Month: October 2009

“Why Sustainability Standards for Biofuel Production Make Little Economic Sense”

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This new paper (pdf) by Harry de Gorter and David R. Just, published in the Cato Institute’s journal, Policy Analysis, looks interesting.

From the executive summary:

Sustainability standards are based on “lifecycle accounting,” in which ethanol is assumed to replace gasoline; but in fact, it may be replacing coal or other energy sources. Life-cycle accounting also fails to recognize that if incentives are given for ethanol producers to use relatively “clean” inputs (e.g., natural gas), the “dirtier” inputs (e.g., coal) that might otherwise have been used for the ethanol production will simply be used by other producers to make products that are not covered by the sustainability standard. Sustainability standards reshuffle who is using what inputs—with no net reduction in national emissions.

Retro-Reading

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It’s interesting to pick up a copy of a business magazine from 10 years ago or more and look at what was then hot and at the predictions that were being made–and how well they stood up with the passage of time.

Forbes ASAP (4/6/98) carried an article by George Gilder, in which he asserts that companies will increasingly compete by understanding that the customer’s time is a valuable resource–and making it possible to do business with them without wasting it.

The fact is that the entire economy is riddled with time-wasting routines and regimes that squander much of the time of the average customer. Suffice it to say that the concept of the customer’s life span as a crucially precious resource, indeed the most precious resource in the information economy, has not penetrated to many of the major business and governmental institutions in the United States, let alone overseas.

The message of the telecosm is that this era is over, as dead as slavery in 1865. These lingering attitudes in established busineses and government offer the largest opportunities for new companies and strategies in the information age.

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Stop Obama’s Wars of Imperialist Aggression!

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I don’t typically wade into politics with my posts, but I just can’t help myself. The other day I was driving around in a town to be unnamed and stumbled upon the building you see in the picture below.

sooper seekrit warehouse

It looks like a typical warehouse that you would find in any of a million industrial parks in the United States.

But upon further investigation I found something quite different. This is the warehouse that the left uses to store it’s papier mache heads, sign making materials and other props for protest marches. Upon sniffing around it for a bit, I noticed that is was packed to the brim. It looked to me as they had contracted with a local lumberyard to supply the wood for their signage.

All humor aside, does the left not think that we haven’t noticed a certain…well…silence over Obama’s policies? It is OK for Obama to not only not decrease troop levels, but increase them as he is doing in Afghanistan? Why isn’t Gitmo closed? What the hell, even Iraq even has troops there that represent the Great Satan ™ as of now. I know because I am still sending care packages to them (unlike ANY of the protesters who claim they support the troops).

So just exactly what am I to think of the left? That these wars are OK as long as the President and Congress have a D by their names? Puhleeeze.