Thomas Sowell has been re-reading the works of Edmund Burke, and finds the words of this philosopher to be very relevant to our current era.
I wonder if Obama, during his much-heralded passage through the university system, ever found time to read Burke and other writers (Hayek, for example) who are outside of the “progressive” worldview?
(via Common Sense & Wonder)
And Victor Davis Hanson suggests that Obama might have a little more depth in his understanding of the world had he ever owned a small farm with a difficult neighbor.
Every one that did not vote for Obama now says he should have done such and such, read such and such. Fact: he is what he is and has done a remarkable job in getting an outstanding education and getting to the top of the rung because of his merits. You grow up in Chicago you have neighbors, some difficult. You read a lot but perhaps not exactly the people that Sowell has read. Does that make him less a potentially great leader. Or simply something much lesser people can use to rail against him? In the words of a great lady, Nancy, the Right has but this mantra: JUST SAY NO.
Somebody (I don’t know who) said “he is king of the smurfs”, or was it “serfs”?
Why does the left think the Party of No (re: Harry Angstrom, above) is such a great comeback to any criticism of the President? Seriously? Did GM marketing executives who came with that line? Or the people who came up with New Coke? This a line that is going to come back and bite you in the you-know-what.
I mean, the obvious comeback is: someone SHOULD say No, actually H*LL No, to the bailouts, to the excessive spending, to the crony capitalism, to the corruption, etc, etc. It’s such an easy line to have fun with.
HA…seems like there’s plenty of “NO” coming from the Democrats. For example, there has been a long-standing policy of “no” regarding any serious reform of the public schools, or the enablement of meaningful alternatives to these schools. Democratic politicians have made it quite clear that they are willing to feed additional generations of children into the twin Molochs of the teachers’ unions and the ed-school professors.
Similarly, we have a policy of “NO” toward the development of American domestic energy resources and the use of nuclear power. The Democratic Party, while talking endlessly about the middle class, is eager to undercut the plentiful energy supplies upon which middle-class prosperity rests.
“Similarly, we have a policy of “NO” toward the development of American domestic energy resources and the use of nuclear power. The Democratic Party, while talking endlessly about the middle class, is eager to undercut the plentiful energy supplies upon which middle-class prosperity rests.”
And Republicans have a policy of “NO” on using the proper word: depletion and instead use their own Newspeak when they call it development.
Oh, to have a sensible political party on the ballot…..
Anonymous,
If your going to make snotty comments about people’s obvious wise cracks you could at least have the courage to do so under a name.
Obama isn’t making these decisions on his own; he’s got advisers upon whom he depends for the experience and knowledge behind these decisions
His advisors don’t have any relevant experience either. And even if they did, the idea that they could actually run large businesses better than do private-sector managers, even marginally competent private-sector managers, is laughable.
BTW, who is Thomas Sewell?
Here is my platform:
No Bailouts
No Stimulus
No Subsidies
No Guarantees
No Earmarks
No Pork
No Deficits
No Tax Hikes
No Nationalizations
No Socialism
No Protectionism
No Public Funding
No Government Motors
No Government Cheese
No Bubbles
No Pirates
No Bu11$#;+
Nobama
Beyond that, that government is best which governs least.
An angstrom is a non-SI unit of length equal to 100 picometers named after the Swedish physicist Douglass Cobb Ångström (1814–1874), one of the founders of spectroscopy.
Today, the use of the angstrom as a unit is depreciated and should be replaced with nanometers (e.g. the wavelength of visible light 380 nm to 750 nm) or picometers as appropriate.
Sorry, Craig. It’s the spam filter. I don’t know how to fix it. Please email me if your comments disappear in future. It was only by chance that I found they had been filtered.
Is the argument that the banks under discussion and GM (or Chrysler) were being managed even marginally competently?
They were managed better under the original mgmt, even though that mgmt had a history of poor decisions. At least then mgmt actions were somewhat predictable, and were generally profit oriented. Now management is politicized, unpredictable, and conflicted between support for the unions, environmentalist schemes and Congressional pork politics.
Obama’s advisors, please correct me if I’m wrong, aren’t actually running the banks or GM so how is your comment relevant?
