants and plans to create a whopping total of 150 jobs, at a cost of $2 million per position.
- Evergreen Solar Inc., which received unknown amounts of green stimulus funds on the hope that it would create “between 90 and 100 jobs” two years ago, filed for bankruptcy this week, $485.6 million in debt. Their Massachusetts plant once employed 800 people; in March it was replaced with a factory in Wuhan, China.
- Green Vehicles, an electric car “maker” in Salinas, California, took $500,000 from the city and almost $200,000 from the state but has failed to produce even one car.
- And as reported earlier on this site, Seattle was one of a handful of cities that received $20 million in federal grants as part of Retrofit Ramp-Up, a program designed to refit houses with more energy efficient materials. Unfortunately, as KOMO4 of Seattle reports, after more than a year “only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program.”
I’ve posted about this failing strategy before; it’s nice to see (h/t Instapundit) that the New York Times has also figured it out that the administration’s green jobs initiative is an embarrassing mess.
As the paper of record reports,
"Federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed, government records show. Two years after it was awarded $186 million in federal stimulus money to weatherize drafty homes, California has spent only a little over half that sum and has so far created the equivalent of just 538 full-time jobs in the last quarter…"
The Economic Development Department in California reports that $59 million in state, federal and private money dedicated to green jobs training and apprenticeship has led to only 719 job placements — the equivalent of an $82,000 subsidy for each one.
The belief that green jobs would drive a new era of American prosperity was — like the large majority of green policy chat — intellectually incoherent. The goods that drive renewable energy industries, like so much else in this world, are far cheaper to construct in Asia. As the NYT piece describes, SolFocus, a widely-celebrated solar power company based, only has 90 employees at their San Jose headquarters. The solar panels are assembled in China. Whether a product is an ordinary t-shirt or an admirable piece of world saving green technology like a wind turbine has zilch, zero, nada influence on the mind of the manufacturer trying to decide where it should be made.
There are perhaps some green jobs that would be exceptions; we could eliminate all forms of welfare and food stamps and offer the unemployed minimum wage jobs pedaling stationary bicycles hooked up to electric generators, solving our budget, poverty, obesity and energy independence problems all at once — but these are not the jobs either the President or his supporters have in mind.
It’s understandable and even forgivable that a political candidate would talk about green jobs on the hustings, especially when the Democratic Party is divided between job hungry blue collar workers and fastidious greens who break out in hives in the presence of coal. What worries me isn’t that the President’s team advised him to make a few speeches on this subject; if a candidate can’t throw chum to the base now and then what’s the point of having elections? What worries me is that they didn’t understand that making something this bogus a central plank of his actual governing plan on an issue as vital as jobs would have serious costs down the road.
Many liberals want green jobs to exist so badly that they don’t fully grasp how otherworldly and ineffectual this advocacy makes the President look to unemployed meat packers and truck drivers.
Let me put it this way. A GOP candidate might feel a need to please creationist voters and say a few nice things about intelligent design. That is politics as usual; it gins up the base and drive the opposition insane with fury and rage. No harm, really, and no foul.
But if that same politician then proposed to base federal health policy on a hunt for the historical Garden of Eden so that we could replace Medicare by feeding old people on fruit from the Tree of Life, he would have gone from quackery-as-usual to raving incompetence. True, the Tree of Life approach polls well in GOP focus groups: no cuts to Medicare benefits, massive tax savings, no death panels, Biblical values on display. Its only flaw is that there won’t be any magic free fruit that lets us live forever, and sooner or later people will notice that and be unhappy.
Green jobs are the Democratic equivalent of Tree of Life Medicare; they scratch every itch of every important segment of the base and if they actually existed they would be an excellent policy choice. But since they are no more available to solve our jobs problem than the Tree of Life stands ready to make health care affordable, a green jobs policy boils down to a promise to feed the masses on tasty unicorn ribs from the Great Invisible Unicorn Herd that only the greens can see.
Here in particular Senator Obama as he then was would have benefited from a less gushing, more skeptical press. If his first couple of speeches on this topic had been met with the incredulous and even mocking response they deserved, he probably would not have married himself so publicly to so vain and so empty a cause.
