Australia's leading libertarian and centre-right blog
The issue of the pipeline from Canada to Taxas is shaping as a major factor in the Presidential campaign. Obama has been threatening to veto the Republican push for legislation to enable the project. Some commentators see this as a potential poison pill for Obam’s hopes. Not these greenies.
They are also excited to see that the National Centre for Science Education is joining the fray to repel “climate deniers” who are storming the classrooms of the nation.
Solutioneering is a term invented by a British GP and local councillor to describe the standard practice of ideologues and bureaucrats empowered by Big Government. James Gordon described the process thus: 1 The Solutioneer (S) identifies a Problem (practically any problem will do). 2 It is designated as a Very Big Problem. 3 The Solution is announced. 4 S advises that the rather steep price is not a worry because it is not really a cost, it is an Investment and also it will Cost More to Fix Later. 5 It is a Very Urgent Problem so there can be no delay. 6 Carping critics who claim (a) it is not such a serious problem and (b) there are better and cheaper ways to go are scolded for (a) not knowing anything and (b) being wicked ideologues (and criminally irrresponsible).
In a nutshell, solutioneering is a solution in search of a problem.
Consider the IPCC and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
At a speech celebrating the 20th birthdayof the IPCC the chairman stated “The UNFCCC is our main customer, if I could label them as such, and our interaction with them enriches the relevance of our work” (Laframboise p 79).
The UNFCCC convened in 1992 at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and it turns out that they are the Arch Solutioneers behind the whole climate scam. Nearly 20 years ago they decided that greenhouse gasses are The Problem and 154 nations signed up in principle, followed in due course by the Kyoto Protocol which is a key component of the UNFCCC process.
So for 20 years the UNFCCC had a brief to reduce human emissions and failing to do so would be “nothing less than criminal irresponsibility”. The IPCC is the device to recruit scientists to support the agenda. Observe the steps:
Step one was the political decision that a greenhouse gas treaty was a worthy and achieveable goal. Step two was the recognition that before such a treaty could be negotiated, certain documents – representing a common understanding – were required. Step three involved enlisting scientists to help produce such documents. (p.80)
Laframboise’s point is that the UN did not wait for climate science to mature, 19 years ago political operators in the organization decided on the solution to a problem that legitimate climate scientists never depicted in alarming terms. She notes that the shortest version of the Climate Bible appeard in 1990.
Its findings were tentative. Yet by June 1992, aided by environmental activists, the UN had successfully convinced a majority of the world’s governments to sign a framework document that declared greenhouse gases to be arch villains. ( p 81)
Beware! Solutioneers at work.
Come on Aussie classical liberals, come on! Classical liberalism practically disappeared from the face of the earth during the 20th century and this is reflected in Australian attitudes to economic and social issues. Hair-raising figures but at least we have base in Carlton.
The table below shows the proportion of liberal responses to the six issues. The one person who gave six out of six and the nine people who gave five out of six were rounded down to 0%. Saying three or more liberal answers makes a liberal gets us to 13%, with rounding.
Flashback to the Kevin 07 estimate of the cost of our greenhouse gas policcy. H/t Ivan Denisovich.
Between now and about 2045 you’d be looking at a total impact on the economy of somewhere between $600 and $800 million or something in the vicinity of $45 per person over that period of time or something like $1 per person per year.
RIP Ronald Searle, prolific writer and cartoonist. A late call, he died at the end of December, but what a record of achievement!
He survived the notorious Death Railwaywhile a prisoner-of war of the Japanese in the Second World War to become a well known artist and satirical cartoonist. He is perhaps best best remembered as the creator of St Trinians School and for his collaboration with Geoffrey Willans on the Molesworth series.
Peter Boettke on Australian economics. He is actually talking about Austrian economics but I like to think that Australians showed the way. When Menger launched Austian economics in 1871 Australia led the world in per capita income.
Meet the North Korean press. And South Korean cuisine.
On Line Opinion piece on the Strike Threat System, W H Hutt’s term for the abuse of trade union power, sanctioned by progressive public opinion and supportive legislation, notably the Fair Work Act. That piece is a summary of a longer piece written for the H R Nicholls Society with a lot more details from Hutt’s arguments.
