David Shearman, Climate change, is democracy enough? 1/17/08:

…Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens…Support for Western democracy is messianic as proselytised by a President leading a flawed democracy…

…Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. It is not that liberal democracy cannot react once it sees a threat, for example, the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency. If governments can recognise a financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why are they unable to do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? Quite simply our system is seen to live and breathe by the present economic system; the problem is that living and breathing within the confines of the world ecological systems is contrary to the activity of progress and development as defined within liberal democracy…

Shearman is co-author of the recent book The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy. From the description on amazon.com:

In this provocative book, Shearman and Smith present evidence that the fundamental problem causing environmental destruction–and climate change in particular–is the operation of liberal democracy…The authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures–for example, in medicine and in corporate empires–that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between “liberty” or “life.”…Having brought the reader to the realization that in order to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms.

“Governance by experts rather than those who seek power.” Sounds like a great idea - race science experts in National Socialst Germany, economic experts in the Soviet Union, agricultural experts in 1960s Communist China. Those experts did a great job.

Close with a couple relevant quotes from H.L. Mencken:

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

and

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Bill Clinton, 1/30/08:

We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions ’cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.

Paul Ehrlich, 1990:

We’ve already had too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.

From Australia’s The Age:

This year is the 40th anniversary of Paul Ehrlich’s influential The Population Bomb, a book that predicted an apocalyptic overpopulation crisis in the 1970s and ’80s.

Ehrlich’s book provides a lesson we still haven’t learnt. His prophecy that the starvation of millions of people in the developed world was imminent was spectacularly wrong — humanity survived without any of the forced sterilisation that Ehrlich believed was necessary.

It’s easy to predict environmental collapse, but it never actually seems to happen…

…Ehrlich was at the forefront of a wave of pessimistic doomsayers in the late 1960s and early ’70s. And these doomsayers weren’t just cranks — or, if they were cranks, they were cranks with university tenure.

Despite what should be a humiliating failure for his theory of overpopulation, Ehrlich is still employed as a professor of population studies by Stanford University…

…(F)or people in the 1970s, predictions of apocalypse through overpopulation and famine were just as real as the predictions of an apocalypse caused by climate change are today. And, just like today, environmental activists and their friends in politics were lining up to propose dramatic changes to avert the crisis…

We’ve written about Paul Ehrlich before (here and here). A few choice quotes from his book:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.

and

A minimum of ten million people, most of them children, will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a mere handful compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of the century.

and

Our position requires that we take immediate action at home and promote effective action worldwide. We must have population control at home, hopefully through changes in our value system, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail.

and

A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies — often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival.

I think the The Age actually somewhat understates the influence Ehrlich has had on environmental thinking. The Population Bomb wasn’t just a book, it was a NYT bestseller. It had real implications for humanity, including the development of China’s One Child policy. And today Ehrlich isn’t just a Stanford Professor, he’s president of that university’s Center for Conservation and head of Population Studies.

Ehrlich is also the recipient of a number of prestegious grant’s and awards - most given after it was obvious most of his life’s work was terribly wrong by institutions more interested in ideology than science. An incomplete list of his awards:

• The John Muir Award of the Sierra Club
• The Gold Medal Award of the World Wildlife Fund International
• MacArthur Prize Fellowship
• The Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• ECI Prize winner in terrestrial ecology in 1993
• A World Ecology Award from the International Center for Tropical Ecology, University of Missouri in 1993
• The Volvo Environmental Prize in 1993
• The United Nations Sasakawa Environment Prize in 1994
• The Heinz Award for the Environment in 1995 (as in Theresa Heinz-Kerry)
• The Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement in 1998
• The Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Environmental Sciences in 1998
• The Blue Planet Prize in 1999
• The Eminent Ecologist Award of the Ecological Society of America in 2001
• The Distinguished Scientist Award of the American Institute of Biological Sciences in 2001

A couple of quotes from interviews given in the 1990s:

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”

and

“We’ve already had too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.”

Just yesterday the National Wildlife Federation put out a press release about “some of America’s greatest scientific minds” petitioning congress for action on climate change. Ehrlich is one of four “scientists” named.