The cost is not simply the stimulus funds wasted on “investments” that don’t produce any jobs. It’s not just the opportunity cost as more practical and reasonable job creation agendas were shoved aside to make room for the unicorn hunt. It’s the credibility cost. The President cannot successfully make the case for stimulus so many of his supporters would like him to make when the opposition can cite figures like $2 million a job, or point to jobs shipped overseas and companies shut down. Worse, the failed unicorn barbecue undermines the President’s ability to convince the American people that he knows how to create jobs. Thirty months of poor job numbers while the White House was off chasing unicorns and hyping green jobs as a national strategy means that the administration has forfeited public confidence on the jobs issue. That is no small handicap in times like the present.
The green jobs fiasco is not the only failure sapping the President’s credibility as an economic policy maker. The administration was clearly caught off guard by the weakness in the economy this year, and only belatedly discovered how poorly constructed its stimulus really was. Not even administration spokespersons attempt to defend its housing policy when it comes to topics like mortgage relief.
A quick return to economic growth would put all these concerns in the background, but on the more probable assumption that the economy will still be struggling well into if not all the way through 2012, the White House needs to figure out how to change course — and how to communicate that change of course to a country that has come dangerously close to tuning out the President when he talks about jobs.
garbage can
North by Northeast
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- Dec 7, 2005
- Posts
- 57,302
I'd suggest that less than 15% of gov't spending results in the innovations above. And most of that would be military spending.
If you're saying the next great boon is "green", it ain't here yet.
Lets go balls to the wall on developing energy via coal, natural gas, oil and lumber.
Let "green" fall where it may.
JohnnySavage
Literotica Guru
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- Aug 25, 2008
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Well then, you should definitely invest your money in those technologies.
As for me, in the next 10 years I see the roofs of office buildings coated in flexible photovoltaic membranes, with wind generators at the corners. The basements will have fuel cells. Those technologies will be downsized for residential units.
The only question is whether or not they will be made here, or in China.
RightField
Literotica Guru
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- Jun 30, 2003
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I think there needs to be research done in these fields, but it has to be carefully considered and done in a smart way that produces positive results. I think the last "green" stimulus was done in a reckless way that was going to result in disaster because the government created a pot of money and rushed to give it away to anyone who had any idea, crazy or not rather than the more considered approach of soliticing inputs, considering a few and putting relatively small amounts of seed money out hoping that of any 20 seeds, we'd get 3 or 4 good plants that we could then further nurture. Instead they threw out millions up millions at anything that moved hoping that they'd get a giant beanstalk to the sky and find the goose that layed the golden eggs.
In additions to the horror stories told in the article above, there were many of fraud also. It was an irresponsible way to squander some of our precious resources in levels that are almost too great to imagine ($1.6T overrun?). I think this administration is floundering and throwing money at anything that moves in a hope that something good will show up before the next elections. I think Obama is too inexperienced and an ineffective leader and the sharpies in Washington took advantage of him to feather a whole lot of beds.
Someone mentioned DARPA. I like the DARPA approach, they produce results. Why couldn't the money have been funnelled through them with the instructions, be responsible, be smart and get some results that will help the USA.
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RightField
Literotica Guru
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- Jun 30, 2003
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This is another example of the wrong way to do it.
Chevy Volt: Flagship Model Of The Government-Industrial Complex
If you build it, some might come.
President Obama recently reminded General Motors‘ stockholders, all 311 million of us, that he’s calling the shots at America’s largest automaker, when he told an audience in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, that freedom to market was the price for the bailout: “If we are going to help you [GM], then you have also got to change your ways.” And then he stated the ways: electric cars, and isn’t it great that jillions of taxpayer dollars are being thrown at battery manufacturers?
The Coolest Apps For Your Car The Government-Industrial Complex (GIC) is at it again, picking energy technologies. Its track record is atrocious. Highly subsidized solar is in eclipse, as demonstrated by the recent bankruptcy of Evergreen Solar in Massachusetts. Try as it might, it can’t make wind energy a big player, largely because people hate it. And how much money has it lavished on Ethanol? This year we will burn up more corn than we will use as a feedstock, which has (and should have) appalled the world.
Nevermind that no one has figured out how to produce a comfortable electric car at an affordable (non-subsidized) price that has enough range to be practical for the most of us. And so GM’s answer is the Chevrolet Volt, which doesn’t suffer from range limitation because of its internal combustion engine, which works both as a generator and prime mover as the charge in 400 pounds of lithium ion batteries depletes.
