I hope people read this excellent article by David Henderson all the way to the end. Here.
Fascinating. It is eloquent testimony in favor of the fuck-up theory of history as opposed to the conspiracy theory.
Also, it introduced me to a new word: monopsony.
From economics.about.com:
Monopsony is a state in which demand comes from one source. If there is only one customer for a certain good, that customer has a monopsony in the market for that good.
Analogous to monopoly, but on the demand side not the supply side.
I am skeptical about the notion that cars will become less safe due to fuel economy laws. There are plenty of ways cars can be made more fuel efficient. Many of which have yet to be tapped.
We've talked about this before, but I still believe that increasing the fleet fuel economy averages COULD work but it would have to coincide with increasing/high gas prices. If gas prices are low then the natural course of auto sales would not slant toward the more fuel efficient models. This is a potential problem. If this approach ends up working I think there will have been some luck involved.
"In 1989 two economists, Robert Crandall of the Brookings Institution and John Graham of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School, found that, adjusting for the downsizing of cars that would have occurred anyway, the CAFE laws would cause an extra 2,200 to 3,900 deaths over the life of a 1989-model-year car."
Since it was brought up: That’s oddly put though. One car will have 2,200 more crashes? I know that’s not true. Or do they mean one model? All cars produced in 1989? Also, are they holding the numbers of cars purchased equal to the control statistic? (I don’t think so otherwise they would have stated it like they stated they were accounting for downsizing that would have happened anyway.) The statement is extremely ambiguous in my mind. In its lack of clarity I am suspicious of the using of a statistic to prove anything one wants. I am not saying that’s true here. Just that I am suspicious since I don’t know what they mean by saying one car will have 2-3,000 more crashes in its lifetime.
I thought I remembered cars in the 80s being advertised as getting mid-30s mpg. What in the heck happened to those? Am I really misremembering?
Last edited by tippy; March-14th-2009 at 11:45 AM.
I thought I remembered cars in the 80s being advertised as getting mid-30s mpg. What in the heck happened to those? Am I really misremembering?
Even worse, Tippy. My brother drove a car in the '60s [a '63 Jaguar sedan] that got 42mpg. It's not impossible to have better fuel efficiency than current cars have.
Why don't they??? Fuel efficiency has gotten worse, not better, with advancements in the auto industry. Why is that?
__________________
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
Last edited by patricia; March-14th-2009 at 12:49 PM.
Even worse, Tippy. My brother drove a car in the '60s [a '63 Jaguar sedan] that got 42mpg. It's not impossible to have better fuel efficiency than current cars have.
Why don't they??? Fuel efficiency has gotten worse, not better, with advancements in the auto industry. Why is that?
You could be right.
But, why do people who live in the city even buy pickup trucks and SUVs?
It's not like they're hauling whole soccer teams or bales of hay on a daily basis.
__________________
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
Last edited by patricia; March-14th-2009 at 01:01 PM.
Well, I was in Utah in the 80s and where I lived people had 4 and 5 and more children and the thing that caught fire then was the minivan. (Remember the vwvan from the 60s?) You need one to cart your family in one vehicle. If we look at it from the soccer mom, sports and manly trucks pov, the collusion is between consumers and manufacturers. Personally, the most compelling thing for me vehicle wise was Japanese reliability and mpg.
And thanks, patricia. So I’m not crazy. Because I too remembered 40-something mpg tv advertisements but wasn’t brave enough to suggest it.
Hungry people. Food prices driven up all over the world. Huge piles of corn rotting on the ground for lack of transport infrastructure. All for mindless "action" in the form of lining some few wallets with billions of dollars in subsidies.
Never mind the energy that was required to prepare the soil, plant the corn, harvest it, etc.
Thoughtless "action" produced thoughtless results. No way around it.
Why do people do anything less than 100% rational? Why isn't everyone munificent and wise?
I've never met anybody who is 100% rational and doubt that such a person exists. When you decide whether to sell a stock you own, do you ever consider where you got in (other than for tax reasons)? Would you ever get more annoyed at shopping at a place that levied a 5% credit card surcharge than one that priced the same items 5% higher but offered a 4.76% discount for paying cash? Do you ever insta-call at online poker and wonder afterwords why you did it? If so, you aren't 100% rational.
I'm much more critical of IQ tests after reading this book. They don't capture the full spectrum of cognitive ability. George W Bush is used as an example a few times in the book of somebody who is reasonably intelligent (~120 IQ) in the textbook sense but is cognitively deficient in ways not measured by IQ tests.
Last edited by Gordon B; March-14th-2009 at 06:00 PM.
Is it possible to learn from these mistakes? Is it possible to devise policy that might bring beneficial unintended policies? Statistically it’s possible. LOL. I think more people are getting more worried about global warming and that movement is now broad enough to include policymakers. Not only that, but our international partners rely on us to do something too. Why don’t a billion people have access to clean drinking water? I personally feel like it’s probably too late but maybe that’s just a mood I’m in. And maybe the fact that it is too late is the compelling factor, right? Like it’s so late, that we have to at least try to do something.
I feel overwhelmed just thinking about it and all that we are up against when I have to include energy policy. Is it ever possible for the government to do something right? If it’s not can we get a refund on the bailout?
Why don’t a billion people have access to clean drinking water?
Which brings up something that has irritated me for several years now. While millions of people have NO access to clean, safe drinking water, here we are, with perfectly safe drinking water, paying for bottled water.
