if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
Socialism: It’s A Gas!
by Lee
I’ve been meaning to blog on this one for a few days now, but it seems that those eeeeeeeevil Limeys are trying to destroy the world.
The UK’s emissions of greenhouse gases rose between 2003 and 2004, according to provisional government data.
The emissions last year were 1.5% above those in 2003, and are now higher than at any time since the Labour government came to power in 1997.
For the first time, the data also suggests Britain could miss its target set down under the Kyoto Protocol.
Miss its target? Don’t they know that the Earth is virtually doomed, and that anyone who misses their target is complicit in the total destruction of life as we know it?
The Kyoto treaty commits Britain to keeping annual greenhouse emissions during the period 2008-2012 to 12.5% below 1990 levels.
In 2002, the UK was 14.4% below 1990 levels, and in 2003, 13.4% below.
The provisional figures for 2004 show emissions are 12.6% below - just 0.1% underneath the Kyoto figure.
So, in other words, a group of leftist scientists and their allies in the United Nations got together and decided that the way the world was in 1990 is the way it should be for the rest of time, and any deviation from the 1990 goal in terms of sea level or glacial activity is solely attributable to eeeeeeeevil pollution and careless cowboy Americans who drive trucks the size of buildings to haul their fat asses down to the Piggly Wiggly for another case of Chocolate Frosted Gravy Chunks.
The government says the main reason for the increase is growing energy demand; statistics show that emissions rose from industry, transport and the domestic sector.
“The policy package they have isn’t working,” Bryony Worthington, climate change campaigner for Friends of the Earth UK, told the BBC News website.
“They need to make radical changes to it, a completely different approach, much more top-down management of emissions across the economy.
“If they don’t do that, there’s every sign that these trends will continue and we will miss our Kyoto targets.”
Okay, let’s break this down into its base elements. Greenhouse emissions are going up. Why? Because the public wants things, those things need to be manufactured, and process of manufacturing and distribution produces emissions. So, the only “solution” to the problem is to use the power of the state to force people not to want those things. Here we have a scientist advocating more “top down management” of the economy. Let’s look through history and see some other societies that have strict top-down management of their economies. The USSR and Soviet Bloc countries. North Korea. Cuba. China. Pre-WWII Germany. In other words, a long laundry list of the most repressive, totalitarian (and not to mention environmentally devastated) regimes in history. This type of top-down socialist management has been abandoned virtually everywhere in the world; even the most socialist economies in Europe today are market-socialist. Sixty years ago F. A. Hayek, in his groundbreaking work The Road to Serfdom showed exactly why and how socialist economies will inevitably lead to totalitarianism. For those of you not familiar with the book, here’s part of the Amazon description.
A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century. Originally published in England in the spring of 1944--when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the socialist program--The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government with increasing economic control would inevitably lead not to a utopia but to the horrors of nazi Germany and fascist Italy. After thirty-two printings in the United States, The Road to Serfdom has established itself alongside the works of Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, and George Orwell for its timeless meditation on the relation between individual liberty and government authority.
What does this show us? That Europe, the continent that gave us two world wars, has learned nothing from its own recent history. Whether it is the goal of radical social egalitarianism or radical environmental lunacy, the common denominator here is that a group of anointed intellectual elites have, once again, decided that they know better than the public at large, and are lobbying to use the awesome power of the state to suppress human nature.
If you haven’t read The Road to Serfdom I highly recommend it. It’s essential reading for anyone who believes that government should be as small as possible. Unfortunately our European cousins seem to have totally ignored this lesson, and there are a great number of people in this country who view the all-powerful state as the solution to whatever economic or social ill happens to ail them.
Comments
Sounds like Britain is farting in the EU’s general direction! : )
Lee,
that Piggly Wiggly line made my night. Thank you
that Piggly Wiggly line made my night. Thank you
Not to mention making me hungry. And I’m fresh out of Chocolate Frosted Gravy Chunks. Thanks, Lee.
Lee -
I know you rail against socialism regularly. Have you ever been to Sweden or Norway? I recently visited both for extended business trips, and loved both countries.
