Category Archives: Business
Another Kick To Malthus
Huge amounts of freshwater reserves have been found, under the ocean:
Water scarcity has been a favorite topic for the Chicken Littles of the world. Just 18 years ago the vice president of the World Bank was ominously warning that “the wars of the next century will be fought over water.” It’s easy to drum up fears of “water wars” some undetermined time in the future, but studies like this one, and discoveries of new water sources like this one in Kenya, or this one under the Sahara, suggest that these fears that have gripped Malthusians — and that Malthusians have in turn used to push through otherwise unworkable policy recommendations — are a lot less serious.
One less excuse for socialism.
Mark Morano
…took no prisoners on CNN last night in a debate with a couple warm mongers.
Climate And Weather
Judith Curry has a post up on today’s Congressional hearing.
The Price Of Milk
OK, can someone explain to me why prices will double if the farm bill isn’t passed? I always thought that dairy prices were propped up by the government program, not subsidized.
SpaceShipTwo
Will it enter commercial service next year?
Doug Messier is skeptical. So am I, for the same reasons.
The Poison Of Protectionism
Sugar subsidies are a symptom of a much larger problem:
Protectionism is always a reverse–Robin Hood proposition. Farm protections force the poor to pay artificially higher food prices in order to pad profits for millionaire farmers. And the poor never even realize that they’re basically being defrauded by a conspiracy of government officials and their favorite special interests. When properly understood in their true economic light, these farm supports (like the abominable Wright Amendment for American Airlines) are tantamount to government collusion in a criminal price-fixing cartel. Contrary to what is an almost biblical tenet of progressivism, government cannot sanitize a price-fixing cartel. Government power can only make the cartel’s injury to the public far worse, both by protecting the cartel from the competition that would bring it down in a truly free market, and by making the cartel permanent. It is no surprise that the New Deal’s agriculture supports were foisted on the American public as emergency measures, but are still with us today.
They’re very pernicious.
Barack Obama’s Economic Ignorance
His proposals have been and will continue to be disastrous for the economy, and for the middle and working class:
Unfortunately, our visionary President knows little of the unintended consequences of legal intervention, so he continues to push hard on policies that fail. But he accuses everyone who disagrees with him of a form of “collective amnesia.” He caricatures them as believing that “we are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.” Both halves of that sentence grossly mischaracterize the opposition.
He’s the king of straw men.
[Update a while later]
“Income inequality,” the biggest lie of all.
[Early afternoon update]
Government Motors
Remember how we were told that the GM bailout would be paid back to the taxpayer?
Well, we just took a ten-billion-dollar bath. As noted there, we’ll never know what useful things might have been done with that ten billion.
Launch Indemnification
Jim Muncy: Extend it indefinitely.
Also, the moratorium on regulating space-participant safety.
[Update a while later]
Not sure how the link got broken, but it’s fixed now I think.