Carrying a $41,000 base MSRP and a $7,500 tax break, the Volt is either going to be the biggest bust since the Edsel, or a niche car with very modest sales. It is not, repeat, not the wave of the future. It’s just too impractical for a large number of everyday drivers.
Cynics are springing handstands over the paltry sales of 125 units last month. GM responds that supply was very short because they had to retool the Hamtramck, Michigan Volt-a-drome so that it could amp production up to 5000 per month, with the expectation of 60,000 to be produced next year (15,000 for overseas delivery).
GM cites large numbers on waiting lists, but CNW Marketing Research, an Oregon firm, recently reported a substantial drop in the number of technological “first adopters” and people identified as electric vehicle enthusiasts saying they are in the Volt market.
There is, however, some information out there that may reconcile these claims.
Today, you will find 775 Volts on sale at Cars.com and about 475 at Autotrader. Calls to dealers around the country revealed that most of these are “in transit”, or are demonstrators that will become available for sale in coming weeks or months. Those “in transit” have real serial numbers, so they are probably the first ones to come out of the newly reopened Hamtramck plant.
But — and this is a big but — there does seem to be a fair number of real ones for sale in Texas, where it appears that about 75% of the online ads are for real cars, and in California. These are where the most Volts were shipped to begin with, which means that the market indeed does saturate fairly quickly.
All of this is probably the case because very few people have $45,000 to throw at the car (that’s the average price online), and the Volt only makes financial sense as a commuter car if used for less than about 50 miles per day. That assumes the real battery-only range of the car will average around 35 miles—a figure the EPA uses. Warning: you will get less when it is very cold or hot.
Outside of that electric range, the Volt gets significantly worse gas mileage than a host of cars costing a lot less. Recently, Consumer Reports stated that the average mpg with the internal combustion engine on was a mere 29. Factor in that GM recommends high-test gas, and the effective mileage is down to 27. This will never sell a lot of Volts, especially as mpgs are increasing in conventional vehicles, but that’s the price of lugging around 400 pounds of batteries and multiple electric motors. Put another way, unless it is only used as a short-range commuter, the Volt will never meet the Obama Administration’s fuel economy standard of 54.5mpg in 2025.
Watch the Volt sales figures carefully to see how many Joe Blows are buying, rather than members of the GIC. Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE and the head of Obama’s Economic Advisory Panel, has agreed to purchase 12,000. New York City just committed to 70, and only Obama knows how many are going to be purchased by the rest of the federal government. For what it’s worth, I have yet to see one privately owned Volt on the streets of Northwest Washington, where Priuses are as common as million-dollar homes stuffed with socialists. In fact, the only one that I have seen belongs to Verizon, another active member of the GIC.
The purchase of Volt fleets by cash-strapped cities is a particular outrage. Besides the fact that Volts require 8-ish hours of downtime to charge from a conventional plug, the difference in price between one and a normal Crown Victoria cruiser is much greater than the difference between a Crown Vic and a Cadillac. Any mayor would be pilloried if he bought Caddies, but Volts are apparently OK. Uh, where’s the media on this one?
GM’s CEO Dan Akerson has famously stated that the Volt “could be the future of GM”. Those of us with a stake in GM, and that’s all of us, should hope that the operative word is “could” – and that Akerson’s statement was just political dues required for GIC membership, where the Volt is the flagship.
Chevy Volt: Flagship Model Of The Government-Industrial Complex
If you build it, some might come.
President Obama recently reminded General Motors‘ stockholders, all 311 million of us, that he’s calling the shots at America’s largest automaker, when he told an audience in Cannon Falls, Minnesota, that freedom to market was the price for the bailout: “If we are going to help you [GM], then you have also got to change your ways.” And then he stated the ways: electric cars, and isn’t it great that jillions of taxpayer dollars are being thrown at battery manufacturers?
The Coolest Apps For Your Car The Government-Industrial Complex (GIC) is at it again, picking energy technologies. Its track record is atrocious. Highly subsidized solar is in eclipse, as demonstrated by the recent bankruptcy of Evergreen Solar in Massachusetts. Try as it might, it can’t make wind energy a big player, largely because people hate it. And how much money has it lavished on Ethanol? This year we will burn up more corn than we will use as a feedstock, which has (and should have) appalled the world.
