21st Century Schizoid Boy

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3FdvqZFHG0.

Very often an economist will say, “It’s absolutely clear that government must have a monopoly over [police, courts, and law-making]. At minimum, you gotta have that.” You can argue about whether the minimal state is a good idea, but what I’ve shown is definitely they’re wrong. It is definitely true that government doesn’t have to have a monopoly over these things. How do we know that government doesn’t have to have a monopoly? Because we don’t have a monopoly now. Government right now is way beyond the night watchman state, and yet it doesn’t actually [monopolize] all the night-watchman functions. There are many aspects of what we think of as being the minimal state that are not actually part of what government does right now… Not only is it possible, it’s already here right now…. All these things, we can definitely give more scope to them than they currently have. Which means that, rather than being some some crazy, fringe idea, privatization of more of these things is something that any reasonable person should be willing to consider.

Bryan Caplan, The Night Watchman State, PhD Economist, http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB1670328AB156123.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in 2003 there were approximately 960,000 private security guards employed in the United States — compared to 650,000 U.S. police officers working that year.

The U.S. Contract Security Guard Industry: an Introduction to Services and Firms, Congressional Research Service, The Library of Congress, August 13, 2004, http://www.hsdl.org/?view&doc=34864&coll=limited.

According to peer-reviewed studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association by U.S. CDC-sponsored medical researchers:

Excess Deaths/year (Underweight) [Generally at a later age] = 33,746
Excess Deaths/year (Fat) = Obese (111,909) + Overweight (−86,094) = 25,815
=> Excess Deaths/year (Underweight) > Excess Deaths/year (Fat) & “Overweight” is not all bad (−86,094) compared to “normal” weight.

We estimated relative risks of mortality associated with different levels of BMI [body mass index, calculated as weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters; underweight < 18.5, overweight 25 to < 30, obese >= 30 in the United States in 2000] from the nationally representative National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys.

We found significantly increased all-cause mortality in the underweight and obese categories and significantly decreased all-cause mortality in the overweight category compared with normal weight.

Obesity (BMI >= 30) was associated with 111,909 excess deaths… and underweight with 33,746 excess deaths. Overweight was not associated with excess mortality: −86,094 deaths.

The more recent data from NHANES II and NHANES III suggest the possibility that improvements in medical care, particularly for cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death among the obese, and its risk factors may have led to a decreased association of obesity with total mortality… Life expectancy [in the United States] increased from 73.7 years in 1980 to 75.4 years in 1990 to 77.0 years in 2000 and continues to increase.

Of the 111,909 estimated excess deaths associated with obesity the majority, 84,145 excess deaths, occurred in individuals younger than 70 years. In contrast, of the 33,746 estimated excess deaths associated with underweight, the majority, 26,666 excess deaths, occurred in individuals aged 70 years and older.

Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity, Flegal et al, Journal of the American Medical Association, April 20, 2005, http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/293/15/1861.full.pdf.

Underweight was associated with significantly increased mortality from noncancer, non-CVD causes (23,455 excess deaths)… but not associated with cancer or CVD mortality. Overweight was associated with significantly decreased mortality from noncancer, non-CVD causes (−69 299 excess deaths) but not associated with cancer or CVD mortality. Obesity was associated with significantly increased CVD mortality (112,159 excess deaths) but not associated with cancer mortality or with noncancer, non-CVD mortality. In further analyses, overweight and obesity combined were associated with increased mortality from diabetes and kidney disease (61,248 excess deaths) and decreased mortality from other noncancer, non-CVD causes (−105,572 excess deaths).

Cause-Specific Excess Deaths Associated With Underweight, Overweight, and Obesity, Glegal et al, Journal of the American Medical Association, November, 2007, http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/298/17/2028.full.pdf.

It is important to go back to the 1995 World Health Organization report that helped establish the idea that a person is overweight with a BMI of 25. This document probably had more impact on determining how obesity was defined than anything else. And who wrote this important document? Most of it was drafted and written under the auspices of the International Obesity Task Force (IOTF). On the surface, the IOTF seems to be a credible association of scientists interested in obesity research and policy….