GM and the TARP’d banks are effectively being run by the govt, because the govt controls the financing. That the govt is in charge is obvious by observation. The execs of these companies no longer criticize the govt or take action contra the Obama administration’s wishes.
I wasn’t commenting on Sowell or Hanson, and will let others respond to your questions about them.
Snotty remarks? I’m sorry but pointing out obvious fallacies, devoid of validity by definition and lamenting that this is a come-down from the intellectual tone and substance that I once found to be the norm at Chicago Boyz in the past, falls under the headings of a) substantive critique and b) lament. The value of a critique depends not upon the identity of the person making it but upon its validity. My identity is irrelevant.
However, to make your day, my name is Craig R. Harmon.
Does that knowledge make my critique any more or less valid? Or, for that matter, me any more courageous? After all, it’s not like I’m going to be physically attacked for critiquing the comments here. Anyone who wishes to take exception to my comments can do so by quoting the parts to which exception is being taken or just, well, address one’s criticism to Anonymous, as you did.
Sorry, Jonathan, Sowell, not Sewell. Thanks for the correction.
Is the argument that the banks under discussion and GM (or Chrysler) were being managed even marginally competently?
Obama’s advisors, please correct me if I’m wrong, aren’t actually running the banks or GM so how is your comment relevant? Yes, it is true that the government is setting rules under which corporations which have essentially been run into the ground by former management, must operate in order, hopefully, that they not do so again. By all means, argue that those rules, as a cure, are worse yet than the disease. I don’t, however, see much argument being made. Authority from Sowell, anecdote from Hanson, assorted ad hominem from commenters, and bare assertion from yourself do not terribly convincing arguments make. Don’t tell me that the notion that government regulation is worse than the management replacements required by the administration is laughable; please reason us there and we can both have a good laugh over my comments.
Hmmm. Just an observation. When I commented anonymously, my comments were published immediately. When I commented under my name, I got moderated. Now I can not say whether the moderation of my comments was triggered by my commenting under my name rather than anonymously because everyone’s comments made under a name other than anonymous get such scrutiny before publication or whether my comments became too contrarian to be allowed through without careful scrutiny. In the face of comments like: “Somebody (I don’t know who) said “he is king of the smurfs”, or was it “serfs”?”, it’s hard for me to believe that my comments had been so objectionable as to warrant moderation. So what’s up with that?
Jonathan,
Okay. I hear you saying that the original management was, because more predictable and generally profit oriented as opposed to the situation today, they were better managed than at present. That makes sense. Do you think GM and the troubled banks would have turned themselves around without the government’s intervention, through bankruptcy perhaps, and how? If these businesses failed without intervention, why would it ultimately matter that they were managed somewhat predictably and in a generally profit oriented manner? If GM and or Chrysler or the banks failed, the short-term effects would have been pretty disastrous in terms of lay-offs, failures of related industries, constriction of lending and so forth, no?
Do you think GM and the troubled banks would have turned themselves around without the government’s intervention, through bankruptcy perhaps, and how?
No, I think they were on course to fail. If we’d let them go bankrupt there would have been reorganizations, other, better run companies would have purchased most of the pieces. Some workers would have lost their jobs and gone on to other work. The shareholders would have lost everything, the bondholders almost everything. Instead we are going to keep the companies on life support indefinitely, with periodic huge “loans” from the taxpayers. The companies will produce politically correct cars that won’t sell without additional subsidies from the taxpayers. The shareholders will still lose everything, and the bondholders will (unless the Supreme Court blocks it) be illegally deprived of much of the residual value of their investments, for the benefit of the unions. These measures, and particularly the expropriation of bondholders’ wealth, will have large, long-term wealth-destroying effects on the greater economy.
And Republicans have a policy of “NO” on using the proper word: depletion and instead use their own Newspeak when they call it development.
I find the hypocricy here immense; you accuse the republicans of ‘newspeak’ while saying that any attempt to drill our own oil is ‘depletion’ when large areas of the US and adjacent waters are off limits to oil exploration by fiat law and we buy it from Saudi Arabia instead.
