THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR August 25, 2019 at 1:13 pm
Paul Plante says:
For the record, “climate” is nothing more than the average course or condition of the weather at a place usually over a period of years as exhibited by temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation, so clearly, and really, this is very basic high school earth science, not rocket science, the earth, the ball spinning through space that we all occupy, in theory, at least, DOES NOT have a climate to change, and talking about the earth’s “climate” is nothing more than absurd crazy talk.
What the earth does have is climatic zones, either three, those being tropical, temperate, and polar, or possibly five, i.e., tropical around the Equator which are hot and humid; arid like you’d find in deserts; Mediterranean; temperate; continental; and polar, which does absolutely nothing to describe totally the climatic conditions you would find in any of those zones.
For example, Cape Charles, said to be more pleasant year-round than Pasadena, California or San Diego, is essentially surrounded by large bodies of water which control local MICRO-CLIMATES, which is what the earthy really has, a multitude of micro-climates, not a “climate,” so its climate, and consequently, its temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation, are controlled by ocean currents, which are very slow to change, given the mass involved.
Not so, however, as one moves due west from Cape Charles far enough to get away from the effects of the ocean or Chesapeake Bay, which incidentally appears to have some of its own issues due to temperature, which is an element of climate, so that it is land, and not water affecting the climate, and consequently, temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation.
On land, you can have two locations within fifteen or twenty miles from each other with totally different “climates,” i.e. temperature, wind velocity, and precipitation, so this whole bidness of “modeling” the “earth’s climate” is a bunch of pure horse****.
Just as is saying that the activities of mankind have no effect on the earth’s “climate,” given there is no such thing in the first place.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-170280
ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
WHAT WE REALLY NEED TO FEAR IN THIS COUNTRY IS THE GROSS STUPIDITY THAT IS OVERWHELMING US WITH AN ENDURING STATE OF BENIGHTED IGNORANCE AS IS EXAMPLED IN THIS CAPE CHARLES MIRROR EDITORIAL THAT BEGINS THIS THREAD ...THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR August 18, 2019
The Danger and Fraud of Eco-Pessimism
By Wayne Creed
It was Simon’s contention that eco-pessimists ignore history, misunderstand finiteness, thinks statically, has a vested interest in doom and is complacent about human innovation.
Almost everything we read about the environment now is ignoring the poor track record of eco-pessimists – this should produce some skepticism about global warming claims today.
The reality is, it’s hard to find actual data – and not models that show either unprecedented change or change is that is anywhere close to causing real harm.
Simon was also critical of the environmental movement and the scientific community.
He understood that they are competitive free markets in which there is intense competition for donations, grants, and subsidies.
The so-called Green movement generates billions of dollars annually, basically by scaring people.
If they said that climate change is a very slow, gentle process that takes hundreds of years to affect anything, I doubt the donations would be as generous.
We need not fear the climate, only fear itself.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... pessimism/
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Summer on the Swollen Great Lakes"
Mitch Smith and Lyndon French
25 AUGUST 2019
CHICAGO — Two rare birds, a major music festival and an overflowing Lake Michigan all claimed a beach on Chicago’s North Side.
But there was not enough sand to go around.
The lake, which rose to levels not seen in decades, formed lagoons where sunbathers once lounged.
The festival, which would have featured disco yoga sessions and musicians across three stages, was canceled.
And the birds, one of only about 75 mating pairs of the endangered piping plover left in the Great Lakes region, lost their nest in the rising water.
With help from more than 180 volunteers who kept curious humans and errant volleyballs at a distance, the tiny, photogenic plovers recently built a new nest further inland, away from the swollen waters, and mated again.
Three chicks hatched.
Two survived.
“How do we make things succeed even in the face of the most daunting challenges?” said Tamima Itani, who some weeks spent 20 to 30 hours protecting the piping plovers, including one harrowing moment when an off-leash dog ran straight toward the chicks.
Across the Great Lakes, high water levels have upended summer, swallowing beaches, closing in on century-old buildings and threatening wildlife.
“Long term, I don’t know how anybody along the lakeshore deals with it,” said Mitch Foster, the city manager in Ludington, Mich., where the rising water has closed roads, damaged homes and seeped into a museum.
There have been benefits, including for massive shipping freighters, which have been able to haul heavier loads across Lake Superior.
Mostly, though, the high waters have caused concern, like on Lake Ontario, where the New York National Guard was called in to help with flood control, and along Lake Erie, where water has spilled into the streets.
The higher water, which set records this summer on some Great Lakes, could be part of an expensive new normal.
Though water levels have always fluctuated, scientists have suggested that in the coming decades climate change could cause higher highs, with periods of intense rainfall and snow, and lower lows, with times of warmer temperatures and increased evaporation.
To understand how extreme lake levels have reshaped life on the water, a New York Times reporter and photographer drove around Lake Michigan.
Over 1,234 miles, four states, two time zones and 34 counties, there were crowded hotels, packed beaches and landscapes worthy of a magazine cover.
But in town after town, higher waters were leaving damage, interrupting routines and stirring fears that the worst may be yet to come.
Clinging to the Edge
OGDEN DUNES, Ind. — When storms send Lake Michigan’s waves crashing into Steve Coombs’s windows, his house shakes and his dog hides.
Once separated from the lake by a generous, sandy beach, Mr. Coombs’s house and dozens of others in the town of Ogden Dunes, about an hour’s drive from Chicago, are now protected by little more than a faltering sea wall and a small patio.
Mr. Coombs fears that his house could eventually fall into the water.
“It is so unnerving,” he said.
The beach at Ogden Dunes was starving for sand long before lake levels rose — a product, residents and local officials believe, of a port that juts into the lake nearby, shifting the natural process that reshapes their beach over time.
(Officials at the port say that it has no role in the sand shortage, and that other factors are to blame.)
Now rising lake levels have accelerated erosion.
Public walkways to the beach now lead straight into the water.
Homeowners fear that their properties will never sell.
Local officials say they would need government permits and millions of dollars to fix the problem and pump sand onto the beach.
So far, help has not come.
Residents of Ogden Dunes only need to glance a few dozen yards down the lake to imagine what the future may hold.
There, in Portage, Ind., a multimillion-dollar beachfront development opened to great fanfare 11 years ago, but parts of the sidewalk and waterfront walkway have vanished into water.
Sand dunes have been sliced open.
Most of the beach is gone.