In reality, however, the IOTF is anything but an unbiased congress of scientists. The IOTF is an organization primarily funded by Hoffman-LaRoche (the maker of the weight-loss drug Xenical) and Abbott Laboratories (the maker of the weight-loss drug Meridia). Like other organizations financed primarily by drug companies that don the “neutral” mantle of science (including the American Obesity Association) the primary mission of the IOTF is to lobby governments and advance particular scientific agendas that coincide with the pharmaceutical industry’s goals. Indeed, the initial mission of the IOTF was to get the lower BMI standards imposed on the WHO report. Few realize that the effort to establish a world-wide standard for what is overweight and obese was sponsored primarily by a company that makes a weight-loss pill.

The IOTF’s chair, British nutritionist Philip James, typifies this conflict of interest. James, a well-regarded scientist, also has many financial links to the pharmaceutical industry. He has been amply paid for conducting clinical trials of Sibutramine (Meridia) and Orlistat (Xenical). He also engages in regular promotional activities for Hoffman-La Roche and Knoll Pharmaceuticals, offering regular praise of their products in press releases.

It is difficult to find any major figure in the field of obesity research or past president of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity who does not have some type of financial tie to a pharmaceutical or weight-loss company…

Unlike the mostly thin doctors and academic health researchers… whom I interviewed for this book… when I ask fat activists… what they would do about the obesity epidemic, they give a relatively simple and straightforward answer. Rather than continuing this mad and pointless effort to either fight our biology or stifle the free market, the best way to get over our weight problem is to stop worrying so much about our weight… After all, the science… shows no clear evidence that excess fat is, by itself, harmful for most Americans.

Fat Politics: The Real Story behind America’s Obesity Epidemic, J. Eric Oliver, 2005, http://www.amazon.com/Fat-Politics-Americas-Obesity-Epidemic/dp/0195169360.

Is it more likely that the strong control the weak in a so-called Hobbesian world or a world in which governments monopolize security? Gustave de Molinari was a French economist in the 19th century.

Man experiences a multitude of needs, on whose satisfaction his happiness depends, and whose non-satisfaction entails suffering. Alone and isolated, he could only provide in an incomplete, insufficient manner for these incessant needs. The instinct of sociability brings him together with similar persons, and drives him into communication with them. Therefore, impelled by the self-interest of the individuals thus brought together, a certain division of labor is established, necessarily followed by exchanges. In brief, we see an organization emerge, by means of which man can more completely satisfy his needs than he could living in isolation.

This natural organization is called society.

The object of society is therefore the most complete satisfaction of man’s needs. The division of labor and exchange are the means by which this is accomplished.

Among the needs of man, there is one particular type which plays an immense role in the history of humanity, namely the need for security.

What, indeed, is the situation of men who need security? Weakness. What is the situation of those who undertake to provide them with this necessary security? Strength. If it were otherwise, if the consumers of security were stronger than the producers, they obviously would dispense with their assistance.

Now, if the producers of security are originally stronger than the consumers, won’t it be easy for the former to impose a monopoly on the latter?

Everywhere, when societies originate, we see the strongest, most warlike races seizing the exclusive government of the society. Everywhere we see these races seizing a monopoly on security within certain more or less extensive boundaries, depending on their number and strength.

And, this monopoly being, by its very nature, extraordinarily profitable, everywhere we see the races invested with the monopoly on security devoting themselves to bitter struggles, in order to add to the extent of their market, the number of their forced consumers, and hence the amount of their gains.

War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security.

Another inevitable consequence has been that this monopoly has engendered all other monopolies.

When they saw the situation of the monopolizers of security, the producers of other commodities could not help but notice that nothing in the world is more advantageous than monopoly. They, in turn, were consequently tempted to add to the gains from their own industry by the same process. But what did they require in order to monopolize, to the detriment of the consumers, the commodity they produced? They required force. However, they did not possess the force necessary to constrain the consumers in question. What did they do? They borrowed it, for a consideration, from those who had it. They petitioned and obtained, at the price of an agreed upon fee, the exclusive privilege of carrying on their industry within certain determined boundaries. Since the fees for these privileges brought the producers of security a goodly sum of money, the world was soon covered with monopolies. Labor and trade were everywhere shackled, enchained, and the condition of the masses remained as miserable as possible.