Ehrlich dreams of totalitarian utopia, and he’s willing to make the most absurd predictions under the guise of science to hasten the abandonment of individual liberties. He is not unique - university basements are full of passionate, bright, narrow, anti-social types who think the whole world should drop everything to support their respective (often contradictory) visions. Political collectivists identify natural alliances with such people, finding a common cause in promoting central authority at the expense of individual liberty.

The ACLU is suing the State of Ohio and Cuyahoga County, trying to stop election officials there from switching back from touch-screen to paper ballots. From AP:

…The ACLU claims the system to be put in place in Cuyahoga County violates voters’ constitutional rights because it doesn’t allow them to correct ballot errors.

With more than 1 million registered voters, Cuyahoga County plans to send paper ballots filled out by voters to a central location — the Board of Election’s warehouse near downtown Cleveland — to be scanned and counted.

Such an optical-scan system with centralized vote tabulation does not give voters notice of ballot errors and an opportunity to correct mistakes that could invalidate votes, the ACLU alleges in the federal lawsuit.

“We take no position on what kind of voting technology is used so long as voters have the chance to check their ballots for mistakes before casting their vote,” ACLU staff attorney Carrie Davis said.

The lawsuit names Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and the county’s three commissioners as defendants…

…”They’re a bit tardy in filing this lawsuit,” Brunner said. “The closer we get to the election the tougher it’s going to be for a judge to deny the voters of Cleveland the right to vote in a presidential primary.”…

…The ACLU said it plans to request a preliminary injunction soon to stop the county from proceeding with the new system until the lawsuit is decided.

“Conceivably, that could muck things up,” (County Prosecutor) Mason said. “But I firmly believe we’re on solid legal standing to use these type of machines.”…

Funny thing, one year ago the ACLU had a different opinion of touch screen versus paper ballots. From an ACLU press release dated 1/30/07:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida today commended Governor Charlie Crist’s announcement that he will recommend that Florida scrap paperless touch-screen voting machines. The following statement can be attributed to Howard Simon, Executive Director of the ACLU of Florida:

“The ACLU applauds the apparent decision of Governor Charlie Crist to recommend the end of paperless voting in Florida.

“Computer touch-screen voting has been the subject of a litany of problems in our state, nowhere better illustrated than the recent Congressional election in Sarasota and the special election in Miami-Dade County. Both elections were marred by under-votes. In the case of the 13th Congressional District election in Sarasota, there were a sufficient number of under-votes to put the outcome of the election in doubt.

Paper ballots no good in Ohio but just what the doctor ordered in Florida? What the heck is the ACLU up to?

Its worth noting that Cuyahoga’s county seat is Cleveland. Despite the fact that identical equipment is being deployed the state’s other 87 counties after a law passed in 2002, the ACLU has for some reason targeted the State’s largest county, home to 12% of state residents, right before the Ohio primary.

DNC delegates are awarded proportionately (not winner-takes-all, as with some states for the GOP). Clinton will probably win the majority, but Obama is still polling at 19% - worth 50-60 delegates. Importantly, according to DNC rules a candidate must get at least 15% of a state’s vote to get any delegates.

So what happens if the state’s largest urban center has its election “mucked up”?

Blacks make up 13% of Ohio’s population, and about half of them live in Cuyahoga. If the results in that county are tossed out do to a legal technicality, Obama would almost certainly drop below the 15% threshold, giving his 50-60 delegates to Clinton. The net gain of up to 120 delegates would be like winning all NJ - its 6% of what she needs to win the nomination.

Clinton presently leads Obama by 79 delegates (235 to 156). In a close convention every delegate will count.

Sound far-fetched? Don’t forget that two weeks ago the (Clinton-endorsing) Nevada State Teachers Union sued to get selected polling places (notably convinient for likely Obama voters) shut down. The suit failed: Obama won 13 NV delegates to Clinton’s 12.

Could the ACLU be so cynical as to “muck up” an election, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of minority voters, just to help the establishment candidate? Without a doubt!

A collection of recent articles opposed the latest bi-partisan fad - fiscal stimulus.

Andrew Samwick

Steven Landsburg

Robert Samuelson

Russell Roberts

James Hamilton

James Cramer

Arnold Kling

Donald Boudreaux

Alan Reynolds

Bruce Bartlett

George Will

Alex Tabarrok

Bill Thomas and Alex Brill

Michael Kinsley

Steve Entin

A nice 8min video from Cato on tax competition.