Ferries Instead of Bridges
LUDINGTON, Mich. — Every few days, workers in Ludington pump out lake water that has infiltrated the sewer system and spilled onto an intersection.
About 12 hours later, after they finish pumping, the water is back.
It is a thankless, endless task — and one that is unlikely to be enough to save some roads and sidewalks in Ludington, about halfway up Michigan’s Lower Peninsula.
In Ludington and other places around the lake, infrastructure damage is complicating daily life and growing worse as long as the water stays high.
In Wisconsin, docks are underwater.
On Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, perch have been spotted swimming up sidewalks.
And in Pentwater, Mich., a short drive from Ludington, an inland bridge made inaccessible by the rising water has cut off one side of town from the other.
In an effort to spare residents a lengthy detour, Pentwater bought a ferry this summer and started offering free rides across Pentwater Lake, just off Lake Michigan.
“It’s seamless,” said Marjory Basile, who now rides the ferry from her cottage to the yacht club and the grocery store, and who had been bracing for an onerous summer of detours.
The scope and expense of the region’s damage may not be known for months.
Mr. Foster, the Ludington city manager, said he was bracing for new sidewalks and roads and improvements to the harbor, as well as sinkholes to repair after the water drops.
“What happens when the water level goes back down and all those systems dry out?” Mr. Foster said.
“They have been inundated with water for a year now or more."
"They have saturated the groundwater."
"They have saturated everything.”
Keeping Fishtown Above Water
LELAND, Mich. — Fishtown, a set of wooden shanties where visitors can shop for T-shirts and sandwiches or watch commercial fishermen set off on boats, links today’s tourist-focused Lake Michigan to the region’s grittier fishing past.
Rising water threatens both.
In Leland, on the northeast side of the lake, one shanty, dating to 1903, was covered in water from Lake Michigan and an inland dam most of the summer.
Parts of the dock have been engulfed.
At a nearby hotel, a room flooded in the middle of the night a few weeks ago and sandbags wait at the ready in case another surge comes.
Amanda Holmes, the executive director of the Fishtown Preservation Society, a nonprofit group that owns most of the shanties, said that high water has made repairs urgent.
Shanties need to be elevated.
The docks need to be raised.
Construction is scheduled to start in October, but hundreds of thousands of dollars are still needed.
The nonprofit’s pitch to donors: “Your gift,” it said online, “will keep Fishtown literally above water.”
Bracing for Winter
GLADSTONE, Mich. — Winter comes early and stays late in Gladstone, near the top of Lake Michigan.
During the fast-fleeting summer, residents grimaced through the hassle of soggy sand volleyball courts.
They jogged in the streets after a nature trail was battered by water.
And they wrestled to fill their boats with gas even when the marina pumps were partly underwater.
But if water levels do not drop before the lake freezes, the problems could turn much worse.
Nicole Sanderson, the city’s parks and recreation director, fears major damage.
Sheet piling in the municipal harbor could sustain significant damage when the water freezes and expands.
“We’re really trying to weigh out what should we try to protect, what should we just take as a loss, what can we just keep our fingers crossed for,” she said.
The good news for Ms. Sanderson is that the Army Corps of Engineers, which monitors lake levels, expects the water to drop enough to stave off the worst of the damage.
The bad news: Forecasting lake levels months in advance is an imperfect science, and her city remains exposed, especially if there is a rainy fall or an early freeze.
On some of the Great Lakes, water has started to recede from the summer crest.
But it remains at some of the highest levels on record.
“There’s really nothing you can do to stop Lake Michigan,” Ms. Sanderson said.
A Hayride on the Lake
BAILEYS HARBOR, Wis. — The Poseidon plows through Lake Michigan every 15 minutes or so, carrying sightseers across 100 yards of water to the Cana Island Lighthouse, a beloved attraction that only recently became an actual island.
The lighthouse, a 150-year-old white tower that shines roughly 18 miles into the Wisconsin night, was long accessible by a narrow causeway that tourists could walk across without getting their socks wet.
As the lake rose, the pathway vanished.
Worried about losing tourists, the group that manages Cana Island, located about 175 miles northeast of Milwaukee, had to improvise.
They leased Poseidon, a bright-green John Deere tractor that pulls a wagon with bench seating, sort of like a hayride through a lake.
The tractor has been a hit with visitors, especially children, who prefer a water ride to a walk.
And it has kept the lighthouse open.
“Nothing swims like a Deere,” said Hal Wilson, who manages the site.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topsto ... P17#page=2
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
Julian Simon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Julian Lincoln Simon (February 12, 1932 – February 8, 1998) was an American professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute at the time of his death, after previously serving as a longtime economics and business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Simon wrote many books and articles, mostly on economic subjects.
He is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration.
His work covers cornucopian views on lasting economic benefits from natural resources and continuous population growth, even despite limited or finite physical resources, empowered by human ingenuity, substitutes, and technological progress.
He is also known for the famous Simon–Ehrlich wager, a bet he made with ecologist Paul R. Ehrlich.
Ehrlich bet that the prices for five metals would increase over a decade, while Simon took the opposite stance.
Simon won the bet, as the prices for the metals sharply declined during that decade.
Personal life
Simon was married to Rita James Simon, who was also a longtime member of the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and later became a public affairs professor at American University.
Simon suffered for a long time from depression, which allowed him to work only a few productive hours in a day.
He also studied psychology of depression and wrote a book on overcoming it.
Simon was Jewish.
He died of a heart attack at his home in Chevy Chase in 1998 at age 65.
Theory
Simon's 1981 book The Ultimate Resource is a criticism of what was then the conventional wisdom on resource scarcity, published within the context of the cultural background created by the best-selling and highly influential book The Population Bomb in 1968 by Paul R. Ehrlich and The Limits to Growth analysis published in 1972.
The Ultimate Resource challenged the conventional wisdom on population growth, raw-material scarcity and resource consumption.
Simon argues that our notions of increasing resource-scarcity ignore the long-term declines in wage-adjusted raw material prices.
Viewed economically, he argues, increasing wealth and technology make more resources available; although supplies may be limited physically they may be regarded as economically indefinite as old resources are recycled and new alternatives are assumed to be developed by the market.
Simon challenged the notion of an impending Malthusian catastrophe — that an increase in population has negative economic consequences; that population is a drain on natural resources; and that we stand at risk of running out of resources through over-consumption.