Nevertheless, after long centuries of suffering, as enlightenment spread through the world little by little, the masses who had been smothered under this nexus of privileges began to rebel against the privileged, and to demand liberty, that is to say, the suppression of monopolies.

This process took many forms. What happened in England, for example? Originally, the race which governed the country and which was militarily organized (the aristocracy), having at its head a hereditary leader (the king), and an equally hereditary administrative council (the House of Lords), set the price of security, which it had monopolized, at whatever rate it pleased. There was no negotiation between the producers of security and the consumers. This was the rule of absolutism. But as time passed, the consumers, having become aware of their numbers and strength, arose against the purely arbitrary regime, and they obtained the right to negotiate with the producers over the price of the commodity. For this purpose, they sent delegates to the House of Commons to discuss the level of taxes, the price of security. They were thus able to improve their lot somewhat. Nevertheless, the producers of security had a direct say in the naming of the members of the House of Commons, so that debate was not entirely open, and the price of the commodity remained above its natural value.

One day the exploited consumers rose against the producers and dispossessed them of their industry. They then undertook to carry on this industry by themselves and chose for this purpose a director of operations assisted by a Council. Thus communism replaced monopoly. But the scheme did not work, and twenty years later, primitive monopoly was re-established. Only this time the monopolists were wise enough not to restore the rule of absolutism; they accepted free debate over taxes, being careful, all the while, incessantly to corrupt the delegates of the opposition party. They gave these delegates control over various posts in the administration of security, and they even went so far as to allow the most influential into the bosom of their superior Council. Nothing could have been more clever than this behavior. Nevertheless, the consumers of security finally became aware of these abuses, and demanded the reform of Parliament. This long-contested reform was finally achieved, and since that time, the consumers have won a significant lightening of their burdens.

But is it conceivable that the production of security could be organized other than as a monopoly or communistically? Could it conceivably be relegated to free competition?

The response to this question on the part of political writers is unanimous: No.

Why? We will tell you why.

Because these writers, who are concerned especially with governments, know nothing about society. They regard it as an artificial fabrication, and believe that the mission of government is to modify and remake it constantly.

Now in order to modify or remake society, it is necessary to be empowered with an authority superior to that of the various individuals of which it is composed.

One cannot intervene in human affairs, one cannot attempt to direct and regulate them, without daily offending a multitude of interests. Unless those in power are believed to have a mandate from a superior entity, the injured interests will resist.

Whence the fiction of divine right.

One fine day [people] took it into their heads to question and to reason, and in questioning, in reasoning, they discovered that their governors governed them no better than they, simply mortals out of communication with Providence, could have done themselves.

It was free inquiry that demonetized the fiction of divine right, to the point where the subjects of monarchs or of aristocracies based on divine right obey them only insofar as they think it in their own self-interest to obey them.

Has the communist fiction fared any better?

According to the communist theory, of which Rousseau is the high-priest, authority does not descend from on high, but rather comes up from below. The government no longer looks to Providence for its authority, it looks to united mankind, to the one, indivisible, and sovereign nation.

Here is what the communists, the partisans of popular sovereignty, assume. They assume that human reason has the power to discover the best laws and the organization which most perfectly suits society; and that, in practice, these laws reveal themselves at the conclusion of a free debate between conflicting opinions. If there is no unanimity, if there is still dissension after the debate, the majority is in the right, since it comprises the larger number of reasonable individuals. (These individuals are, of course, assumed to be equal, otherwise the whole structure collapses.) Consequently, they insist that the decisions of the majority must become law, and that the minority is obliged to submit to it, even if it is contrary to its most deeply rooted convictions and injures its most precious interests.

That is the theory; but, in practice, does the authority of the decision of the majority really have this irresistible, absolute character as assumed? Is it always, in every instance, respected by the minority? Could it be?