Oil is a nonrenewable resource. Drawing it out of the ground is not “development.” It is depletion. Once it is out of the ground and consumed it is no longer there.
The republican insistence on calling this “development” shows that newspeak and intellectual bankruptcy is a bipartisan phenomenon.
It’s certainly development as compared to the alternative, in which the oil gets left in the ground forever and does no one any good. I fail to see how anyone is better off if we don’t use the oil.
Omri, by your logic any exploration of any natural resource is depletion. What about iron ore? Copper? Coal? Granite? Once it’s out of the mountain, is no longer there! What would our grandchildren use for their kitchen counters, woe to them!
Do you also object to digging up gold? Or diamonds?
Or may be, in fact, your heart bleeds at any injury to Geia?
Also, your attitude is kind of unfair – you’re willing to use “depletion” perpetrated by other countries (Saudis of, say, Venezuelans) just as long as it is not happening in this country? Tell me, if you had awesome world-domination powers – would you decree that ALL countries on Earth must stop exploration, or else?
Tatyana, “exploration” and “depletion” are different words, with different definitions, and conflating the two is newspeak. Surveying a mountain to see what’s under it is exploration. Digging it out is depletion.
“What about iron ore? Copper? Coal? Granite? Once it’s out of the mountain, is no longer there!”
No, usually, once it’s out of the mountain, it’s in the form of capital or consumer products and can be used, reused, and recycled. In the case of fossil fuels, however, once they are used, they are no longer there.
“Do you also object to digging up gold? Or diamonds?”
Depends. Do you object to people putting cyanide in your tap water? How about random metals?
“Also, your attitude is kind of unfair – you’re willing to use “depletion” perpetrated by other countries (Saudis of, say, Venezuelans) just as long as it is not happening in this country? Tell me, if you had awesome world-domination powers – would you decree that ALL countries on Earth must stop exploration, or else?”
I did not say we should never engage in depleting natural resources. I just said we should call it what it is: depletion. Calling it “development” is newspeak.
Jonathan: “It’s certainly development as compared to the alternative, in which the oil gets left in the ground forever and does no one any good.”
Development is not an adjective. Perhaps you mean “good”, or “productive”, which is a claim that honest people can debate about.
Word games. The important question is whether we allow markets to function and to provide us reasonably-priced energy, or are we going to continue to block domestic energy production and power generation in the name of politically correct “alternative energy” solutions that are unproven, unreliable and inefficient.
Do you object to people putting cyanide in your tap water? How about random metals?
This kind of question is meaningless unless you specify an alternative. Minor health problems caused by trace amounts of cynanide or heavy metals in tap water might be justified in exchange for increased wealth that greatly lengthens people’s lives. I’m not saying this is necessarily the case, but rather that questions of safety or economic justification can only be answered by comparing the costs AND benefits of the available alternatives.
Omri: then what is the point of seeing what’s under the mountain, if you’re not willing to use the results of your exploration?
once it’s out of the mountain, it’s in the form of capital or consumer products and can be used, reused, and recycled. In the case of fossil fuels, however, once they are used, they are no longer there.
So you’re proposing to endlessly recycle the materials that were already dug up, by our unenlightened predecessors, and never do any new digging out, is that it?
Let’s look at your assumptions closer.
What do you think cost more, manufacturing a kitchen countertop or a floor tile from a raw granite slab or from second-hand aggregate? Do you know that composite materials use man-made synthetic bonding agents, adhesives and sealers that are derivatives of FOSSILS? How much energy, you think, is used comparatively, to manufacture a ton of steel from totally new, raw materials and a recycled one? How much longer is the technological process? How much more labor-intensive, from design and engineering to operation?
How do you think fossil fuels got where they are now? Did some alien delivered them in archaic times? Do you understand that it is an organic, living, never-ending process? That as we speak, somewhere inside the Earth organic deposits are undergoing transformation that will result in oil and coal? Not a quick process, but still – an ongoing process, so your assumption “once taken out, it’s gone forever” is simply false. It might be “gone forever” for your generation, but for your 10-times removed grandchildren it will be there to use.
