Froz, your links aren't working quite right.

Froz, what we're seeing isn't so much a Wild West mentality as it is rather empty posturing about pretending to be serious, pending agreement on who is going to actually bite the bullet, when and how will it be monitored.

Until shared pain is agreed, everyone is simply postponing the heavy lifting and substituting jawboning instead. No one wants to be economically disadvantaged by acting unilaterally on a matter of common concern if others think it's fine to free ride, while mocking those making efforts. No wonder the EU over-allocated permits.

Classic tragedy of the commons situation, coupled with domestic favor-seeking by insiders.

As a result of stone-walling here, we are years fruther behind the game, which is starting to slip away from us as India and China have embarked on periods of rapid growth that are producing emissions that dwarf what we can expect to easily reduce. There is still alot of hardball ahead of us.

Ron Bailey of Reason summarizes the basic economic analysis in his congratulations to Al Gore. Cass Sunstein points to some of the jockeying that underlies the stalemate.

Unfortunately, it seems that both the climate is changing more rapidly than scientists anticipated and that GHG concentrations are also climbing more rapidly than expected. And Lomborg notwithstanding, no one seems particularly interested in exploring just how the developed world intends to deal with climate change impacts that are expected to hit poorer countires more severely.

Empty posturing and pretending seriousness, agreed, but the wild-west mentality of which I speak is the lovely little business that the REC peddlers have carved out in the vacuum of any meaningful agreed-upon values. Lawlessness, in effect, as unaccountable chicanery.

Perhaps not the best metaphor but the point remains the same.

Oh. And Ron Bailey, as usual, grossly oversimplifies the causes of the problems. Didn't read the whole Sunstein report but what I did of it was very astute.

It's interesting to juxtapose their opposing angles on the 'morality' of the issue...

If your car burns $100 in gas while idling overnight, you really should get a tune up. (Or find the leak in the fuel line.)

I suggest that the USA can go a LONG way by bringing its empire home from all the wars and occupations. And the Navy too, which is corporate welfare for global shipping companies.

And it should cease all subsidies, period, but stop them fastest of all to non-renewable resources. And, instead of allowing companies to mine public BLM land for coal and tar sands, they should sell the land at market value to the resource extraction companies, who would then be far less likely to run fly by night operations and leave land they owned in a state of disaster.

Oil and fossil fuels should be allowed to reach their true market price, which would be much higher than now if it were not for subsidies and deficits. With oil at a higher natural price (and for that matter, even garbage or any other environmentally messy thing), there would be far more incentive for consumers to conserve.

The roads should be pay-per-use. The electronic infrastructure to enable skycars and aero-taxis should be set up; these not only would cut commutes and congestion to a fraction of what they are now, they would get better gas mileage per person--especially if neutrally bouyant, semi-rigid dirigibles were used. Who needs roads anyway.

Finally, the power grid should be radically changed to a paradigm of "supply everyone all the time even when nobody's home" to "individuals or small groups pay as they go."

All of these are solutions to the alleged problem of carbon dioxide / peak oil / waste / etc. that involve decentralization and not a gigantic increase in power to the globocrats and their collectivist goons.

Froz, I think that Ron Bailey helps to explain the basic dynamics quite well - and in a way that can be understood by "conservatives" who are convinced "AGW" is a scam dreamed up by "evironazis" who want to take over the world and/or destroy the US. Ron speaks in words these people can understand.

Generally, the market economy works much better than fiat, though it tends to eat up resources that are not effectively owned or managed.

My problem with Ron is that he doesn't REALLY want to get his hands dirty by contributing to the effort to build appropriate institutions, and would rather stand on the sidelines, both spouting his easy optimism and criticizing those doing the heavy lifting.

The problem with Cass Sunstein's work here is that he underestimates the costs and work that the US must face and couches things in terms guaranteed to minimize domestic political will - you mean the US won't suffer that much on a net basis, but has a moral obligation to transfer wealth to the rest of the world? Yeh, right, I can hear people saying. The real reason for us to act is that it is very much in our interests to do so - not only to dampen climate change but to ameliorate the costs that we are like to face from the damage that climate change will cause elsewhere.

Jon, I agree with you generally that decentralization is generally the right approach - and that we ought to get the government out of the land management business, which is basically a nearly free transfer to extractive industries, who then leave us holding the bag for environmental costs.

However, I am in favor of cooperation at international levels on climate change and developmental problems (caused mainly by misgovernance/kleptocracy/lack of clear and effective property rights), including a carbon levy that replaces payroll taxes.

including a carbon levy

You're just another tax-n-spend liberal...

What can I say - I'm weak-willed and try to blend into every board I visit?