Suppose nevertheless that the partisans of an artificial organization, either the monopolists or the communists, are right; that society is not naturally organized, and that the task of making and unmaking the laws that regulate society continuously devolves upon men, look in what a lamentable situation the world would find itself. The moral authority of governors rests, in reality, on the self-interest of the governed. The latter having a natural tendency to resist anything harmful to their self-interest, unacknowledged authority would continually require the help of physical force.

If anyone, says M. de Maistre, attempts to detract from the authority of God’s chosen ones, let him be turned over to the secular power, let the hangman perform his office.

If anyone does not recognize the authority of those chosen by the people, say the theoreticians of the school of Rousseau, if he resists any decision whatsoever of the majority, let him be punished as an enemy of the sovereign people, let the guillotine perform justice.

These two schools, which both take artificial organization as their point of departure, necessarily lead to the same conclusion: TERROR.

The Production of Security, Gustave de Molinari, Journal des Economistes, 1849, http://praxeology.net/GM-PS.htm.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a famous French socialist anarchist in the 19th century.

To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harrassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

P.J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294, with some alterations from Benjamin Tucker’s translation in Instead of a Book (New York, 1893), p.26.

If this vast machine always kept itself within the limits of its responsibilities, elected representatives would be superfluous. However, the government is a living body at the center of the nation, which, like all organized entities, tends strongly to preserve its existence, to increase its well-being and power, and to expand indefinitely its sphere of action. Left to itself, it soon exceeds the limits which circumscribe its mission. It increases beyond all reason the number and wealth of its agents. It no longer administers, it exploits. It no longer judges, it persecutes or takes revenge. It no longer protects, it oppresses.

If we wish, however, to restrict the action of the government, let us not appoint employees of the government. If we wish to decrease taxation, let us not appoint those people who live off taxation. If we wish to obtain good municipal law let us not appoint a prefect. If we want freedom of education, let us not appoint a rector. If we want to eliminate the droits réunis or the Council of State, let us not appoint either a councillor of state or the director of the droits réunis. Individuals cannot independently represent those who pay them, and it is absurd to have a function kept in check by the very person bound by it.

To the Electors of the Département of the Landes, Frédéric Bastiat, 1830, http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=2393&chapter=226018&layout=html&Itemid=27.

Private companies originally managed rapid transit routes and surface lines. Abraham Brower established New York City’s first public transportation route in 1827, a 12-seat stagecoach called “Accommodation.”

The next year, John Mason organized the New York and Harlem Railroad, a street railway that used horse-drawn cars with metal wheels and ran on metal track. By 1855, 593 omnibuses traveled on 27 Manhattan routes and horse-drawn cars ran on street railways on Third, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Avenues.

The city’s first regular elevated railway service began on February 14, 1870. The El ran along Greenwich Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan. Elevated train service expanded and dominated rapid transit for the next few decades.

New York City’s first official subway system opened in Manhattan on October 27, 1904. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) operated the 9.1-mile long subway line that consisted of 28 stations from City Hall to 145th Street and Broadway.

IRT service expanded to the Bronx in 1905, to Brooklyn in 1908, and to Queens in 1915. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) began subway service between Brooklyn and Manhattan in 1915. The Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) took over the BRT a few years later.

Private companies also operated the city’s earliest motor buses. The Fifth Avenue Coach Company began passenger service between Washington Square and 90th Street with gasoline-powered buses and open-top double-deckers on July 13, 1907.

New York City Transit – History and Chronology, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, http://www.mta.info/nyct/facts/ffhist.htm.

On Oct. 27, 1904, the Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), the first subway line in the city, began operating from lower Manhattan. It was an immediate success. A journalist wrote the new lines were “architecturally superlative executions.” A transit trade journal called the subway stations “dignified and artistic efforts of the highest order.” One historian called these private lines “a great public work.”

Today, with more than a half century of public ownership and operation of the subways, imagine anyone making those kind of comments about the New York subways!

Sell The Subways, Gregory Bresiger, 1998, http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=69.