Nevermind that no one has figured out how to produce a comfortable electric car at an affordable (non-subsidized) price that has enough range to be practical for the most of us. And so GM’s answer is the Chevrolet Volt, which doesn’t suffer from range limitation because of its internal combustion engine, which works both as a generator and prime mover as the charge in 400 pounds of lithium ion batteries depletes.
Carrying a $41,000 base MSRP and a $7,500 tax break, the Volt is either going to be the biggest bust since the Edsel, or a niche car with very modest sales. It is not, repeat, not the wave of the future. It’s just too impractical for a large number of everyday drivers.
Cynics are springing handstands over the paltry sales of 125 units last month. GM responds that supply was very short because they had to retool the Hamtramck, Michigan Volt-a-drome so that it could amp production up to 5000 per month, with the expectation of 60,000 to be produced next year (15,000 for overseas delivery).
GM cites large numbers on waiting lists, but CNW Marketing Research, an Oregon firm, recently reported a substantial drop in the number of technological “first adopters” and people identified as electric vehicle enthusiasts saying they are in the Volt market.
There is, however, some information out there that may reconcile these claims.
Today, you will find 775 Volts on sale at Cars.com and about 475 at Autotrader. Calls to dealers around the country revealed that most of these are “in transit”, or are demonstrators that will become available for sale in coming weeks or months. Those “in transit” have real serial numbers, so they are probably the first ones to come out of the newly reopened Hamtramck plant.
But — and this is a big but — there does seem to be a fair number of real ones for sale in Texas, where it appears that about 75% of the online ads are for real cars, and in California. These are where the most Volts were shipped to begin with, which means that the market indeed does saturate fairly quickly.
All of this is probably the case because very few people have $45,000 to throw at the car (that’s the average price online), and the Volt only makes financial sense as a commuter car if used for less than about 50 miles per day. That assumes the real battery-only range of the car will average around 35 miles—a figure the EPA uses. Warning: you will get less when it is very cold or hot.
Outside of that electric range, the Volt gets significantly worse gas mileage than a host of cars costing a lot less. Recently, Consumer Reports stated that the average mpg with the internal combustion engine on was a mere 29. Factor in that GM recommends high-test gas, and the effective mileage is down to 27. This will never sell a lot of Volts, especially as mpgs are increasing in conventional vehicles, but that’s the price of lugging around 400 pounds of batteries and multiple electric motors. Put another way, unless it is only used as a short-range commuter, the Volt will never meet the Obama Administration’s fuel economy standard of 54.5mpg in 2025.
Watch the Volt sales figures carefully to see how many Joe Blows are buying, rather than members of the GIC. Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE and the head of Obama’s Economic Advisory Panel, has agreed to purchase 12,000. New York City just committed to 70, and only Obama knows how many are going to be purchased by the rest of the federal government. For what it’s worth, I have yet to see one privately owned Volt on the streets of Northwest Washington, where Priuses are as common as million-dollar homes stuffed with socialists. In fact, the only one that I have seen belongs to Verizon, another active member of the GIC.
The purchase of Volt fleets by cash-strapped cities is a particular outrage. Besides the fact that Volts require 8-ish hours of downtime to charge from a conventional plug, the difference in price between one and a normal Crown Victoria cruiser is much greater than the difference between a Crown Vic and a Cadillac. Any mayor would be pilloried if he bought Caddies, but Volts are apparently OK. Uh, where’s the media on this one?
GM’s CEO Dan Akerson has famously stated that the Volt “could be the future of GM”. Those of us with a stake in GM, and that’s all of us, should hope that the operative word is “could” – and that Akerson’s statement was just political dues required for GIC membership, where the Volt is the flagship.
This failing scenario reminds me of a story about the explorer who finally succeeded in passage of the Arctic...
...and the matter of gravity.
All Arctic attempters before employed the same forceful theory: the larger the ship, the better to power through the ice; the more cargo stowed, the less worry of inadequate provision.
Success finally came from the opposite adaptive theory: the smallest ship possible to gracefully navigate its way through the ice, instead of unnaturally attempting to overpower it; and the less cargo stowed, the more agile the navigation would be; navigation questions and the less provision issue would be solved by stopping frequently to inquire of the natives and adapt to their way of life in the Arctic.
Gravity cannot be conquered by forceful challenge either: its natural greatness is infinitely too much for man to overcome...
...our only hope is to understand gravity as best we can, then adapt our methods to what it dictates.