Remember: carbon taxes and tradable carbon permits are formally identical. With permits, the government sets a quantity of emissions and lets the market set the price, while with a tax the government sets the price and lets the market the quantity. For any level of carbon tax, there is a quantity of permits that will produce exactly the same outcome, and vice versa.

Tradable permits are no more (or less) market-based than a tax. Both are more market-based than traditional regulations, but neither is a "true" market. Both require exactly the same enforcement mechanisms -- plants must be monitored to ensure that they are emitting no more carbon than they have permits for, or that they are paying the tax for everything they emit.

In practice, the tax has a couple of big advantages, however. First, the instabilities of any speculative market may result in an inefficient allocation of permits. Second, the permits will tend to migrate to the areas of strict enforcement, while producers in areas with weak enforcement continue emitting without permits. In other words, a permit system is not effective anywhere unless it is enforced everywhere. Whereas a tax system is effective in areas where it is enforced regardless of what happens elsewhere. (Well, producers can still migrate to areas of lax enforcement, but it's a lot easier to more a permit than a power plant.) Finally, under a tax system, if the cost of reducing emissions is lower than expected, then we'll get more reduction, if it's higher than expected, we'll reduce less. Which is logical. Whereas a permit system results in the exact same emissions reduction regardless of how much it costs to achieve.

So while a tax and tradable permits are equivalent in theory, in practice the tax system is almost always better. The only advantage of the permit system I can see is that as a fake market it's more salable to people who believe in the magic of marketplace. But in fact, both approaches involve exactly the same level of government "interference."

Per per use roads is a terrible idea. Toll collection slows down traffic and encourages drivers to take the long way around. Dirigibles? Why not pneumatic tubes or solar powered unicycles?

11-

but they're neutrally buoyant dirigibles! Don't you see?

More seriously, I love how Jon goes on about decentralizing, cutting subsidies, opposing collectivism and then says "the infrastructure should be set up" for his own hobbyhorse. Set up by whom? It's amazing how reliable an indicator the passive voice is for dishonesty or confusion.

and not a gigantic increase in power to the globocrats and their collectivist goons.

No, but it would be a gigantic increase in power to the corporate titans and their goons. Everybody picks their own poison, of course, but given the choice, I pretty much always trust the government more.

...trust...

I don't trust either, as a generalization. Proximity to my influence is a far better determinant of my level of trust than the nature (public versus private) of title. And these secondary ends are both mitigated by awareness that private entities are more economically efficient and public entities are more democratically accountable.

11, 12, 13: To be fair, I think that what Jon is envisioning is what may happen - if the government doesn't get in the way too much.

That the state is an extremely poor planner and subject to all kinds of misincentives (to grow budgets rather than to manage well) and to corrupting "rent-seeking" by powerful insiders should be obvious, but here's someone who rently said it well:

"James Scott's Seeing Like a State ... is an extraordinary well-written and well-argued tour through the various forms of damage that have been done in the twentieth century by centrally-planned social-engineering projects--by what James Scott calls "high modernism" and the attempt to use high modernist principles and practices to build utopia. As such, every economist who reads it will see it as marking the final stage in the intellectual struggle that the Austrian tradition has long waged against apostles of central planning. ... [W]ithin economics even liberal Keynesian social democrats acknowledge that the Austrians won victory in their intellectual debate with the central planners long ago.

"This book marks the final stage because it shows the spread of what every economist would see as "Austrian ideas" into political science, sociology, and anthropology as well.

"No one can finish reading Scott without believing--as Austrians have argued for three-quarters of a century--that centrally-planned social-engineering is not an appropriate mechanism for building a better society."

Any guesses as to who this was? (And just what
do "Austrians" have to say about central planning, anyway?)
And as to how wacky Jon is, can you read these two pieces and tell me how much you disagree?

Lew Rockwell, Jr. “Are Conservatives Crazy?”

Lew Rockwell, Jr., “The Great Conservative Hoax.”

Funny, TokyoTom, I'm about to hop on the NYC subway and go to work. Just imagine how much better it would run if managed by competiting private firms! Uh huh.

the state is an extremely poor planner and subject to all kinds of misincentives

Some times the state does things poorly, sometimes it does them well. In this, it differs not at all from the market, as millions of failed companies and lost investments will attest.

but here's someone who rently said it well:

I assume you mean "recently", but that review was written back in 1999.

As such, every economist who reads it will . . .

No one can finish reading Scott without believing . . . .

I hate bullshit claims like that, whoever says them.