We wrote on the same subject last February, when the EU was trying to force Switzerland to change its 500 year old system of government by federalizing its tax policy.

With his Civics Initiative Richard Dreyfuss calls himself a “pre-partisan” with no particular sympathy for either political party. But its hard to talk about things like individual responsibility, American exceptionalism, and the importance of not reflexively casting away our freedoms in favor of centralized government control without sounding like a Classical Liberal (i.e. the opposite of a Modern American Liberal).

The Mexican border state of Sonora, that is. From the Tuscon Sun:

A delegation of nine state legislators from Sonora was in Tucson on Tuesday to say Arizona’s new employer sanctions law will have a devastating effect on the Mexican state.

At a news conference, the legislators said Sonora - Arizona’s southern neighbor, made up of mostly small towns - cannot handle the demand for housing, jobs and schools it will face as illegal Mexican workers here return to their hometowns without jobs or money.

The law, which took effect Jan.1, punishes employers who knowingly hire individuals who don’t have valid legal documents to work in the United States. Penalties include suspension or loss of a business license…

…”How can they pass a law like this?” asked Mexican Rep. Leticia Amparano Gamez, who represents Nogales.

“There is not one person living in Sonora who does not have a friend or relative working in Arizona,” she said in Spanish.

“Mexico is not prepared for this, for the tremendous problems” it will face as more and more Mexicans working in Arizona and sending money to their families return to hometowns in Sonora without jobs, she said.

“We are one family, socially and economically,” she said of the people of Sonora and Arizona…

Family or not, Mexico has a problem. It could be called collectivism or socialism, but in Mexico’s case its most accurately called statism. The Mexican government consumes nearly half of the country’s economy (in the US its about 35.4%).

The Mexican economy should benefit from enormous structural advantages. 90% of its exports are to the US and Canada with almost no trade barriers. It is blessed with abundant natural resources - its the world’s 5th largest oil producer (right behind Iran). Their proximity to the US means they can get by with almost no military (the US spends 20% more on the Coast Guard than Mexico spends on its entire military).

A couple straightforward changes to Mexican law would help a lot. First, they need to dump their Expropiación Petrolera law. In 1932 Mexico nationalized (aka socialized) all foreign assets involved in oil exploration and extraction. It was good politics (domestically), but it has had a devastating impact on their petroleum industry. Pemex is run through a system of patronage and graft. There is no competition for natural resources, so the company is wasteful and inefficient - with side effects including environmental destruction and long term damage to reserves (by, for example, excessive injection of sea water). Opening the industry to foreign capital and competition would mean more exploration, more modern methods, more oil exports, and more domestic jobs for Mexicans.

The other thing they need to dump is Article 27 of their constitution. The Article stipulates that all land is property of the Mexican government, and that private property is a un privilegio creado por la nación. (”a privilege created by the nation” - ie not a right). This is a serious problem that reflects the country’s Continental legal heritage (as opposed to one derived from British common law). A more specific problem with Article 27 is the last sentence of Section I:

En una faja de cien kilómetros a lo largo de las fronteras y de cincuenta en las playas, por ningún motivo podrán los extranjeros adquirir el dominio directo sobre tierras y aguas.

Roughly, foreigners cannot under any circumstances own land within 100km of the border and 50km of the ocean.

One immediate impact of this law is obvious in this satellite photo of the area around Imperial Valley.

Click to enlarge:

Can you guess where the border is?

What’s going on here - is the difference in agricultural development an issue of labor or capital? Well, since a good portion of the laborers on the north side of the border are Mexicans, its probably not a labor problem. Why the capital problem? Because the people owning and developing the land north of the border are legally barred from doing so on the other side. They look pretty crammed in to the valley up there - no doubt some would look south if they could. And with NAFTA their produce could easily be sold in the same markets.

Same thing goes for coastal development. How many thousands of Mexicans are employed building vacation homes for American baby boomers just a few hundred miles inside the US in places like Tuscon, or on the CA or FL coasts? Why don’t more Americans build retirement homes in places like Ensanada, or Playa del Amor, or Cancun? Because they effectively cannot.