Originally [the New York City subway] was built by entrepreneurs under a franchise granted by the “city fathers.” As a condition of the grant, the fare was fixed at five cents. For a while all went well; the company rendered adequate service and paid its bills, including interest on its bonded indebtedness. As the city pulled into its orbit more and more surrounding communities, the company extended its mileage, as required, and in due time the nickel fare did not meet operational costs. The company asked for permission to increase its fare. The people-loving politicians refused the request and the “nickel fare” became a potent campaign issue.

A Matter of Degree: The New York Subway, Frank Chodorov, 1959, http://mises.org/daily/3948.

One of the promises of public ownership and management back in 1940 was that the nickel fare would be protected from “greedy” private operators.

Once the “greedy” private operators were gone, there was no bar to fare, tax, and toll raises… The fare has been hiked many times and is today $2… These rate hikes usually have exceeded the rate of inflation.

That’s because over the years it has been “easy to hide the cost of dipping into taxpayer levies,” wrote a biographer of Fiorello LaGuardia. He was the mayor who accomplished the 1940 plan to replace the private sector, a plan that most historians recognize led to a spiral of problems and high fares.

For example, in 2004 the MTA said that it expected to take in some $3.5 billion. It projected another billion or so from the profits of the bridges and tunnels, whose tolls have been raised many times. That’s although drivers were told in the 1950s that the bridges were generating so much money that the tolls would eventually be dropped. In spite of this extra bridge and tunnel money, $4.5 billion is less than half of projected MTA expenses of $9.4 billon!

In 2006, there is estimated to be about a $1.2 billion deficit, and in 2007 the MTA expects red ink of $1.3 billion. By the way, MTA’s debt service is forecast to go from 19 percent of operating revenues to 27 percent over the next two years.

Even supporters agree that Amtrak and the subways are in terrible shape; that there is a huge backlog of repair projects as well as vital improvements that are required if these systems are not to deteriorate further. However, supporters say that these systems are “starved” and should receive bigger subsidies.

The IRT made money through much of its existence, even though it operated under great handicaps — handicaps that led it to sell out because it would never be allowed to raise its fare. The Pennsylvania Railroad — before it was regulated and taxed to death — made regular dividend payments for more than a century.

Yet subway leadership, under the government-enterprise model, has not only raised the fares many times, but mulcted drivers and taxpayers — many of whom are disgruntled ex-subway riders — to pay for the city’s and region’s problematic public-transit system. All this has happened while the quantity and quality of service have declined. The system has, as we have seen, raised bond issues for specific purposes. Then the system’s leaders spent the money on other things. The system has received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state aid — maybe billions: there have been some scandals in the MTA over how it adds up the numbers — and still runs in the red almost every year. Indeed, despite all this additional revenue, the system, to quote the Orwellian language of the MTA reports, still has “gaps” and “structural imbalances.”

So we come to possibly the most insidious of all problems of government enterprise — its lack of accountability. Whom do we go to if we’re not happy with a government enterprise? Write a letter to the governor or another elected official?

“If anything has been demonstrated by modern experience in these matters,” F.A. Hayek wrote in 1960 of state agencies and commissions, “it is that, once wide coercive powers are given to government agencies for particular purposes, such powers cannot be effectively controlled by democratic assemblies.”

The Disastrous World of the New York Subway, Gregory Bresiger, June 26, 2006, http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0602e.asp.

Last year the New York City Subway system carried 1.41 billion passengers. In 1947, the historic high point of ridership, the system carried 2.02 billion. That means the latest numbers constitute an incredible falloff of some 30% in a city whose population has stayed about the same over the past 60 years.

The Charlatan Lindsay ran for mayor in 1965 on a platform of protecting the 15 cent fare. Once in office, he raised the fare. Actually, he raised it several times in his eight years in office.

By the way, the tracks are so bad that there are hundreds of places in the system where trains must go slow.

But you know that if this were a private system pulling these scams, the politicos would be falling all over one another to indict the “greedy” owners of capital. Yet isn’t a 33% increase “greedy?” And since the government bought out the last vestiges of private management in 1940, the fare has risen 3,900% or $1.95.

Government ownership would result in economies of scale. It would mean labor peace because subway workers would be barred from striking, according to LaGuardia. It would mean that the nickel fare would be protected from those rapacious private subway owners. All these fabulous promises were made by our pols, men and women we elected and re-elected.