Simon argues that population is the solution to resource scarcities and environmental problems, since people and markets innovate.
His ideas were praised by Nobel Laureate economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the latter in a 1998 foreword to The Ultimate Resource II, but they have also attracted critics such as Paul R. Ehrlich, Albert Allen Bartlett and Herman Daly.
Simon examined different raw materials, especially metals and their prices in historical times.
He assumed that besides temporary shortfalls, in the long run prices for raw materials remain at similar levels or even decrease.
E.g. aluminium was never as expensive as before 1886 and steel used for medieval armor carried a much higher price tag in current dollars than any modern parallel.
A recent discussion of commodity index long-term trends supported his positions.
His 1984 book The Resourceful Earth (co-edited by Herman Kahn), is a similar criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth and resource consumption and a direct response to the Global 2000 report.
For example, it predicted that "There is no compelling reason to believe that world oil prices will rise in the coming decades."
"In fact, prices may well fall below current levels".
Indeed, oil prices trended downward for nearly the next 2 decades, before rising above 1984 levels in about 2003 or 2004.
Oil prices have subsequently risen and fallen, and risen again.
In 2008, the price of crude oil reached $100 per barrel, a level last attained in the 1860s (inflation adjusted).
Later in 2008, the price again sharply fell, to a low of about $40, before rising again to a high around $125.
Since mid-2011, prices were slowly trending downward until the middle of 2014, but falling dramatically until the end of 2015 to ca. $30.
Since then prices were relatively stable (below $50).
Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, the latter primarily because of the perceived rapid switch from fears of global cooling and a new ice age (in the mid-1970s) to the later fears of global warming.
Simon also listed numerous claims about alleged environmental damage and health dangers from pollution as "definitely disproved".
These included claims about lead pollution & IQ, DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos, and the chemical contamination at Love Canal.
He dismissed such concerns as a mere "value judgement."
But also, to a startling degree, the decision about whether the overall effect of a child or migrant is positive or negative depends on the values of whoever is making the judgment – your preference to spend a dollar now rather than to wait for a dollar-plus-something in twenty or thirty years, your preferences for having more or fewer wild animals alive as opposed to more or fewer human beings alive, and so on.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Simon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Julian Lincoln Simon (February 12, 1932 – February 8, 1998) was an American professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute at the time of his death, after previously serving as a longtime economics and business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Simon wrote many books and articles, mostly on economic subjects.
He is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration.
His work covers cornucopian views on lasting economic benefits from natural resources and continuous population growth, even despite limited or finite physical resources, empowered by human ingenuity, substitutes, and technological progress.
He is also known for the famous Simon–Ehrlich wager, a bet he made with ecologist Paul R. Ehrlich.
Ehrlich bet that the prices for five metals would increase over a decade, while Simon took the opposite stance.
Simon won the bet, as the prices for the metals sharply declined during that decade.
Personal life
Simon was married to Rita James Simon, who was also a longtime member of the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and later became a public affairs professor at American University.
Simon suffered for a long time from depression, which allowed him to work only a few productive hours in a day.
He also studied psychology of depression and wrote a book on overcoming it.
Simon was Jewish.
He died of a heart attack at his home in Chevy Chase in 1998 at age 65.
Theory
Simon's 1981 book The Ultimate Resource is a criticism of what was then the conventional wisdom on resource scarcity, published within the context of the cultural background created by the best-selling and highly influential book The Population Bomb in 1968 by Paul R. Ehrlich and The Limits to Growth analysis published in 1972.
The Ultimate Resource challenged the conventional wisdom on population growth, raw-material scarcity and resource consumption.
Simon argues that our notions of increasing resource-scarcity ignore the long-term declines in wage-adjusted raw material prices.
Viewed economically, he argues, increasing wealth and technology make more resources available; although supplies may be limited physically they may be regarded as economically indefinite as old resources are recycled and new alternatives are assumed to be developed by the market.
Simon challenged the notion of an impending Malthusian catastrophe — that an increase in population has negative economic consequences; that population is a drain on natural resources; and that we stand at risk of running out of resources through over-consumption.
Simon argues that population is the solution to resource scarcities and environmental problems, since people and markets innovate.
His ideas were praised by Nobel Laureate economists Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the latter in a 1998 foreword to The Ultimate Resource II, but they have also attracted critics such as Paul R. Ehrlich, Albert Allen Bartlett and Herman Daly.
Simon examined different raw materials, especially metals and their prices in historical times.
He assumed that besides temporary shortfalls, in the long run prices for raw materials remain at similar levels or even decrease.
E.g. aluminium was never as expensive as before 1886 and steel used for medieval armor carried a much higher price tag in current dollars than any modern parallel.
A recent discussion of commodity index long-term trends supported his positions.
His 1984 book The Resourceful Earth (co-edited by Herman Kahn), is a similar criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth and resource consumption and a direct response to the Global 2000 report.
For example, it predicted that "There is no compelling reason to believe that world oil prices will rise in the coming decades."
"In fact, prices may well fall below current levels".
Indeed, oil prices trended downward for nearly the next 2 decades, before rising above 1984 levels in about 2003 or 2004.
Oil prices have subsequently risen and fallen, and risen again.
In 2008, the price of crude oil reached $100 per barrel, a level last attained in the 1860s (inflation adjusted).
Later in 2008, the price again sharply fell, to a low of about $40, before rising again to a high around $125.
Since mid-2011, prices were slowly trending downward until the middle of 2014, but falling dramatically until the end of 2015 to ca. $30.
Since then prices were relatively stable (below $50).
Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, the latter primarily because of the perceived rapid switch from fears of global cooling and a new ice age (in the mid-1970s) to the later fears of global warming.
Simon also listed numerous claims about alleged environmental damage and health dangers from pollution as "definitely disproved".
These included claims about lead pollution & IQ, DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos, and the chemical contamination at Love Canal.
He dismissed such concerns as a mere "value judgement."