Changing property ownership laws and privatizing (including international capital) Pemex would go a long way toward helping Mexico create more domestic jobs. Fewer of their hardest working, most ambitious citizens would working illegally inside the US and would instead be helping grow their own economy. Win-win.

But I think Hillary Clinton has probably the best solution for illegal immigration.

She’s already promised $800B in new annual federal spending (will take our government spending to >40% of GDP), she wants to nationalize parts of our petroleum industry, and she wants to slow our economic growth with increased taxes. She will simply make the US more like Mexico.

From the National Review:

Our poor state is $14 billion plus now in the red, and the Governator has promised no new taxes, wise inasmuch as our sales and income taxes are already among the highest in the country. The University of California system is panicking and sending out emails to us alums, to march en masse on Sacramento for redress!

But lost in the furor is any self-reflection, such as why would UC Davis recently pay John Edwards, multimillionaire trial lawyer, $50,000 plus to give a brief lecture on poverty? Such questions are never answered, much less raised, since the problem is always framed as a matter of a shortage of income, never a surfeit of unnecessary expenditure. 

We in California, given the past budget implosions, know the script to follow. We expect that police, fire, prisons, parks etc will be threatened with cut-backs and closure while the state-funded “Center for this” and the “Department of that” will remain untouched, since cutting the essential while protecting the politically-correct superfluous is the only way to scare the voter and achieve higher taxes.

At some point we Californians should ask ourselves, how we inherited a state with near perfect weather, the world’s richest agriculture, plentiful timber, minerals, and oil, two great ports at Los Angeles and Oakland, a natural tourist industry from Carmel to Yosemite, industries such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and aerospace—and serially managed to turn all of that into the nation’s largest penal system, periodic near bankruptcy, and sky-high taxes.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

That “$50,000 plus” was exactly $55,000. According to UC Davis 1,787 people attended. Tuition and fees within the University of California system nearly doubled from 2002-2007. This year the system plans a 7% tuition increase.

From the WSJ:

…(E)vidence is piling up that neither government nor multilateral spending on education and infrastructure are key to development. To move out of poverty, countries instead need fast growth; and to get that they need to unleash the animal spirits of entrepreneurs.

Empirical support for this view is presented again this year in The Heritage Foundation/The Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom, released today. In its 14th edition, the annual survey grades countries on a combination of factors including property rights protection, tax rates, government intervention in the economy, monetary, fiscal and trade policy, and business freedom.

The nearby table shows the 2008 rankings but doesn’t tell the whole story. The Index also reports that the freest 20% of the world’s economies have twice the per capita income of those in the second quintile and five times that of the least-free 20%. In other words, freedom and prosperity are highly correlated…

(Click to enlarge)

One thing not mentioned in the article that stands out to me - all of the top 5 and 8 of the top 10 countries were once part of the British Empire (including the UK itself).

Looked at differently, there are about 330MM people in the world who speak English as a first language. 96% of them live in one of the top 10 economically freest countries. Of the other 6.3B people who are not native English speakers, just 0.9% live in one of the top 10. And more than half of those (32MM) are Americans who speak English as a second language.

Seems a pretty strong case for the British tradition of rule of law, individual rights, limited government and capitalism.

Its hard to believe that just 200 years ago that system was locked in mortal struggle with France - the highest ranking representative of that defunct Empire (excluding French Canada) is France itself, #48. And never mind the Soviet/Communist Empire (Russia comes in #134, Cuba edges out North Korea for 2nd to last at #156).

Not sure which way the causation goes, but its noteworthy that the last time one of the top 10 countries (excluding tiny Singapore and Hong Kong) was engaged in a land war on its own territory was 1883 (War of the Pacific - Chile, Bolivia, Peru, 12,000 casualties). The last time for a top 10 country that is also English speaking was the American Civil War. If you want a war in which an English speaking country had a meaningful number of non-English speaking troops on its territory you’d probably have to go back to the American Revolution (French Troops on British Territory). For a major military engagement before that you’re probably talking 1066 or the Vikings.

Seems these countries are pretty good at avoiding or maybe just not stirring up trouble.

Something to remember next time America (or the UK, or Australia) considers outsourcing its international policy making to the UN, or subordinating our own sovereign rights to international treaties and agreements.