Socialism seems to work very well there. Good jobs. Plenty of private businesses. Great health care. Clean streets and parks. No ghettos or “bad areas.” Something like 60% of both countries have broadband. Granted, they both have huge oil revenues to support their nanny states, but I was greatly impressed.
Also… both countries SEVERELY restrict immigration, and have a very tight control on thier borders.
Gadman, yes I have. Believe it or not I was conceived in Norway (though I was born in Australia) and I lived there twice, once as a baby and once again in elementary school. My dad did a ton of business there.
Yeah, it’s a good life. But the income tax rates range from about 40-70%, if memory serves. And that doesn’t include the VAT or any other number of hidden taxes. I’m sure you will recall how expensive everything was there. And you’re right about the oil revenues. Basically Norway has two industries, oil and fishing. I’d love to see them financing that welfare state on their fishing revenues.
But I don’t believe they’re going to be able to maintain this state forever. As was predicted so beautifully by Hayek, the inevitable end result of the nanny state is the slow, progressive loss of individuality by the people. Why work, when someone else will be there to pick up the slack? I don’t think in 100 years we’re going to see these types of welfare states in Europe, simply because they are by their very definition unsustainable.
Gadman: Sweden doesn’t really have oil going for it, and the economy has actually swung back and forth between “moderate” and “we’re all going to die” since the 70’s. The standard of living there isn’t, by any account I’ve seen, one most Americans would find enviable, although it’s hardly bad, quite typical for Europe. (The average Swede’s purchasing power is about 60% of the average American’s.)
Norway does, you are correct, do quite well, with virtually identical per capita economic power to the US. For one reason and one reason only, however, which you touched on: Norwegian money grows on trees. Much like Kuwait, as long as the oil continues flowing, it doesn’t matter if people produce anything or not, because the state, which controls the revenues, can cut them all checks from the oil fund and they can then go buy whatever they need. When the oil dries up, absent foresight and market reforms, Norway will become a sad place, and they know it. If you read up, you’ll see that government is already taking steps to dismantle some of the socialist state in an effort to prepare for that day.
We have no such luck as Norway or Kuwait, however: The U.S. economy actually has to produce. If we were to find that we’re sitting on a huge free energy supply, of course, we could all go on very, very long vacations.
Chocolate Frosted Gravy Chunks
Yum!
The Road to Serfdom
Lee, thanks for the tip my brutha!
I know you rail against socialism regularly. Have you ever been to Sweden or Norway? I recently visited both for extended business trips, and loved both countries.
I have lived in Scandanavia for over a year and while the life there can be good some aspects suck ass. System Bolaget would be one.
Sweden is not technically a socialist state, but a social democracy. They have a creeping vänster partiet (communist) that is doing things like offering to pay your subway card if you sign up to it.
The thing that still cracks me up about Kyoto is that India and China can belch whatever the hell they like into the atmosphere because they need to ‘naturally grow out of that ecnomic model towards a more evironmentally clean model’. Hello!!!???!!!
So, in other words, a group of leftist scientists and their allies in the United Nations got together and decided that the way the world was in 1990 is the way it should be for the rest of time, and any deviation from the 1990 goal in terms of sea level or glacial activity is solely attributable to eeeeeeeevil pollution and careless cowboy Americans who drive trucks the size of buildings to haul their fat asses down to the Piggly Wiggly for another case of Chocolate Frosted Gravy Chunks
Lee: Great line, had me laughing, but you missed one thing, and careless gun toting cowboy Americans who drive trucks
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Lee,
Blaming everything on manufacturing is actually a misconception. As someone in the biz the government lays every burden environmentally onto the private sector. For example, crash testing of cars the government simply laid the responsibility onto the manufacturer. All products have to conform to many governmental standards that can hinder the design and cost of things.
Plastic is manufactured from crude for all of those hippie idiots toting cell phones and buying synthetic leather. Crude is actually more of a necessity for manufacture than transportation. It is also far better of a manufacture resource for many reasons. All of those Eco Freindly boxes that are printed on are not eco at all.