But also, to a startling degree, the decision about whether the overall effect of a child or migrant is positive or negative depends on the values of whoever is making the judgment – your preference to spend a dollar now rather than to wait for a dollar-plus-something in twenty or thirty years, your preferences for having more or fewer wild animals alive as opposed to more or fewer human beings alive, and so on.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Simon
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR August 27, 2019 at 11:00 am
Paul Plante says :
* Julian Lincoln Simon, an American professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato who served as a longtime economics and business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is dead and has been dead for 20 years;
* Julian Lincoln Simon was not an engineer, nor was he a scientist, nor did he have any technical or scientific training that would qualify him as any kind of expert on weather and climate;
* Julian Lincoln Simon wrote books and articles, mostly on economic subjects, not on climate or weather;
* Julian Lincoln Simon is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration, not on climate or weather;
* Julian Lincoln Simon suffered for a long time from depression, which allowed him to work only a few productive hours in a day, which would severely limit his personal studies of climate and weather, which there is no evidence he ever conducted in the first place;
* Simon’s 1981 book The Ultimate Resource was a criticism of what was then the conventional wisdom on resource scarcity, not climate or weather;
* His 1984 book The Resourceful Earth was a criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth and resource consumption, with nothing to do with climate or weather;
* Twenty-five (25) years ago, Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, although he never produced a lick of evidence to support his skepticism;
* Simon dismissed concerns about lead pollution & IQ, (think Flint and Newark), DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos, and the chemical contamination at Love Canal as mere “value judgement,” which makes him out to be either a sociopath or psychopath.
ERGO, the writings and maunderings of the long dead Julian Simon DO NOT support the
conclusion in the OP that “We need not fear the climate, only fear itself.”
Editor's Note:
This is one of the worst takes ever posted to the Mirror, the only thing missing is some anti-Semitic tropes to go along with the rest of this…
Oh yeah, and let’s trash him for his depression.
It’s kind of scary, but Simon’s critics, the ones that he has proven wrong, said a lot of the same things.
Not sure you want to be part of that group.
What’s even more concerning, is that so much of this goes right past you…you criticize Simon for being an economist and not a climate scientist, but you miss the fact that his arguments are really economic.
That’s like claiming Kant’s work on metaphysics is worthless because he’s not a theologian.
You paste stuff from wikipedia, but I’m not sure you understand it.
You act like Simon was in favor of polluting the earth, which was never the case.
His point was, in the big picture, DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos are not a big deal…we’ll figure something out, and we did.
We’re still here, just like he said we would be, and we are thriving, living longer, healthier and more comfortably, using the best resources at our disposal to do so.
Oh, and DDT, how many people died because we stopped using it?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-170879
Paul Plante says :
* Julian Lincoln Simon, an American professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato who served as a longtime economics and business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is dead and has been dead for 20 years;
* Julian Lincoln Simon was not an engineer, nor was he a scientist, nor did he have any technical or scientific training that would qualify him as any kind of expert on weather and climate;
* Julian Lincoln Simon wrote books and articles, mostly on economic subjects, not on climate or weather;
* Julian Lincoln Simon is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration, not on climate or weather;
* Julian Lincoln Simon suffered for a long time from depression, which allowed him to work only a few productive hours in a day, which would severely limit his personal studies of climate and weather, which there is no evidence he ever conducted in the first place;
* Simon’s 1981 book The Ultimate Resource was a criticism of what was then the conventional wisdom on resource scarcity, not climate or weather;
* His 1984 book The Resourceful Earth was a criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth and resource consumption, with nothing to do with climate or weather;
* Twenty-five (25) years ago, Simon was skeptical, in 1994, of claims that human activity caused global environmental damage, notably in relation to CFCs, ozone depletion and climate change, although he never produced a lick of evidence to support his skepticism;
* Simon dismissed concerns about lead pollution & IQ, (think Flint and Newark), DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos, and the chemical contamination at Love Canal as mere “value judgement,” which makes him out to be either a sociopath or psychopath.
ERGO, the writings and maunderings of the long dead Julian Simon DO NOT support the
conclusion in the OP that “We need not fear the climate, only fear itself.”
Editor's Note:
This is one of the worst takes ever posted to the Mirror, the only thing missing is some anti-Semitic tropes to go along with the rest of this…
Oh yeah, and let’s trash him for his depression.
It’s kind of scary, but Simon’s critics, the ones that he has proven wrong, said a lot of the same things.
Not sure you want to be part of that group.
What’s even more concerning, is that so much of this goes right past you…you criticize Simon for being an economist and not a climate scientist, but you miss the fact that his arguments are really economic.
That’s like claiming Kant’s work on metaphysics is worthless because he’s not a theologian.
You paste stuff from wikipedia, but I’m not sure you understand it.
You act like Simon was in favor of polluting the earth, which was never the case.
His point was, in the big picture, DDT, PCBs, malathion, Agent Orange, asbestos are not a big deal…we’ll figure something out, and we did.
We’re still here, just like he said we would be, and we are thriving, living longer, healthier and more comfortably, using the best resources at our disposal to do so.
Oh, and DDT, how many people died because we stopped using it?
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-170879
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
With respect to right-wing or conservative hysteria-mongering along with their slavish devotion to Julian Simon, their guru or cult leader, and the closed-minded "thinking" of the science deniers, if it can be even called "thinking," as opposed to lashing out mindlessly while parroting talking points, I was going to continue the piece on Julian Simon, but this above exchange on the Cape Charles Mirror with respect to a rational rebuttal of the Op-Ed which starts this thread just came to my attention, and thinking it relevant to the discussion, which it most certainly is with regard to the comments of the editor, I thought I would take the time to post it now, and then get back to Julian Simon ..THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR August 27, 2019 at 11:00 am
Editor:
It’s kind of scary, but Simon’s critics, the ones that he has proven wrong, said a lot of the same things.
Not sure you want to be part of that group.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-170879
And so ...
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
THE ECONOMIST
"Julian Lincoln Simon, an optimistic economist, died on February 8th, aged 65"
Feb 19th 1998
FOR those who have not heard it before, here is the best story about Julian Simon.
In 1980, Mr Simon challenged the popular (and still widely held) view that there were limits to growth; in particular that the earth's natural resources were becoming so scarce that they would become ever costlier.
He offered to bet that the prices of raw materials would actually fall.
Paul Ehrlich, a fierce critic of further growth, took up the bet.
The two men agreed to check the prices of five metals — copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten — in ten years' time.
In 1990, as Mr Simon had predicted, all had fallen in price, even without allowing for inflation.
Mr Ehrlich paid up in settlement of the modest, but much-publicised, bet, grumbling that it was “a matter of marginal environmental importance”.
Marginal or not, it neatly illustrated Mr Simon's contention that the threat of high prices for seemingly essential materials would encourage the search for new supplies or alternatives.