But as long as we're quoting Brad DeLong, how about this paragraph from the same review:

I should note that today almost every single economist--even those who (like me) are profoundly hostile to many of Hayek's arguments (that government regulation of the money supply lies at the root of the business cycle, that political attempts to reduce inequalities in the distribution of income are likely to lead to totalitarianism, that the Federal Reserve should be abolished, that the competitive market is the "natural spontaneous order" of human society)--agrees that Hayek and his company (including Scott) hit the particular nail that is Scott's central theme, the critique of high-modernist centrally-planned social-engineering, squarely on the head.

And this one:

That the conclusion is so strong where the evidence is so weak is, I think, evidence of profound subconscious anxiety: subconscious fear that recognizing that one's book is in the tradition of the Austrian critique of the twentieth century state will commit one to becoming a right-wing inequality-loving Thatcher-worshiping libertarian (even though there are intermediate positions: you can endorse the Austrian critique of central planning without rejecting the mixed economy and the social insurance state).

Lemeul, why not? How great is Amtrak? Would you rather fly a Aeroflot or a private air carrier?

In Japan, private commuter trains are cheaper and run more frequently than the subsways and national railways (and there is remarkable cooperation, especially with private lines and subways).

Just about anything that government can do, it does nore expensively than private firms.

Some times the state does things poorly, sometimes it does them well. In this, it differs not at all from the market, as millions of failed companies and lost investments will attest.

Um, there`s a huge difference. When the government does things poorly, it`s wasting MY money and that of other taxpayers (+ future generations). When companies do, their shareholders lose money - and there`s always another competitor to step into the breach. We need government for some things, but much of its expenditures are a dead-loss weight on the economy - parasitic expenditures that benefit those in power and insiders. Expenditures, risk-taking and innovation in the private sector is what builds wealth.

More and more, the Republicans are just like Dems - on our backs, in our pocketbooks and private lives. It`s a puzzle that you guys don`t notice.

Just about anything that government can do, it does nore expensively than private firms.

But there are plenty of things that societies want to and/or should do for their members that just aren't profitable, or that shouldn't be left to the decisions and whims of private actors.

M/tch, thanks for offering more quotes from DeLong in support of my position about the economists` consensus that government planning doesn`t work.

As other Austrian criticisms, such like criticism of the Fed, economists and others continue to come around to the Austrian view - the Fed creates and exacerbates problems. In a lengthy interview broadcast today on Bloomberg, a well-known investor concluded that "If I were Bernanke I would abolish the Fed and resign":

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aLtnv38BoCaw (the video is in the right column)

More on Austrian views of the Fed here: http://www.mises.org/story/2728

Those were the closing words of Jim Rogers on

the economists` consensus that government planning doesn`t work.

There is no such consensus, unless you're using "government planning" to mean what DeLong calls "high-modernist centrally-planned social-engineering" or, for short, "central planning". That's fine, but that's not what most people, or even most economists, mean when they use the term "government planning".

In a lengthy interview broadcast today on Bloomberg, a well-known investor concluded that "If I were Bernanke I would abolish the Fed and resign":

I imagine industrial polluters say the same thing about the EPA, Tom. Citing the opinions only of the regulated on whether regulation is worthwhile proves next to nothing.

M/tch, I'm surprised that you can be enamoured of government planning at any level outside of one's own neighborhood.

Government "planning" has brought us the Iraq war, the rise and fall of the Shah, an endless embargo of Cuba, all of our disastrous meddling in Latin America, our new "Homeland Security" department, the war on terror/drugs/our basic liberties, a century of wildfire supression, hundreds of billions still being poured into nuclear weapons, and subsidies to interstate highways, automobiles and urban sprawl.

What's not to like?

My philosopy - let those who would plan put their own capital at risk. Government planning isn't always disastrous, but it is always accompanied by a whole host of people trying to maximize their personal interests - more power, more glory, bigger budgets, easy profits etc. - which are difficult to check or steer.

We would be freer and wealthier if we had a lighter government, that wasn't blowing our money on causes that only benefit those in power and their best buddies, that didn't have a military empire, and that wasn't trying to Real ID and S-Chip us all and to listen into all of our communications.

Government "planning" has brought us the Iraq war, the rise and fall of the Shah, an endless embargo of Cuba, all of our disastrous meddling in Latin America, our new "Homeland Security" department, the war on terror/drugs/our basic liberties, a century of wildfire supression, hundreds of billions still being poured into nuclear weapons, and subsidies to interstate highways, automobiles and urban sprawl.

What does "planning" mean to you, Tom? Because from the above it seems that you're using it as a synonym for "action of any sort".

We would be freer and wealthier if we had a lighter government

I'm not sure what you mean by "We". When dealing with people and entities who are wealthier and more powerful than I am and who want to make me less free and poorer, the only fighting chance I've got is representative government.