Only fools attempt to force their way through the Arctic or against gravity...
...and only fools force a product on a market that wishes it not, going against the natural process of adapting a product to what that market needs.
Of course, if you're a socialist and can gather enough other socialists to support your forceful wishes...
...you can bang your head against reality as long as the money you steal from taxpayers lasts.
It's always easier to disingenuously ask for forgiveness than it is to honestly ask for permission...
]
]
]
...and the matter of gravity.
All Arctic attempters before employed the same forceful theory: the larger the ship, the better to power through the ice; the more cargo stowed, the less worry of inadequate provision.
Success finally came from the opposite adaptive theory: the smallest ship possible to gracefully navigate its way through the ice, instead of unnaturally attempting to overpower it; and the less cargo stowed, the more agile the navigation would be; navigation questions and the less provision issue would be solved by stopping frequently to inquire of the natives and adapt to their way of life in the Arctic.
Gravity cannot be conquered by forceful challenge either: its natural greatness is infinitely too much for man to overcome...
...our only hope is to understand gravity as best we can, then adapt our methods to what it dictates.
Only fools attempt to force their way through the Arctic or against gravity...
...and only fools force a product on a market that wishes it not, going against the natural process of adapting a product to what that market needs.
Of course, if you're a socialist and can gather enough other socialists to support your forceful wishes...
...you can bang your head against reality as long as the money you steal from taxpayers lasts.
It's always easier to disingenuously ask for forgiveness than it is to honestly ask for permission...
]
]
]
Last edited:
fuckwaffle
~Watch the Birdie~
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- Posts
- 1,781
Trump also said we have idiots for leaders. Was Trump wrong?
mercury14
Pragmatic Metaphysician
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fuckwaffle
~Watch the Birdie~
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2009
- Posts
- 1,781
Sorry if my accent got in the way.
Trump also says we should drill, drill, drill anywhere in the US where there is oil. Wrong? Right?
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
- Joined
- May 4, 2009
- Posts
- 45,618
Yes, time and time again, central planning has proven to be the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources. Its track record of success is unblemished which is probably why we keep returning to it and demanding it remake our world into an Eden...
__________________
"The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry."
Ludwig Heinrich Elder von Mises
The more government is asked to do on your behalf, the less it can actually get accomplished.
A_J, the Stupid
__________________
"The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry."
Ludwig Heinrich Elder von Mises
The more government is asked to do on your behalf, the less it can actually get accomplished.
A_J, the Stupid
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
I love GREEN technology cuz I'm a geek at heart and GREEN makes for interesting toys. But I was an engineer many years ago, and GREEN only works when used as a passive means of energy conservation.
Dynamos make dandy flash-lights. Solar-cells charge batteries for overnite lighting or to charge cell-phone batteries.
I plant cold sensitive plants close to the south wall of my home, the wall releases stored heat at night. Trees help control the heat-load of my home; in summer they shade the roof and walls, in winter they expose the roof and walls to the sun. I grow a garden and orchard that use solar energy to produce food. Behind my home I grow oak trees I can use for fuel or whatever. They also feed squirrels I could harvest.
Dynamos make dandy flash-lights. Solar-cells charge batteries for overnite lighting or to charge cell-phone batteries.
I plant cold sensitive plants close to the south wall of my home, the wall releases stored heat at night. Trees help control the heat-load of my home; in summer they shade the roof and walls, in winter they expose the roof and walls to the sun. I grow a garden and orchard that use solar energy to produce food. Behind my home I grow oak trees I can use for fuel or whatever. They also feed squirrels I could harvest.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
On Strike!
- Joined
- May 4, 2009
- Posts
- 45,618
How in the hell did you ever manage to do all that without government direction and resources?
JohnnySavage
Literotica Guru
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- 44,472
How in the hell did you ever manage to do all that without government direction and resources?
Ask him who paid for his education*
*Granted it's a moving target, what with him claiming to have degrees in whatever field is the current subject of discussion.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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Most guys who got shot at in Vietnam and survived used the GI Bill.
It was a contractual benefit used to entice volunteers and to make amends to the draftees.
Now, please grow up. This pro-government kick that you have been on is a bit myopic in nature.
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Nowhere has a Democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders. It is only where responsibility can be learned and practiced in affairs with which most people are familiar, where there is awareness of one's neighbor rather than some theoretical knowledge of the needs of other people which guides action, that the ordinary man can take real part public affair because they concern the world he knows.