His confidence in the ingenuity of mankind to overcome its problems and so progress is the theme of his most influential book, “The Ultimate Resource”, first published in 1981.
The ultimate resource, he says, is people, “skilled, spirited and hopeful people who will exert their will and imaginations for their own benefit, and so, inevitably, for the benefit of us all.”
That had been the experience of mankind since Eden and there was no reason why it should not continue indefinitely.
So there.
Burn the heretic
His prose has an infectious friendliness.
“This chapter and the next are tougher reading than most of the others, but I hope you will bear with them."
"Read them when your mind is fresh, perhaps.”
From time to time throughout the book he pauses for breath and allows the reader to catch up by providing summaries of the argument so far.
He is, you feel, a dedicated teacher prepared to be endlessly patient with a not very bright class.
Sometimes he seemed to despair (he wrote a book about overcoming depression) but he never gave up.
Understandably, such persistence inflamed his critics.
For them, the growth question, the environment, pollution, the fate of the great globe itself, had become a cause of religious intensity, and the optimistic Mr Simon was a heretic to be put to the pyre.
Julian Simon compounded his heresy by pooh-poohing the alarms over global warming; and, even worse, seeming to be unconcerned about the world's ever growing population, which has alarmed economists since Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) claimed that the world was facing starvation as it filled up with people.
Mr Simon pointed out that India, once seen by Malthusians as a hopeless case, fated to be increasingly hungry, could now feed itself.
The world could indeed accommodate a lot more people, he said, because future generations would produce enough geniuses to solve the problems that more people would cause.
This is dangerous territory.
Some experts take the view that more people mean more problems.
But every economist is also a human being subverted by his prejudices.
Mr Simon was opposed to birth control, although not for reasons of faith: he was a Jew, not a Roman Catholic.
He just felt it was wrong, but he sought to give some logic to his prejudice by asking how many Mozarts, Michelangelos and Einsteins had been lost to the world by birth control.
A tricky question.
Are Michelangelos the inevitable products of fecund communities or the fortunate accidents of small and specialised civilisations?
But such interesting exchanges, in the view of his critics, only gave Mr Simon respectability.
Personal attacks seemed more rewarding.
His doctorate at the University of Chicago had been in business economics.
He had run a mail-order business and worked for an advertising agency.
What respect for truth could you expect from a businessman?
Mr Simon was happy to acknowledge that he had once touched the real world in commerce (and in the United States navy, where he spent three years), although in fact nearly all his adult career was in academe.
In reference books he called himself an “economics educator”.
He wrote about 30 books and was in demand on the university circuit as a speaker.
Those who declined to be educated he called “doomsayers”.
Among the broad range of Americans, anyway, he seemed to be winning.
In Fortune magazine he was listed as one of the “150 great minds of the 1990s”.
In “The State of Humanity”, a book published in 1996 for the Cato Institute, a Washington organisation passionate for the free market, he made two predictions for the coming century.
One was guaranteed to upset every right-thinking pessimistic economist:
that “humanity's condition will improve in just about every material way,” whether it was life expectancy, the price of a natural resource or the number of telephones in China.
The other prediction was that “humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse.”
At least Julian Simon might carry the day for that view.
https://www.economist.com/obituary/1998 ... lian-simon
"Julian Lincoln Simon, an optimistic economist, died on February 8th, aged 65"
Feb 19th 1998
FOR those who have not heard it before, here is the best story about Julian Simon.
In 1980, Mr Simon challenged the popular (and still widely held) view that there were limits to growth; in particular that the earth's natural resources were becoming so scarce that they would become ever costlier.
He offered to bet that the prices of raw materials would actually fall.
Paul Ehrlich, a fierce critic of further growth, took up the bet.
The two men agreed to check the prices of five metals — copper, chrome, nickel, tin and tungsten — in ten years' time.
In 1990, as Mr Simon had predicted, all had fallen in price, even without allowing for inflation.
Mr Ehrlich paid up in settlement of the modest, but much-publicised, bet, grumbling that it was “a matter of marginal environmental importance”.
Marginal or not, it neatly illustrated Mr Simon's contention that the threat of high prices for seemingly essential materials would encourage the search for new supplies or alternatives.
His confidence in the ingenuity of mankind to overcome its problems and so progress is the theme of his most influential book, “The Ultimate Resource”, first published in 1981.
The ultimate resource, he says, is people, “skilled, spirited and hopeful people who will exert their will and imaginations for their own benefit, and so, inevitably, for the benefit of us all.”
That had been the experience of mankind since Eden and there was no reason why it should not continue indefinitely.
So there.
Burn the heretic
His prose has an infectious friendliness.
“This chapter and the next are tougher reading than most of the others, but I hope you will bear with them."
"Read them when your mind is fresh, perhaps.”
From time to time throughout the book he pauses for breath and allows the reader to catch up by providing summaries of the argument so far.
He is, you feel, a dedicated teacher prepared to be endlessly patient with a not very bright class.
Sometimes he seemed to despair (he wrote a book about overcoming depression) but he never gave up.
Understandably, such persistence inflamed his critics.
For them, the growth question, the environment, pollution, the fate of the great globe itself, had become a cause of religious intensity, and the optimistic Mr Simon was a heretic to be put to the pyre.
Julian Simon compounded his heresy by pooh-poohing the alarms over global warming; and, even worse, seeming to be unconcerned about the world's ever growing population, which has alarmed economists since Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) claimed that the world was facing starvation as it filled up with people.
Mr Simon pointed out that India, once seen by Malthusians as a hopeless case, fated to be increasingly hungry, could now feed itself.
The world could indeed accommodate a lot more people, he said, because future generations would produce enough geniuses to solve the problems that more people would cause.
This is dangerous territory.
Some experts take the view that more people mean more problems.
But every economist is also a human being subverted by his prejudices.
Mr Simon was opposed to birth control, although not for reasons of faith: he was a Jew, not a Roman Catholic.
He just felt it was wrong, but he sought to give some logic to his prejudice by asking how many Mozarts, Michelangelos and Einsteins had been lost to the world by birth control.
A tricky question.
Are Michelangelos the inevitable products of fecund communities or the fortunate accidents of small and specialised civilisations?
But such interesting exchanges, in the view of his critics, only gave Mr Simon respectability.
Personal attacks seemed more rewarding.
His doctorate at the University of Chicago had been in business economics.
He had run a mail-order business and worked for an advertising agency.
What respect for truth could you expect from a businessman?