In the beginning, at the start of the 20th century, the nickel fare was just fine. This was the golden era of the subways, which were primarily built with private funds. A friend of public ownership, Brian J. Cudahy, in his book “Under the Sidewalks of New York, would reluctantly concede that without private money the subways “would not have been possible.”

This was the era—roughly from the turn of the century to 1940—when people actually came from around the world to ride the subways. Even an enemy of private ownership, Robert Caro, would write in “Power Broker,” of this era, “so superbly had it (the subways) been designed that it took decades to break down.”

Subway Tax in the Rancid Apple, Gregory Bresiger, February 27, 2003, http://mises.org/daily/1172/Subway-Tax-in-the-Rancid-Apple.

Immanuel Kant was a famous German philosopher in the 18th century.

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] “Have courage to use your own understanding!”–that is the motto of enlightenment.

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance, nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them… regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.

Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course.

But that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed, if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable. For even among the entrenched guardians of the great masses a few will always think for themselves, a few who, after having themselves thrown off the yoke of immaturity, will spread the spirit of a rational appreciation for both their own worth and for each person’s calling to think for himself. But it should be particularly noted that if a public that was first placed in this yoke by the guardians is suitably aroused by some of those who are altogether incapable of enlightenment, it may force the guardians themselves to remain under the yoke–so pernicious is it to instill prejudices, for they finally take revenge upon their originators, or on their descendants. Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.

Nothing is required for this enlightenment, however, except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. But on all sides I hear: “Do not argue!” The officer says, “Do not argue, drill!” The tax man says, “Do not argue, pay!” The pastor says, “Do not argue, believe!” … “Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!” In this we have examples of pervasive restrictions on freedom. But which restriction hinders enlightenment and which does not, but instead actually advances it? I reply: The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among mankind…

Thus, once nature has removed the hard shell from this kernel for which she has most fondly cared, namely, the inclination to and vocation for free thinking, the kernel gradually reacts on a people’s mentality (whereby they become increasingly able to act freely).

Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?, 1784, http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html.

Predictions about peak coal in the 1800s were wrong. But even if peak oil is true, natural gas, cleaner than coal and oil, can take its spot, followed by renewables as their technology gets cheap enough.

In 1865 a young economist named W. S. Jevons published a book titled The Coal Question in which he argued that Britain’s “present lavish use of cheap coal” could not continue as coal would soon run out and continued prosperity was therefore “physically impossible. We have to make the momentous choice between brief greatness and longer continued mediocrity.” Gladstone, as Chancellor, found Jevons’ “grave and … urgent facts” so persuasive that he proposed to Parliament, with the support of John Stuart Mill, to retire the national debt while the good times lasted.

In fact, coal output rose and the price fell for many decades. Jevons’ gloomy warning that “it is useless to think of substituting any other kind of fuel for coal” was hilariously timed, six years after the first oil wells were drilled in Pennsylvania.

“Experts” regularly rush to predict the exhaustion of fossil fuels. “Already the output of [natural] gas has begun to wane. Production of oil cannot long maintain its present rate,” a US presidential commission said in 1922. “We could use up all the proven reserves of oil in the entire world by the end of the next decade,” Jimmy Carter said in 1976.

The world will use about 450 exajoules (billion billion joules) of fossil fuel energy this year and has so far used less than 20,000 exajoules since the Industrial Revolution began. Total oil, gas and coal resources in the Earth’s crust are estimated at more than 570,000 exajoules.

Shale gas was thought to be as inaccessible as clathrates, and when it began to be exploited in the 1990s it looked as if it would still come in at the top of the price range. Now technological improvements have brought the price down so far that it undercuts conventional gas.

Shale gas is good news for America and China (which probably has even more of it than America), consumers (cheap fuel means higher standards of living) and farmers (fertiliser is made from gas).

Wrong about Running Out, Matt Ridley, May 7, 2011, http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wrong-about-running-out.

