Make energy expensive so industry moves abroad, then tax the goods coming back in due to their carbon content.
You pay twice.
– Steve Loftus, illustrating why the Tories should and will burn to ash at the next General Election.
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Make energy expensive so industry moves abroad, then tax the goods coming back in due to their carbon content. You pay twice. – Steve Loftus, illustrating why the Tories should and will burn to ash at the next General Election. I recently read Economics In One Virus, by Ryan Bourne of the CATO Institute in the US, and an excellent account it is. (It was published in 2021.) It is a good overview of how people should think about the economic issues involved in a pandemic. The current farcical “inquiry” into the UK government’s handling of COVID-19 (see my recent posting here) got me thinking about some of the more admirable things I noticed during the nightmare. One of them was the way that the supermarket industry, and associated logistics sector (warehouses, lorry drivers, ports, shipping, stock inventory platforms, etc), worked. Suddenly, everyone became familiar with the term “supply chain”. I recall a few years ago meeting a person who introduced himself as a “supply chain specialist”, and others in the room made rude comments about how “dull” this sounded. (I make a point of avoiding jerks like them, by the way.) Well, his field of expertise came into a very bright spotlight, and to an extent, there it remains. Getting supplies right is about as non-dull as you can imagine. Global capitalism gets a lot of silly criticism, and yet those who presume to champion it often fail to note the triumphs when they occur. They would do well to point out how much better the bottom-up, entrepreneurial, market-based way of doing things is than the top-down, government approach. I recall that when the news first broke of a virus in Wuhan and what to do about it, the conventional (ie, wrong) wisdom seemed to be that we should copy the Chinese in their lockdowns and restrictions, and this was seized upon, it seemed, by those itching for these controls for various other reasons, such as harsh “Green” policy. What got drowned out was the case for how enterprise could provide solutions, from rapid development of ICU unit technology through to better management of supplies, treatments, vaccines, etc. In the months since lockdowns ended, we have forgotten these lessons, and I fear that the wrong ones have been learned. Not enough is being done to point out how inventiveness, enterprise, intelligent risk-taking and experimentation are what’s wanted, not the often oafish fist of the state. Jobs are a cost, not a benefit. Having to direct human labour to some task reduces the amount of such human effort that can be devoted to sating some other desire – it’s a cost. So that boast is that dealing with climate change would add 380 million costs to the global economy. Yes, obviously, this is an opportunity cost but if you’re not doing opportunity costs then whatever you’re doing it’s not economics. Probably the most important man of the 21st Century, if only for his potential to do good, Argentine President-elect (as I write) Javier Milei sat down with Tucker Carlson for an interview, (excerpt provided) at which he discussed the Pope, the murderous Castros and architecture amongst other points (that socialists are evil and think they are ‘God’). The interview was done with Mr Carlson asking questions in English and Señor Milei’s replies in Spanish are sub-titled (accurately I would add) and presumably interpreted in real time. This segment is just over 9 minutes long, and it is well worth watching. We have all the indications that he is the real deal, he says that he is prepared to die for his beliefs, let us wish him a long and productive life and Presidency. But we can and should go further than that. We all know there’s a vast amount of investment happening in this going green stuff. Maybe that’s a good idea, maybe not, that’s for another day. But the point of what is being done is to address an externality – those environmental damages, costs of emissions, which do not show up in prices and therefore are, again, not in GDP. So, we solve those externalities – and maybe we should! – and we create green jobs while doing so. Cool. So, now we have the same output – say a GW of ‘leccie, even a GWhr – with the same value as before but we’ve used more human labour to produce it – those green jobs that the energy transition creates. By definition productivity has declined. Again, by definition productivity has declined. The Guardian‘s “social affairs correspondent”, Richard Booth, has written an article with the title “Five things that could help fix Britain’s private rented sector”. By “fix” he must mean “fix its current problems in stone”, because, with the possible exception of the first, every one of them would make yet more landlords run for the exits while they still have the chance. An astonishing number of people think it is a good argument to say at this point, “Aha, but the houses would still exist, so landlords selling up would be good for the tenants because they could