Mr Simon was happy to acknowledge that he had once touched the real world in commerce (and in the United States navy, where he spent three years), although in fact nearly all his adult career was in academe.
In reference books he called himself an “economics educator”.
He wrote about 30 books and was in demand on the university circuit as a speaker.
Those who declined to be educated he called “doomsayers”.
Among the broad range of Americans, anyway, he seemed to be winning.
In Fortune magazine he was listed as one of the “150 great minds of the 1990s”.
In “The State of Humanity”, a book published in 1996 for the Cato Institute, a Washington organisation passionate for the free market, he made two predictions for the coming century.
One was guaranteed to upset every right-thinking pessimistic economist:
that “humanity's condition will improve in just about every material way,” whether it was life expectancy, the price of a natural resource or the number of telephones in China.
The other prediction was that “humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse.”
At least Julian Simon might carry the day for that view.
https://www.economist.com/obituary/1998 ... lian-simon
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION
"Remembering Julian Simon - Simon Was a Pioneer in Disproving Faulty Environmentalist Assumptions"
Paul A. Cleveland, Erin Hagert
Monday, January 1, 2007
Paul A. Cleveland is a professor of economics at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama. Erin Hagert is studying economics at The King’s College in New York.
The late Julian Simon was not a household name, but he left an indelible mark nonetheless by demanding that environmentalists produce evidence for their doomsday predictions.
Meanwhile, he produced his own evidence showing that the planet was becoming more, not less, hospitable to human life.
Born in 1932, Simon grew up in a Jewish family in New Jersey and absorbed many of the popular environmental and economic misconceptions of his day.
However, in time questions arose that eventually led him to reject those misconceptions and launch an offensive on behalf of sound thinking and human creativity.
People, Simon realized, are not mere consumption machines.
As his colleague Stephen Moore noted in a eulogy for Simon, who died in 1998, it made no sense to him that when a calf is born in a country, per-capita GDP rises, but when a human being is born, per-capita GDP falls.
The ability of people to create wealth gives rise to economic progress and promotes general well-being.
From this realization Simon went on to dispel the myths of overpopulation and resource depletion.
Simon’s adversaries derive their ideas from various faulty environmentalist assumptions traceable back to Thomas Robert Malthus.
In the late eighteenth century Malthus put forth his famous but bleak principle that population growth would outpace food production.
In modern times this kind of thinking has led to government intervention of various sorts, including the barbaric one-child policy in China.
But Malthus was wrong (as he conceded in later editions of his book).
He assumed people would not innovate or change their behavior in connection with changes in their economic situations.
As Simon noted, technological and economic advances permitted not only the maintenance of a larger population but also a significant increase in living standards.
The rise in per-capita food production has exceeded population growth.
Though this truth is well established, it has not been well received in the academic world or generally.
Environmentalists such as Paul Ehrlich persist in promoting Malthusian ideas, claiming that people are destroying the environment and that if anything is to be left for our children, the world must be protected from capitalism.
In his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote, “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death. . . . At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
It never happened.
Yet such nightmare scenarios are still promoted by the media, the public schools, and opportunistic politicians.
The stories have been told so often that most people take for granted that we are running out of food and natural resources and that government needs to do something now.
But as Simon pointed out, “Every agricultural economist knows that the world’s population has been eating ever better since World War II."
"Every resource economist knows that all natural resources have been getting more available rather than more scarce, as shown by their falling prices over the decades and centuries.”
The price of food relative to wages in the United States is now only about a tenth of what it was in the 1800s.
Simon was a pioneer in proving the doomsayers wrong.
In many books and articles he used hard data to wage an assault on a vast number of environmental myths.
In his best-known book, The Ultimate Resource, he went to the heart of the issue: human intelligence is the most valuable resource because it discovers uses for nature’s materials.
In other words, people create resources out of otherwise useless stuff.
Moreover, he observed that the advance of human well-being has come in conjunction with free markets, which allow the greatest latitude for human ingenuity.
As a result, life expectancy has increased, which in turn has led to the population boom.
This conquest over premature death is something to celebrate not lament.
Human beings live longer, healthier, and more comfortable lives than ever before.
In a 1994 study Simon concluded that “everything we buy—pens, shirts, tires—has been getting cheaper over the years because we know how to make them cheaper.”
What is even more astonishing is that “natural resources have been getting cheaper even faster than consumer goods.”
This is exactly opposite of what the environmentalists predict.
Simon’s key realization is that people, when left to their own devices, will forever improve their knowledge of how to make products cheaper and will constantly come up with better alternatives.
For example, before its utility was discovered, crude oil was considered a nuisance that devalued property.
Only when someone found that kerosene, an efficient illuminant, could be distilled from it did oil become valuable.
“Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths,” Simon said.
“Human beings create more than they use, on average."
"It had to be so, or we would be an extinct species.”
He showed that “almost every economic and social change or trend points in a positive direction, as long as we view the matter over a reasonably long period of time.”
The Bet
Simon was provoked to put his money where his research was when he heard Ehrlich say on “The Tonight Show” in 1980, “If I were a gambler I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
Simon bet that any five resources of Ehrlich’s choosing worth $1,000 would be less expensive in real terms in a decade.
The loser of the bet would pay the difference in price to the winner.
In 1990 Ehrlich’s choice of copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten was not only cheaper after adjusted for inflation but also in nominal terms.
On average the prices decreased 40 percent.
As Simon had predicted, the metals became cheaper because human innovation created less-expensive ways of mining them as well as substitutes for them.
Ehrlich paid Simon the $576.07 difference but said he had not changed his mind about the future.
Which one was the scientist?
https://fee.org/articles/remembering-julian-simon/
"Remembering Julian Simon - Simon Was a Pioneer in Disproving Faulty Environmentalist Assumptions"
Paul A. Cleveland, Erin Hagert
Monday, January 1, 2007
Paul A. Cleveland is a professor of economics at Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama. Erin Hagert is studying economics at The King’s College in New York.
The late Julian Simon was not a household name, but he left an indelible mark nonetheless by demanding that environmentalists produce evidence for their doomsday predictions.
Meanwhile, he produced his own evidence showing that the planet was becoming more, not less, hospitable to human life.
Born in 1932, Simon grew up in a Jewish family in New Jersey and absorbed many of the popular environmental and economic misconceptions of his day.
However, in time questions arose that eventually led him to reject those misconceptions and launch an offensive on behalf of sound thinking and human creativity.