Now, that may not seem like anything at first blush, except pickiness about how your drinking water tastes, a charming eccentricity if you will.
But, I think that if so many people are willing to pay for water, which has been shown in several cases to be tap water, filtered or not, shoved into a bottle, why should towns bother upgrading their water reserves??
__________________
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
Last edited by patricia; March-14th-2009 at 10:46 PM.
You make a good point, patricia. Maybe bottled water was a consequence of the excess of the 80s. Didn’t it start with Evian and all that designer stuff and keeping up with the Jones. But where along did I pick up the idea that one *had* to drink bottled water? It’s an expense but I don’t drink my tap water because I don’t think it’s safe. I do the fridge filter system. So I do actually drink tap water. The worst part about the bottled water seems to be the unintended consequence of plastic in landfills – in astronomical amounts. All you have to do is look around you to see everyone drinking bottled water and the volume of retail space maintained to stock it.
She does? I don't see how marketing of bottled water in the "developed world" has anything to do with water crises in third world nations.
It’s called association, Pete. The broader subject is drinking water. Patricia took this opportunity to mention that we ourselves no longer drink out of the tap. The unintended consequences of the popularity of bottled water are pollution (which relates to energy policy) and low demand for drinkable tap water.
David Henderson wrote that "insightful" piece for a right-wing think tank, the "Foundation for Economic Education," which had as initial board members executives for both General Motors and Chrysler.
These are free market fundamentalists who deny reality on a routine basis and helped bring us to the state of economic chaos we are in now.
Amory Lovins debunked the nonsense in that article years ago, but no one was listening -- especially no one in the automotive industry, the oil industry and at right wing spin factories like the one that Henderson works for.
David Henderson wrote that "insightful" piece for a right-wing think tank, the "Foundation for Economic Education," which had as initial board members executives for both General Motors and Chrysler.
These are free market fundamentalists who deny reality on a routine basis and helped bring us to the state of economic chaos we are in now.
Amory Lovins debunked the nonsense in that article years ago, but no one was listening -- especially no one in the automotive industry, the oil industry and at right wing spin factories like the one that Henderson works for.
Yeah, those automobile companies are extreme right wing as is Henderson, for lamenting both the rise of OPEC and the two Iraq wars, not to mention death by automobile. Nobody ever writes anything worthwhile, unless they pass a jeff waggoner ideological litmus test.
She does? I don't see how marketing of bottled water in the "developed world" has anything to do with water crises in third world nations.
I mentioned bottled water because it seems to absolve cities here in the "developed world" from providing tap water that doesn't taste horrible, even though it's perfectly safe to drink.
But, if we're talking about the water crisis in third world countries, here's an angle that you might not have considered.
I actually think that marketing baby formula in third world nations and giving nursing mothers the idea that somehow breast-feeding isn't the best way to feed their babies is more dangerous.
Aside from the many reports of contaminated formula being marketed in those countries, the formula is diluted by mothers, often with contaminated water, who are hard-pressed by the cost of the formula, to make it go farther.
Not only are the adults drinking contaminated water, but so are the babies who are being bottle-fed with formula diluted with that same water.
__________________
A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
Oscar Wilde [1854-1900]
Last edited by patricia; March-15th-2009 at 01:29 PM.
My water doesn't taste very good out of the tap but filtered it tastes fine. Every bit as good as bottled water. It's amazing how many people I see at the super market with cases of bottled water in their carts. What a waste.
I mentioned bottled water because it seems to absolve cities here in the "developed world" from providing tap water that doesn't taste horrible, even though it's perfectly safe to drink.
Do you have evidence of this consequence?
I don't know if any U.S. city ever had an agenda to make better tasting tap water.
Yeah, those automobile companies are extreme right wing as is Henderson, for lamenting both the rise of OPEC and the two Iraq wars, not to mention death by automobile. Nobody ever writes anything worthwhile, unless they pass a jeff waggoner ideological litmus test.
Gordon, you are the one who kneels at the altar of free enterprise. Logic doesn't enter into the picture unless it passes the Gordon Blewis greed-is- good litmus test.
And on this case, you are, as usual, full of free market fundamentalist bullshit.
Yeah, those automobile companies are extreme right wing as is Henderson, for lamenting both the rise of OPEC and the two Iraq wars, not to mention death by automobile.
Yeah, those automobile companies are extreme right wing as is Henderson, .
It is the extreme right wing, such as the automobile companies and other rightwing nut cases who have been fighting CAFE standards since Carter, if not before.
The automobile industry has historically been hostile to clean air and a clean environment in this country, as has been the right wing and the Republican party.
Henderson is simply a paid lobbyist for the automobile industry.
– MITT ROMNEY: Well, government did [cause a lot of this]. There’s no question but that the CAFE standards have put an unusual burden on the domestic automobile manufacturers. And our energy policies as a country continue to put burdens on domestic manufacturers. That’s just — that’s reality. [11/19/08]
– WILLIAM KRISTOL: Well, one problem with the auto industry is we have been telling them how to operate an awful lot, you know, in terms of CAFE standards and other things, probably which should not have been most — may have been the most — not the most intelligent way to help that industry. [11/16/08]
– SEAN HANNITY: They [the government] — you know, between the unions, between trade policy, safety standards, CAFE standards, you know, economy, fuel economy standards, they’re forcing these auto companies to be in a position where they’re not as competitive. [11/14/08]
And maybe the fact that it is too late is the compelling factor, right? Like it’s so late, that we have to at least try to do something.
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