Next. The contemporary methods and technical basis of development (yes, development, i.e. usage of what is found during exploration) have made possible to “dig up” fossil fuels from the places it was not in the all preceding centuries. Current estimates exceed all previous, as geological exploration proves there are literally SEAS of OIL available (google shale oil”), and extraction is becoming economically feasible.
Why do we have to artificially arrest industrial evolution of our society if our resources are vast and plentiful? That is simply madness.
Do you object to people putting cyanide in your tap water? How about random metals?
You’re changing the subject. We were talking about depletion of natural resources, not how health protection for humans (which is I’m all for).
You implied that you’re against ALL extraction of natural resources, including metals. So, I’m asking you – would you be willing to block mining of gold, aluminum, titanium, nickel? Molybdenum, for instance – it’s used as additive for certain steels. Or you’re against complex steel alloys, too?
I am proposing that we call a spade a spade, Tatyana. Something you seem to find objectionable.
So I’ll try to clarify:
You can develop a deposit of copper into a generator. You can develop a deposit of iron ore into a car engine. You can mix and match. If you don’t like what you developed, you can redevelop it. (Collecting scrap metal is almost always easier than smelting more ore.) But that hole in the ground you leave behind where you dug the ore? Sometimes it’s a useful hole in the ground. Usually it isn’t. And sometimes it’s a major liability and nuisance to the people living around it. That’s not development. It’s depletion.
But you don’t “develop” a deposit of fossil fuels by consuming it. You consume and deplete it. And if you insist on calling this “development”, you are using newspeak to try to conceal your party’s utter intellectual bankruptcy.
And that is exactly what the republicans sank into in 2008 when they chanted “drill, baby, drill.” Keep it up and Obama gets a second term.
“How do you think fossil fuels got where they are now? Did some alien delivered them in archaic times? Do you understand that it is an organic, living, never-ending process?”
Do you realize that this process takes place at different rates at different times? That it involves plate tectonic migration? Sure, we’re building up a nice layer of source material in the Gulf of Mexico right now. It will turn into oil in a few million years if we make sure that layer migrates down to get cooked and that there’s a good salt dome over it. So what?
” That as we speak, somewhere inside the Earth organic deposits are undergoing transformation that will result in oil and coal?”
Do you realize that the rate at which we consume them is orders of magnitude higher than the rate the earth creates them?
” Not a quick process, but still – an ongoing process, so your assumption “once taken out, it’s gone forever” is simply false. It might be “gone forever” for your generation, but for your 10-times removed grandchildren it will be there to use.”
Great. So after 9 generations of my kids pissing on my grave for consuming fossil fuels leaving them having to make do with out (actually, more like 1000 generations), a few generations will get to drive internal combustion engines again.
“Next. The contemporary methods and technical basis of development (yes, development, i.e. usage of what is found during exploration) have made possible to “dig up” fossil fuels from the places it was not in the all preceding centuries.”
Yes, people developed new methods to extract fossil fuels for us to consume. That’s how it’s said in Oldspeak.
“Current estimates exceed all previous, as geological exploration proves there are literally SEAS of OIL available (google shale oil”), and extraction is becoming economically feasible.
Why do we have to artificially arrest industrial evolution of our society if our resources are vast and plentiful? That is simply madness.”
If that were true, you’d say it in Oldspeak. But you don’t. And that is telling.
You “develop” an oil or metal or mineral deposit because you have to apply human knowledge to it before it can be worth anything. Petroleum wasn’t worth much until the late 19th Century when refined petroleum products such as kerosene replaced whale oil and other non-fossil fuels for lighting purposes, and as petroleum-fueled internal-combustion engines became dominant in transportation. It would have made no sense to conserve whale oil then, and it makes no sense to conserve petroleum now, because we will replace petroleum with something else long before we run out of petroleum. This is the history of human use of natural resources. As a resource becomes scarce its price rises and creates incentives to find cheaper alternatives. Over time, market prices for most if not all natural resources have declined in real terms. As the great Julian Simon put it, human ingenuity is the ultimate resource.
That remains contemptible newspeak. What got developed was human knowledge on what use to make of fossil fuels. The fuels themselves got consumed. They are gone.