People, Simon realized, are not mere consumption machines.
As his colleague Stephen Moore noted in a eulogy for Simon, who died in 1998, it made no sense to him that when a calf is born in a country, per-capita GDP rises, but when a human being is born, per-capita GDP falls.
The ability of people to create wealth gives rise to economic progress and promotes general well-being.
From this realization Simon went on to dispel the myths of overpopulation and resource depletion.
Simon’s adversaries derive their ideas from various faulty environmentalist assumptions traceable back to Thomas Robert Malthus.
In the late eighteenth century Malthus put forth his famous but bleak principle that population growth would outpace food production.
In modern times this kind of thinking has led to government intervention of various sorts, including the barbaric one-child policy in China.
But Malthus was wrong (as he conceded in later editions of his book).
He assumed people would not innovate or change their behavior in connection with changes in their economic situations.
As Simon noted, technological and economic advances permitted not only the maintenance of a larger population but also a significant increase in living standards.
The rise in per-capita food production has exceeded population growth.
Though this truth is well established, it has not been well received in the academic world or generally.
Environmentalists such as Paul Ehrlich persist in promoting Malthusian ideas, claiming that people are destroying the environment and that if anything is to be left for our children, the world must be protected from capitalism.
In his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Ehrlich wrote, “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death. . . . At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”
It never happened.
Yet such nightmare scenarios are still promoted by the media, the public schools, and opportunistic politicians.
The stories have been told so often that most people take for granted that we are running out of food and natural resources and that government needs to do something now.
But as Simon pointed out, “Every agricultural economist knows that the world’s population has been eating ever better since World War II."
"Every resource economist knows that all natural resources have been getting more available rather than more scarce, as shown by their falling prices over the decades and centuries.”
The price of food relative to wages in the United States is now only about a tenth of what it was in the 1800s.
Simon was a pioneer in proving the doomsayers wrong.
In many books and articles he used hard data to wage an assault on a vast number of environmental myths.
In his best-known book, The Ultimate Resource, he went to the heart of the issue: human intelligence is the most valuable resource because it discovers uses for nature’s materials.
In other words, people create resources out of otherwise useless stuff.
Moreover, he observed that the advance of human well-being has come in conjunction with free markets, which allow the greatest latitude for human ingenuity.
As a result, life expectancy has increased, which in turn has led to the population boom.
This conquest over premature death is something to celebrate not lament.
Human beings live longer, healthier, and more comfortable lives than ever before.
In a 1994 study Simon concluded that “everything we buy—pens, shirts, tires—has been getting cheaper over the years because we know how to make them cheaper.”
What is even more astonishing is that “natural resources have been getting cheaper even faster than consumer goods.”
This is exactly opposite of what the environmentalists predict.
Simon’s key realization is that people, when left to their own devices, will forever improve their knowledge of how to make products cheaper and will constantly come up with better alternatives.
For example, before its utility was discovered, crude oil was considered a nuisance that devalued property.
Only when someone found that kerosene, an efficient illuminant, could be distilled from it did oil become valuable.
“Minds matter economically as much as or more than hands or mouths,” Simon said.
“Human beings create more than they use, on average."
"It had to be so, or we would be an extinct species.”
He showed that “almost every economic and social change or trend points in a positive direction, as long as we view the matter over a reasonably long period of time.”
The Bet
Simon was provoked to put his money where his research was when he heard Ehrlich say on “The Tonight Show” in 1980, “If I were a gambler I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”
Simon bet that any five resources of Ehrlich’s choosing worth $1,000 would be less expensive in real terms in a decade.
The loser of the bet would pay the difference in price to the winner.
In 1990 Ehrlich’s choice of copper, chrome, nickel, tin, and tungsten was not only cheaper after adjusted for inflation but also in nominal terms.
On average the prices decreased 40 percent.
As Simon had predicted, the metals became cheaper because human innovation created less-expensive ways of mining them as well as substitutes for them.
Ehrlich paid Simon the $576.07 difference but said he had not changed his mind about the future.
Which one was the scientist?
https://fee.org/articles/remembering-julian-simon/
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR August 27, 2019 at 10:04 pm
Editor Note:
Oy vey, American reading skills have slipped further than we thought.
The buffoonish criticism of Simon, that he is an economist and not a “climate scientist” totally misses the point – the article is about the economic impact of eco-pessimism and the damage it will do to future generations, which will be much worse than a few extra degrees celsius will ever do.
So far, history is on Simon’s side.
What is so disgusting is how gleefully these frightened liberal men want to damage the free market economy and plunge future generations into marginal lives.
He sounds like the writer from the Economist that lamented that poor people were eating more meat and that was bad for the environment…how dare they find the sustenance they need to be healthy!
Then, he stupidly attempts to conflate an article about the Bay’s dead zone, as if they are just different sides of the same coin.
He calls dead zones dying parts of the bay.
What?
First, dead zones occur naturally when the water temperature rises, usually around 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
This year was worse than usual due to a wet spring, and the runoff associated with it – lots of nitrogen and phosphorus fed that beast.
When the water cools, they go away.
The bottom line, as this guy says, is that the climate is going to do what it wants…it’s never static, it’s a dynamic system.
The words stability or equilibrium should never be used when talking about the climate.
This person talks about climate catastrophes and ice ages and blah, blah, blah…guess what?
We’re still here.
Life finds a way.
The climate will change, that much is certain, and it contains no sweet spot just for humans.
We can’t stop change, but we better be able to adapt to it.
Either way, life will find a way.
It may be different, but it will still be here.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-171001
Editor Note:
Oy vey, American reading skills have slipped further than we thought.
The buffoonish criticism of Simon, that he is an economist and not a “climate scientist” totally misses the point – the article is about the economic impact of eco-pessimism and the damage it will do to future generations, which will be much worse than a few extra degrees celsius will ever do.
So far, history is on Simon’s side.
What is so disgusting is how gleefully these frightened liberal men want to damage the free market economy and plunge future generations into marginal lives.
He sounds like the writer from the Economist that lamented that poor people were eating more meat and that was bad for the environment…how dare they find the sustenance they need to be healthy!
Then, he stupidly attempts to conflate an article about the Bay’s dead zone, as if they are just different sides of the same coin.
He calls dead zones dying parts of the bay.
What?
First, dead zones occur naturally when the water temperature rises, usually around 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
This year was worse than usual due to a wet spring, and the runoff associated with it – lots of nitrogen and phosphorus fed that beast.