buy them”. There is indeed often a temporary glut of houses for sale just before laws such as Mr Booth advocates are passed, which is like winning the lottery for the people rich enough to buy at that moment. Then the door closes for decades. The great majority of tenants cannot afford to buy the houses they are renting and most would not want to even if they could. They are students, or people on temporary contracts, or people happy to do a fast-paced job in the big city while they are young but who never had any intention of settling there forever. Rent control and legal “protection” for these tenants is nice for one generation of them, a disaster for those who come after. Then again, a return to the days of yore when most people lived and died within a few miles of where they were born can seem quite a charming prospect to those who think that it will not apply to them. And there is no doubt that an end to all this social mobility would be very eco-friendly. The state does not provide stability in such a case but rather the sort of mono-culture that makes systems unstable and takes them all down at once in a paroxysm of fiscal failure. As ever, the mantra of “too important to be left to free markets/the people” is the most towering of lies. the comfort of one’s retirement is far too important not to be. “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”, the great mathematician Archimedes is supposed to have said. Maybe it was their company name that led Anglo-Dutch consumer packaged goods company Unilever to briefly decide that their real mission was not making shampoo, soap, washing power and assorted packaged food products but to take it upon themselves to move the world. The world moved all right, away from these irritating people who were trying to shove it around. “Unilever to tone down social purpose after ‘virtue-signalling’ backlash”, reports the Telegraph.
Can anyone tell me if this pledge was fulfilled, and if so which brands were sold to other companies? I like the sound of products whose makers feel that there is nothing more important than manufacturing them to perform their functions well.
Tellingly, the Telegraph article adds that the “social mission” to boycott the Palestinian occupied territories did not apply to occupied territories nearer home where Unilever’s profits were at stake:
Schumacher’s response was to emit words:
“When bureaucrats and politicians (including 17 state attorney generals) attack a successful, entrepreneurial company, is it surprising that it looks like a circus?” In the Telegraph, Ruby Hinchliffe writes,
“Working on”, as in “destroying”:
And, naturally,
In his book, After America (published in 2011, which already seems a loooong time ago), Mark Steyn wrote this:
And:
Steyn is connecting two things: a government/central bank policy mix that focuses on consumption, rather than production, and ties policy to that, including welfare policy (ideas such as Univeral Basic Income, etc). Also, the risk-adverse, Precautionary Principle of our time seems to go against humans being adventurous, taking calculated risks, getting up and going places, etc. For example, he notes how young adults today can go through their teens and early 20s without having a job. When, as I did, you worked on Saturdays and during the summer holidays (paper rounds, working on farms, in shops, etc) there were various consequences – all good – including the fact that you had to be physically active. (Glenn Reynolds writes in a similar vein on why teenagers should work before going to college.) Now, the idea of young people working is treated as being on the same plane as evil Victorian mill owners out of a Dickens novel. But Steyn is also making the point about production – and a very anti-Keynesian point. As the “Austrian” school notes (as in George Reisman’s book Capitalism), to consume, you have to produce and that means accumulate capital (physical capital, and mental capital, such as skills and habits). So much present policy seems to work against accumulating capital (taxes, regulations, inflation, the general demonisation of wealthy people, etc). And we print or have printed money to fill the gap. So our economy becomes zombified on ultra-low rates, and like someone who hasn’t taken a regular walk, lifted weights or performed physical work, we get bloated and sick. Much of what Steyn wrote 12 years ago was accurate, and many of his predictions hold true. I think where the book is a bit off is that he thinks the threat from fundamentalist Islam was the biggest threat to the US while he did not write lot about China, although China does figure in this book quite a bit, to be fair. And the idea of Russia running amok in Ukraine or wherever, while he hints at this risk, it does not really figure all that much. I am quibbling, though. This is a book that holds up well. Its conclusion – that we have to shrink the State, remains as valuable as ever. Right, off to the gym. Investment is an expense and don’t let anyone tell you different – not even a fashionable professor. – Tim Worstall, who is probably annoyed at how often he has to state the bleedin’ obvious. |
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