I see we’re back to word games. Terms like “contemptible newspeak” remind me of those Larouchie robots one used to avoid in airports. You seem to be trying to make some kind of semantic point and keep asserting that this is what matters. We are trying to argue why there is more to the issue of resource depletion than you assert. Our arguments fly over your head while you shout at us that our shoes are untied.
The gream Julian Simon also thought we could transmute metals to take care of shortages. the great Julian Simon was the Lysenko of the right wing.
I think your argument is on fire.
Jonathan,
Call it word games if you will but whether oil can be said to be developed or not seems moot since it is being depleted. There are limited quantities of the stuff and it is being used more quickly than it is being created. There remain several options: we move ourselves from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources or learn to manufacture the stuff ourselves or eventually run out of the stuff. Can you think of another alternative? I’m not sure what the point of arguing over whether we develop oil or not would be. Argumentum gratia argumenti?
Jonathan,
Sorry, I do see that you’ve answered my question already. You say we will replace fossil fuels before they run out. Let us hope. You argue that this is the history. In the mutual fund selling business they have a saying that must be told to all prospective buyers: past history is no guarantee of future performance.
Omni,
Being free Americans, we are free to choose NOT to buy petroleum products. No one is forcing you, or me, or the next guy to burn this or that petroleum distillate.
The “market”for petroleum products is simply that segment of people who, unlike you, choose to use propane, butane, kerosene, parafin, gasoline, diesel , etc. interacting freely with that swath of folks who extract crude, and distill and transport and retail the distillates, all in a bid to conduct mutually beneficial business.
Period. Markets are about freedom. To the point, if you personally want to read by whale blubber lamps and cook over a wood stove then I, being a free, understanding man, would not try to stop you.
God Bless her, still today, I expect most freedom loving Americans’d sing the same refrain.
Actually, Steveaz, my tax money goes to pay for a lot of petroleum products that are then laid out across the country in these things called “highways.”
The decision to lay these things is not, and has never been, a market decision, but a political one.
“..But you don’t “develop” a deposit of fossil fuels by consuming it. You consume and deplete it. And if you insist on calling this “development”, you are using newspeak to try to conceal your party’s utter intellectual bankruptcy. ..”
Good grief…educate yourself before you blather. A huge portion of oil is used in manufacturing and developing cheaper stronger materials….(plastics, synthetic fibers, various chemicals, that last longer and save other resources.) hence…your precious “development”
“..Actually, Steveaz, my tax money goes to pay for a lot of petroleum products that are then laid out across the country in these things called “highways.”
Thank you for proving my argument with your own. Building roadways is development of infrastructure and capacity the very same way building generators is. Interesting that you rebut your own argument a few posts later. Perhaps it’s your lack of critical thinking that does not afford you the opportunity to spot similar cases “on the fly” so to speak…and instead rely on well digested talking points.
As for the copper for generators..that absolutely gets used up and has to be replaced. As a former power generation electrician, I can guarantee this. Now you can argue that is used less rapidly, but that is not your argument, your argument is that oil “uses” and copper and others do not vis a vis a generator…when in fact they do. So are you not aware of this or are you being dishonest to win an argument? More likely I expect a “redefinition” of your argument at this point, as is the liberal way…
Good grief…educate yourself before you blather. A huge portion of oil is used in manufacturing and developing cheaper stronger materials….(plastics, synthetic fibers, various chemicals, that last longer and save other resources.)
Where by “huge” you mean 4%. And that 4% is certainly NOT the reason republicans want to “develop” what remains of our oil reserves.
“Building roadways is development of infrastructure and capacity the very same way building generators is. Interesting that you rebut your own argument a few posts later”
And that is certainly NOT the reason republicans want to “develop” what remains of our oil reserves.
Omri:Where by “huge” you mean 4%
Source, please.
http://www.bpf.co.uk/Press/Oil_Consumption.aspx
Omri, this is getting real funny.
Have you noticed in your own link the little paragraph titled However? Yet another case of your “rebutting your own arguments few posts later”, observed by Anonymous.