Summary of a piece by Arthur Koestler on the dysfunctional attitudes of the British trade unions and the upper classes (contemptuous of trade and industry) which made England the sick man of Europe before the Thatcher revolution.
In 1956 a Merseyside dispute between joiners and metal-workers about who should drill the holes in aluminium sheets led to a strike which lasted six months and attracted national attention. It was regarded as a kind of music hall joke, an endearing quaintness of characters out of Dickens. Two years later,The Times reported that four hundred men had to be dismissed as redundant, eleven thousand were threatened with the same fate, that production on three vessels and a submarine had to be postponed indefinitely because the boiler-makers and the drillers could not agree who was entitled to use five stud-welding guns designed to weld nuts and thimbles to metal plates. It then transpired that the use of this quick and efficient method had been prevented by this dispute between the two unions for the last twelve years.
The H R Nicholls Society home page. Grace Collier consultant.
Old but Good. A paper on the Aboriginal Stockworkers Award of 1965 that put the skids under the Aborigines in the Northern Territory.
Miscellaneous links. This page was supposed to grow but other things got in the way.
Quadrant magazine for January and February.
Three posts from Conservative Teacher in the US.
The fall in the US unemployment figure reflects increasing numbers of dropouts from the workforce. Participation rates 67% at the turn of the century, 66% in 08, 64% now.
New White House director of a program for Hispanics has past connections with BillAyers.
Some of you may know that I have personally met Bill Ayers, and that that experience may have indirectly led to me losing my first job in education. I had a long interview with Larry Elder on this issue last year, and I’ve posted a briefer version of my experience on my blog (see my post My Experience Meeting Bill Ayers).
Backing Romney for President, Sarah Palin or Condoleeza Rice for VP. Elect a clerk and fill the Houses with responsible reps who will make him address the issues, not an exciting revolution but a solid push in the right direction.
The Doomsday clock is moving on (warning, this is an ABC report).
The last decision by the group, which includes a host of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, moved the clock a minute further away from midnight in 2010 on hopes of global nuclear cooperation and the election of US president Barack Obama. However, the latest decision pushes the clock back to the time it was at in 2007.
Stephen Hicks on the movie Rocket Singh, Salesman of the Year.
Rocket Singh takes up negative themes of corrupt in sales, bribery, and conflicts of interest, but the emphasis is on the positive: the sources of self-respect, win-win business relations, and the spirit of entrepreneurship. I responded to the very human challenges of honesty, integrity, necessity as the mother of invention and ingenuity, growing pains, guts, and semi-redemption.
Lorenzo Warby’s favorite economics blogs.
Jo Nova on the email trail that started to burn down the house of climate alarmism 20 years ago. That reminds me to get back to Donna Laframboise and finish her story. And a sceptical look at ocean acidification.
Ron Paul as an Austrian.
But “Austrians” in Paul’s sense refers to something narrower, specifically the thought of Ludwig Von Mises and his student Murray Rothbard. It is a form of capitalism that is even more libertarian and anarchic than that espoused by many libertarians. Rothbard‘s followers, most prominently longtime Paul associate and founder of the Mises Institute Lew Rockwell, have been waging a decades-long war against the Koch brothers and the more mainstream form of libertarianism the Kochs represent.
Garry Johnson, Presidential candidate, announces that he is a Libertarian. The man of 750 vetos when he was Governor of New Mexico. He wanted to legalise cannabis but the Democrat house would not do it to spite him for his fiscal responsibility. “Lets reduce welfare and warfare, especially corporate welfare”.
A bit of fun from a joyful libertarian. How to keep bossy bureaucrats at bay. Start at 8.30.
Catallaxy’s favorite peripatetic pamphleteer strikes again at the warmies.
Andrew Bolt posts from the Holy Land.
Stand on the top of sheer Masada, probably Israel’s most inspiring and memorable landmark, and you can see the ruins of the palace built by Herod, a king so powerful that historians call him “the Great”.
See, deep below on the plain, the outlines still of the camp of an army of a Roman empire so powerful that it seemed fated to last forever. That empire, too, is long gone. Around you is country over which fought pharaohs, the generals of Alexander the Great, and the great kings of Babylon and Persia .