When the water cools, they go away.
The bottom line, as this guy says, is that the climate is going to do what it wants…it’s never static, it’s a dynamic system.
The words stability or equilibrium should never be used when talking about the climate.
This person talks about climate catastrophes and ice ages and blah, blah, blah…guess what?
We’re still here.
Life finds a way.
The climate will change, that much is certain, and it contains no sweet spot just for humans.
We can’t stop change, but we better be able to adapt to it.
Either way, life will find a way.
It may be different, but it will still be here.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-171001
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
For the record, these are two separate people that the Cape Charles Mirror editor is mocking and attacking in these posts above here, with no further responses from either person as of this time, which is how the science-denying right-wingers have been playing the game for some long time now, making non-factual statements that cannot be challenged because they control access to the debate, keeping out those who disagree with them while mocking and attacking them without allowing further response …
So we shall see how this game goes …
And so ...
So we shall see how this game goes …
And so ...
Re: ON ENVIRONMENTAL HYSTERIA-MONGERING
THE CAPE CHARLES MIRROR August 27, 2019 at 10:04 pm
Editor Note:
What is so disgusting is how gleefully these frightened liberal men want to damage the free market economy and plunge future generations into marginal lives.
http://www.capecharlesmirror.com/news/t ... ent-171001
Except we DO NOT have a "free market economy" in this country, and haven't for some time now, which makes the inane statement above from the Cape Charles Mirror Op-Ed, which reads like a script from the Rush Limbaugh Show, about it being "so disgusting is how gleefully these frightened liberal men want to damage the free market economy" sound just as stupid, uninformed, ignorant and out of touch with reality that Op-Ed writer really is, and what makes that Op-Ed so incredible is the fact that for once, the position of a die-hard science denier is written down, and thus the words are now frozen in time, which is the first time I have encountered that in my lifetime, a science denier putting their thoughts down on paper in their own words so they can then be scrutinized by each of us in our leisure, which is precisely how democracy is supposed to work …MONEY
"Is a free market 'free' if it's regulated?"
by Josh Clark
Does the United States Have a Free Market?
One of the tenets of capitalism is that a free market fails from time to time.
The market should be able to correct itself by ridding itself of the poorly performing businesses and investments that dragged it down.
But the United States has a long shown a lack of faith in the free market's natural correction mechanism.
In times of financial crisis, the United States has customarily turned to capitalism's antithesis -- socialism -- to artificially correct the markets.
The very existence of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alone indicates the U.S. economy isn't a free market.
For the first 116 years after it was established in 1817, the New York Stock Exchange operated without government regulation.
Following the crash on Oct. 24, 1929, the federal government held hearings that revealed the types of fraud corporations used to mislead and swindle investors.
These hearings led to unprecedented government oversight of the stock market.
For one, corporations now had to file earnings reports with the newly formed SEC, which had the ability to audit these companies [source: Berenson].
But the SEC's formation in 1934 was hardly the U.S. government's first foray into business.
By the end of the 19th century, the government concluded that major corporations such as Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel and Union Pacific Railroad had grown too powerful.
As a result, a spate of laws and bureaucracies were created to offset this power.
The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 outlawed monopolies.
The Food and Drug Administration was created in 1904 and vested with litigation of companies that broke new purity laws.
The Federal Trade Commission was created in 1914 to regulate competition among American companies.
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established a national minimum wage for workers (25 cents an hour) [source: Dept. of Labor].
Under a pure capitalist system, none of these laws or entities should exist.
Essentially, each act limited markets by granting the federal government the power to regulate business.
As a result, the United States no longer has a free market system.
Instead, the United States now has a managed economy -- by definition, a nonmarket economy since it doesn't exist solely on supply and demand [source: Merriam-Webster].
These government regulations are constant -- even in periods of calm and prosperity.
But they tend to emerge during times of crisis; the market crisis of 2008 is a good example of a managed economy in action.
In addition to the interventions already mentioned -- like the takeover of Mae and Mac and the buy-in of AIG -- the U.S. government also called for further steps to artificially correct the market.
In September, a $700 billion bailout was proposed.
In the wording of the plan, the government would take unprecedented control of the market.
Not only would it intervene by purchasing businesses, it would also temporarily nationalize some of them and control how they're governed.
One provision stipulates how much compensation these companies can offer their executives after the government purchases their bad debt [source: U.S. House].
Whether it's favorable that the United States has a managed economy instead of a free or socialized one is purely academic.
It would literally take a revolution to steer a government toward either pole of the economic spectrum.
Unlike corporations, governments can exercise their will virtually unfettered.
If a government decides to intervene in a market, there's little anyone -- capitalist or socialist -- can do.
Sources
• Berenson, Alex. "The Number." New York: Random House. 2003.
• Foer, Albert A. "United States of American Antitrust Institute." American Antitrust Institute. April 2006. http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/archi ... es/502.pdf
• Mellor, Richard. "What the nationalization of Freddie and Fannie shows us." Portland Indy Media. September, 2008. http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/09/379453.shtml
• Parker, Rachel. "Industrial innovation in Austria, Norway and Sweden." Industry and Innovation. December 2000. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... tBody;col1
• Phillips, Peter. "American mantra: free market capitalism." Common Dreams. January 3, 2001. http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0103-05.htm
• Smith, Adam. "The Wealth of Nations, 1776." Modern History Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/adam ... mmary.html
• Williams, Walter E. "The argument for free markets: morality vs. efficiency." Cato Institute. 1996. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n2-3-3.html
• Winerman, Mark. "The origins of the FTC: concentration, cooperation, control, and competition." Federal Trade Commission. http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/history/docs/origins.pdf
• "Facts about the Socialist Labor Party of America." Socialist Labor Party of America. http://www.slp.org/facts.htm
• "Fed eyes nationalization of US banks." The Telegraph. March 30, 2008. http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=6060
• "History of federal minimum wage rates under the Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938 - 2007." U.S. Department of Labor. http://www.dol.gov/ESA/minwage/chart.htm
• "Managed economy." Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. C.G. Merriam and Company. 1913. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/managed+economy
• "Memorable quotes for 'Wall Street' (1987)." Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094291/quotes
• "The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890)." St. Olaf College. http://www.stolaf.edu/people/becker/ant ... erman.html
https://money.howstuffworks.com/free-ma ... onomy2.htm
And so ...