FA Hayek
The Road to Serfdom, Chapter 15 p. 234
The more distant and powerful your government, the more likely it is to be dominated and controlled by just a very small group of people.
A_J, the Stupid
"The more communal enterprise extends, the more attention is drawn to the bad business results of nationalized and municipalized undertakings. It is impossible to miss the cause of the difficulty: a child could see where something was lacking. So that it cannot be said that this problem has not been tackled. But the way in which it has been tackled has been deplorably inadequate. Its organic connection with the essential nature of socialist enterprise has been regarded as merely a question of better selection of persons. It has not been realized that even exceptionally gifted men of high character cannot solve the problems created by socialist control of industry."
Ludwig Heinrich Elder von Mises
Obama, you see, is our nemesis. He is a totem, the logical manifestation of a warped media, the reification of some crazy — and arrogant — ideas about redistributive politics, the statist economy, and cultural and social life that permeated American life the last forty years. He is the president with a 1,000 faces that we have all seen at work, on TV, throughout American life, and at some point the odds determined that we had to have a rendezvous with him— perhaps a catharsis to teach us the wages of Keynesian debt, of a social policy contrary to human nature with its equality of result doctrines, of an all-powerful, all-growing unaccountable government, of the now hip ambiguity about past American protocols and history. Obama is the exaggeration of all the dubious ideas that arose since the 1960s — brought to fruition on his watch, delivered by mellifluous cadences by an untouchable persona.
In fact, a Barack Obama was long overdue. Had he not appeared out of nowhere in 2008, we would have surely had to invent him.
Victor Davis Hanson
JohnnySavage
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So the answer is, the government invested in his education.
JohnnySavage
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... and it's not a pro-government kick. It's a smart spending of our resources kick.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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The government also tried to get him killed. You don't see a quid pro quo there?
There is no such thing as smart spending when it comes to government. Government does not make smart decisions, in fact, it is completely incapable of making them because it is made up of politicians who tend to make political decisions, like making sure green money gets spent in their district on things that tend to quickly go broke without more government largess because their ideas and plans are not sound enough to attract investors who will gamble with their own capitol, and here's the problem, in order to spend money saving their "smart" resources, they have to raid the actual smart money, thusly actually inhibiting that which they wish to make true...
Wake up Neo.
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... under the name of the state the citizens taken collectively are considered as a real being, having its own life, its own wealth, independently of the lives and the wealth of the citizens themselves; and then each addresses this fictitious being, some to obtain from it education, others employment, others credit, others food, etc., etc. Now the state can give nothing to the citizens that it has not first taken from them.
Frédéric Bastiat
JohnnySavage
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You would have been a great 19th century European leader. As America was rising on the strength of its natural resources, cheap labor, and government investment in infrastructure, they put their heads in the sand too.
Frisco_Slug_Esq
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Africa is chock full of natural resources.
Has been for a long time.
What they lacked and what we had was Capitalism, a rarity in the affairs of human governance, the idea that we had property rights.
When you take away property rights and begin plundering your fellow man, then liberty and life are sure to be forfeit for property is only acquired by surrendering a portion of your life, and sometimes the voluntary surrender of liberty to an employer, so that when one takes your wealth in the name of "fairness" then they are taking also a measure of your life.
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What class does not solicit the favors of the state? It would seem as if the principle of life resided in it. Aside from the innumerable horde of its own agents, agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, the arts, the theatre, the colonies, and the shipping industry expect everything from it. They want it to clear and irrigate land, to colonize, to teach, and even to amuse. Each begs a bounty, a subsidy, an incentive, and especially the gratuitous gift of certain services, such as education and credit. And why not ask the state for the gratuitous gift of all services? Why not require the state to provide all the citizens with food, drink, clothing, and shelter free of charge?
Frédéric Bastiat
JohnnySavage
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And China is in the process of locking up all of Africa's natural resources.
Africa's (generally) "non-development" is because it hasn't had a form of government that fostered exploitation of its resources, not because it lacked an economic system. The economic system follows the form of government, not the other way around. The USSR is a perfect example of that.
Africa's (generally) "non-development" is because it hasn't had a form of government that fostered exploitation of its resources, not because it lacked an economic system. The economic system follows the form of government, not the other way around. The USSR is a perfect example of that.