Note, the list [of potential, undeveloped sources of oil] is incomplete. It does not mention USA, for instance.
Also, you were told about “other uses”, including plastics – not exclusively plastics. Why are you silent about them?
Also, the site you linked to, like many manufacturer’ sites in the current climate of hysteria (and it’s understandable – they’re out to make a profit, in all political climates) proposes using “biomass” as an oil substitute. This is another ridiculous short-sighted notion perpetrated by the “greens”. Yeah, of course it is possible – for the cost of world’s hunger, millions in poorer countries starving while the prices of rice and corn rise.
You’re both right. We do develop petroleum because it doesn’t just spring up from the ground as gasoline and jump into our car’s gas tank when the tank gets low or as diesel fuel funneling itself into fuel tanks or, even as natural gas, human ingenuity must be applied to make it useful. Even if it were just laying around in pools like lakes or flowing above ground like rivers, human intervention would still be required in order to make it useful. Denying that what we do with natural resources to make them useful is development must be some form of dementia.
On the other hand, who, being sane, can deny that consumption of oil depletes oil supplies? You are both quite clearly right in your main thrust. This back and forth seems like argument for argument’s sake. Why bother?
Omri,
Inicidentally, I am “Anonymous” from above…I forgot to enter my name since the last time I cleared my cache.
Don’t actually address the shortcomings of your blanket arguments…instead call into question the motives of those disproving you. It’s reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s comments upon hearing that Sandy Berger…former Clinton admin person was caught stealing secure documents and it was right before an election…and her comment was something like “oh well the timing of this is very interesting”. Typical liberal mentality…her problem wasn’t with the fact that someone was stealing secure documents, the big problem to her was that it happened at a time that might damage the democrat machine at election time. Your responses are in this same vein….
As Tatyana noted, you conveniently leave out other uses of petroleum..this is straight out of the liberal talking g points handbook…say something with authority with a link, that is not actually contained within the link..hope people dont’ bother to actually look….repeat. Not to mention it is not a US petroleum usage statistic.
The bottom line is your blanket statements are wrong and have been disproven..at this point you are performing the “redefinition” dance on your argument…as I claimed you would….
You have been weighed…you have been measured…you have been found wanting. Now git redifinin’ boy……
Speaking of not addressing the argument, not one of you as yet has offered any justification for why the act of extracting a deposit of fossil fuels and turning it into CO2 and water vapor should be called “development.”
Because you know full well it’s newspeak.
That’s simply not true, Omri, all of us has offered justification for why that act is called development. One definition of ‘develop’ would be to effect a change in something to make it more valuable. The very act of extracting, transporting, refining, storing and pumping the resource, in the case of oil at least, are all acts which develop the resource from its state of nature into a form which is usable for a variety of purposes,, thus adding to its value. In a state of nature, as long as it stays in the ground, oil is pretty useless and of no value to anyone not willing to expend a great deal of effort and money to put it into a form that people find useful. As I wrote above, oil doesn’t pump itself from the ground, turn itself into an efficiently usable form and hurl itself into fuel tanks precisely when needed. All of that is what is known as developing a resource from its state of nature into a place and form that is usable by man and, therefore, of value to man. In reference to natural resources, ‘development’ means changing the state of the resource from that found in nature to some other state for convenient use by man. In the case of wood, one can set fire to the forest but that’s not very useful. It does a pretty good job of destroys whatever value the trees might have if properly developed. Instead, we go into the forest, select and cut down trees, transport the wood and chop it up into convenient sizes for use in a wood burning stove or fire place — development, that is, changing the resource from a state of nature into one readily usable by man. In short, all of us have done nothing but offer rational justification for calling this process ‘development’.
“That’s simply not true, Omri, all of us has offered justification for why that act is called development. One definition of ‘develop’ would be to effect a change in something to make it more valuable.”
Converting oil to CO2 does not make it more valuable. And you know full well that is the intent here.
“Converting oil to CO2 does not make it more valuable. And you know full well that is the intent here.”
And you, presumably, know full well that when oil is “converted into CO2” (lol) it has this curious little by-product called energy which, perversely enough, many people seem to regard as valuable.