From the sublime to something else. Vlad Putin sings “Blueberry Hill”. If you are in a hurry fast forward to 1.25.
Is that real or is someone having a lend of us?
Trouble in the Chinese paradise.
“China has uncovered 531bn yuan [AUD$81.5bn] of irregularities in local government debts…
“There are growing concerns about the amount of bad loans being held by local governments.”
Organizations and Markets, top posts for 2011. Viva les French Fries.
Most people don’t know that France is McDonald’s second-most popular market, despite the presumed French distaste for les choses américaine. Knowledge @ Whaton has a nice piece suggesting that the firm’s willingness to cater to French tastes explains its success over local and multinational rivals.
French fries of a different kind. Tim Blair on car burning as recreation.
Ruminations by a Tintin fan. I had a deprived childhood, only finding Tintin when I had children of my own. Still, better late than never.
So the new Tintin movie, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, opened in Australia on Boxing Day. As a die-hard fan of Tintin, the creation of Georges Remi known as Hergé (1907-1983), I will have to see it, though I have serious doubts that the movie can remotely match my expectations given it originates from books that are amongst the most favorite in my life.
Baa Bas the elephant is fun as well. Not to mention Pooh Bear.
Climate realist puts his house on the line in a legal case against the hockey stick evidence hiders.
John O’Sullivan is putting in above and beyond what any single skeptical soul ought to. He’s already been a key figure helping Tim Ball in the legal fight with the UVA establishment, which has spent over a million dollars helping Michael Mann to hide emails. The case was launched by Michael Mann, but could turn out to do a huge favor to skeptics — the discovery process is a powerful tool, and we all know who has been hiding their methods, their data, and their work-related correspondence.
Two weeks in Israel with a mob of Christians and Jews. [0ld news but possibly of interest to supplement Andrew Bolt's impressions.]
Stanislav Andreski’s best-known book is Social Sciences as Sorcery which should be on your shelf alongside Barzun’s The House of Intellect and The Sociological Imagination by C Wright Mills. It was popular among sociologists who I met in the 1970s but they must have thought that the criticisms only applied to other schools of thought in the subject, not their own. A word of warning, he was far too soft on the logical positivists in the philosophy of science, and also Keynes in economics.
A few years ago there was a photo of Andreski on the net, at a conference of the Libertarian Alliance in Britain but it cannot be found now. He was a striking figure with the build of a rugy league second row forward and filmstar looks. He was very lucky to be alive because he should have died in the Katyn forest during WW2.
He was born into the family of a Polish merchant and he studied economics at Poznan University until he was mobilised as an officer cadet and sent to the eastern front in 1939. He was captured by the Soviets but managed to escape and pass through Soviet and German occupation zones back to Poznan. Both sides would have regarded him as an enemy, ripe for capture and quite likely execution. On New Year’s eve, 1940, with a friend, he crossed the “green border” Slovakia (controlled by the Germans) and travelled by train to Hungary. Without visas or travel documents they pretended to read German newspapers, and, taken for Germans, they were left alone.
In Britain he joined the Free Polish Forces. He studies in Britain and South Africa, lectured in Chile, Nigeria, the US, Canada and Japan, and founded the department of sociology at Reading University in 1964, where he remained there as professor and then head of department until his retirement in 1984.
Searching my favorites for some stored links on the remarkable Stanislav Andreski (post pending) this one turned up.
A piece in the New York Times in 1999 warning that the increased involvement of Fannie and Freddie plus equal opportunity lending was fueling a situation that would end in tears when the music of increasing house prices stopped.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.
”From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”
I seem to recall a piece in the same paper that cited alleged figures for the amount of suspect loans backed by Freddie and Fannie, also pointing out the eventual bailout would make the thrift industry (savings and loans) buyout look like small change. That was about $200 Billion so they got it pretty right. Bush tried to get the Fannie and Freddie books opened to public scrutiny but was blocked by the Dems.
What is wrong with the discipline that is nowadays taught in most universities under the misleading label of economics is not that the teachers and the authors of the textbooks are either not businessmen or failed in their business enterprises. The fault is with their ignorance of economics and with their inability to think logically.
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