Ten years ago this month, a landmark book was published that put neo-Malthusianism on the defensive. The unvarnished facts were there to weaken doom-and-gloom prognostications, but it took a rare individual named Julian Simon (1932–1998) ) to uncover the anomalies and present them in integrated and compelling form–and to win the most famous wager in the history of economics!
Then came a young Dane named Bjørn Lomborg set out to refute Simon but instead rediscovered the bogey of fixed-pie, depletionist thinking. This audacious 36-year-old also found that whether the result was of market progress or regulation, virtually all environmental indicators were trending positively, not negatively. Lomborg could agree with the title of Simon’s last major public address, “More People, Greater Wealth, Expanded Resources, Cleaner Environment.”
A Heated Debate
And then, with the debate joined, came a slew of establishment neo-Malthusians, led by John Holdren, now Obama’s science advisor, who got emotional and nit-picked.…
Continue ReadingIt was supposed to be a speech about government engineering for job growth, including giving America another dose of “green jobs.”
What it turned out to be was the greatest surprise in the history of presidential speechmaking–a prime time address that the founding fathers would have applauded.
And the genesis of last night was several months ago when Obama decided to audit (through remote technology) the summer seminars held by the Institute of Humane Studies at George Mason University to learn about the ideas and ideals of a free society.
“‘Sleep less, think more’. That intrigued me,” said Obama after his address calling for deregulating the tax code by eliminating special provisions across-the-board; privatizing an estimated $1.5 trillion in federal assets over the next four years to transition away from New Deal/Great Society welfarism; and establish a commission to explore separating government from money and banking.…
Continue ReadingPrevious posts at MasterResource have been critical of the energy-related positions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, such as The U.S. Chamber’s Energy Security Index: Where’s the Definition? by Robert Michaels and Dear U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Why Attempt to Resuscitate a Brain Dead Climate Bill? by yours truly.
The Chamber, in fact, was waxed and waned for and against the free-and-neutral market for virtually its whole existence. Such is life in political capitalism where special government favor is sought and received by business.
John T. Flynn’s 1928 essay, “Business and the Government” (Harper’s Monthly Magazine), criticized the Chamber motto More Business in Government and Less Government in Business as “sloganeering.”
Flynn noted that new laws were coming far less from the imaginations of legislators as from “the legislative program committees of trade associations or from the special counsel of trade groups … backed often by resolutions from trade conventions and chambers of commerce.”…
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