Yes the wealthy and powerful have undue influence over our government, but if the government shrank or disappeared it's not like the wealthy and powerful would somehow have less power. They'd have more, because they'd be able to exercise it directly on me and others instead of having to go through the process of influencing the government, which is at least somewhat responsive to the rights/concerns/needs of people besides the wealthy and powerful.

If you have some other idea for reigning in the tyranny of the rich and powerful over the rest of us, I'm all ears, but only railing against government power without addressing what to do about other forms of power in our society is, frankly, ridiculous.

but only railing against government power without addressing what to do about other forms of power in our society is, frankly, ridiculous.

Do I have to solve all the world`s problems on one thread? I just thought I was pointing out how those who promote the government are often trying to steal from us or are grossly incompetent, so we ought to be extremely cautious. Yes, there is a role for government in protecting the rule of law and our liberties. Funny how the bigger the government gets, the worse it is at those while protecting its own prerogatives to tell us what to do.

Do I have to solve all the world`s problems on one thread?

No, but your "solution" of weakening the government across the board (as opposed to specifically in relation to, for example, search and seizure powers) doesn't actually do anything to maintain freedom and prosperity, and in fact would make maintaining such more difficult.

Funny how the bigger the government gets, the worse it is at those while protecting its own prerogatives to tell us what to do.

Funny how that's not remotely true. To cite but one example among many, it wasn't the state or local governments who were protecting the voting and other civil rights of African-Americans while the tyrannical Federal Government worked to keep them disenfranchised second-class citizens.

M/tch, I am strongly in favor of using government to protect civil rights and liberties and basic rule of law - the framework for a free and prosperous society.

But the government itself doesn't generate prosperity, but the people, acting voluntarily in their own self-interests. Beyond certain framework expenses and a portion of so-called "public goods" investments, most government expenditure is a dead-weight loss to society. I think it is also easy to see that the bigger the government gets, the more easily it is corrupted by some of the self-same wealthy people who terrify you so much - except with the state they gain greater police power over us and our treasury, and a leg up over competitors.

I understand the urge to seek to wrest control over government from powerful insiders, but as long as government is big so will the temptations and opportunities. Just look at how eager the Republicans were to gerrymander, pork out, lock down government information, push tools of oppression like the Patriot Act, Real ID, gut FISA, expand the war on drugs, and run foreign policy as both a source of political power and for the benefit of defense contractors and other special interests.

It is the urge for lucre and power that led Republicans to so flagrantly abandon their own small government principles and concern for checks and balances. It is only by putting the patient on a diet that we can hope to improve its health - and to roll back some of the threat that it poses to us.

Anybody notice that liberal Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald is drawing attention to and praising Ron Paul`s campaign for limited government, against "the rancid establishment governing the Beltway"? Seems that he would vote for Ron Paul over Hillary.

It may be unlikely that Paul will win the Republican nomination, but I`m rooting for him. In any case, this seems like a statement by one prominent liberal that we should seriously consider taking a big step back from big government.

Let`s hope we don`t run off a cliff first.

From Greenwald's update on that post: "Saying something positive about a specific candidate does not mean that one: (a) is voting for that candidate; (b) is encouraging others to support that candidate;"

Look, if you like Dominionism and the belief that "God's law" supercedes our own, then Ron Paul is your guy. If you think religious fundamentalists should be kept as far from the levers of power as humanly possible (and I do), then you want nothing to do with him, even if he happened to back into a correct position on Iraq. So, of course, have Pat Buchanan and David Duke, but nobody's proposing them as serious candidates.

apo, I'm quite aware of what Greenwald said, but he is obviously both in accord (and on a chord) with what Ron Paul is saying (about how both parties are complicit in a bloated and corrupt federal system in which Congress has become increasingly irrelevant and all of us ever more susceptible to the whims of the commander-in-chief and his torture-approving staff) and trying to shake up the Democratic candidates - and is implicitly stating that a vote for Hillary will be a vote for more of the same. I think he's clearly right.

With a Ron Paul, we would have a more modest AND law-abiding federal government, that would get out foreign wars, the domestic wars on drugs, our privacy and common sense, and out of federal laws on abortion, and more matters pushed down to places where they can be addressed locally - with a federal civil rights laws remaining to be enforced as a check against state abuses.

You may not like your state government, but you have more influence over it that than the federal government, which is increasingly out of control and engendering domestic economic meltdown.

Ron is a principled believer in law and the Constitution. He may believe that our society should also follow "God's law", but he is adamantly opposed to government forcing it down our throats, much less advocating that it "supercede [sp]" our laws.