The dominant fuel in the world fuel mix has gradually shifted from wood to coal to oil over the past 150 years, with gas the latest fuel to grow rapidly. At this rate gas may overtake oil as the dominant fuel by 2020 or 2030. The consequence of this succession is that the carbon-hydrogen ratio in the world fuel mix has been falling steadily, because the ratio of carbon to hydrogen atoms is about 10-to-1 in wood, 2-to-1 in coal, 1-to-2 in oil and 1-to-4 in gas. On its current trajectory, the average ratio would reach 90% hydrogen in 2060, having been 90% carbon in 1850. Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University describes this phenomenon as follows:

When my colleagues Cesare Marchetti, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Arnulf Grubler and I discovered decarbonisation in the 1980s, we were pleasantly surprised. When we first spoke of decarbonisation, few believed and many ridiculed the word. Everyone ‘knew‘ the opposite to be true. Now prime ministers and presidents speak of decarbonisation. Neither Queen Victoria nor Abraham Lincoln decreed a policy of decarbonisation. Yet, the energy system pursued it. Human societies pursued decarbonisation for 170+ years before anyone noticed.

Consequently, although increased energy use means that carbon dioxide emissions are rising all the time, the world is nonetheless slowly decarbonising. A sudden and forced acceleration of this decarbonisation is what environmentalists and many politicians are demanding in the name of climate change policy. The argument is that the cost of waiting for decarbonisation to happen of its own accord is higher than the cost of replacing existing fuels with low-carbon alternatives.

However, few of the low-carbon alternatives are ready to take up the challenge on a scale that can make a difference. Nuclear is too slow and costly to build; wind cannot provide sufficient volume of power or reliability; solar is too expensive; biofuel comes at the expense of hunger and high carbon dioxide emissions. All except nuclear (and to a lesser extent solar) require unacceptably vast land grabs. Diverting 5% of the entire world grain crop into the US ethanol program in 2011 will displace just 0.6% of world oil use ; getting 10% of Denmark‘s electricity from wind has saved no net carbon emissions (because of the need for inefficient back-up generation).

The world would do well to heed the advice of Voltaire and not make the best the enemy of the good. Rapid decarbonisation using renewables is not just expensive and environmentally damaging, it is impossible. However, switching as much power generation from coal to gas as possible, and as much transport fuel from oil to gas as possible, would produce rapid and dramatic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

The Shale Gas Shock, Matt Ridley, 2011, http://thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/Shale-Gas_4_May_11.pdf.

As economist Tyler Cowen has noted, the countries that received the most Marshall Plan money (allies Britain, Sweden, and Greece) grew the slowest between 1947 and 1955, while those that received the least money (axis powers Germany, Austria, and Italy) grew the most.

The Marshall Plan Myth, Jeffrey Tucker, September 1997, http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=120 (http://www.gmu.edu/centers/publicchoice/faculty%20pages/Tyler/Marshall_Plan.pdf).

U.S. assistance never exceeded 5% of the GDP of the recipient nations… Moreover, receipt of aid did not track with economic recovery. France, Germany and Italy began to grow before the onset of the Marshall Plan, while Austria and Greece expanded slowly until near the program’s end. Great Britain, the largest aid recipient, performed most poorly.

The Marshall Plan may have been a generous act, but that doesn’t mean it spurred Europe’s recovery. The real lesson of the Marshall Plan is that entrepreneurial culture, legal stability and free markets are necessary for economic success. Liberty, not money, is the key to prosperity.

Since World War II the U.S. alone has provided $1 trillion (in current dollars) in foreign aid to countries around the world. The result? According to the United Nations, 70 countries, aid recipients all, are poorer today than in 1980. An incredible 43 are worse off than in 1970.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany launched its own massive Marshall Plan to rebuild the formerly Communist East. Bonn has spent about $600 billion since 1990; private firms, in response to special government incentives, have invested another $500 billion. The result is mass unemployment and underemployment, low productivity, uncompetitive industry, minimal growth and de facto bankruptcy.

Over the last 30 years, the U.S. has spent about $6 trillion (in today’s dollars) to fight poverty. Yet the poverty rate remains largely unchanged, while families and communities have imploded.

A Look Behind The Marshall Plan Mythology, Doug Bandow, Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6138.