All The Candidates Are Incompetent
Scott Adams on our current batch of presidential candidates:
According to Time, ethanol is very bad economics and disastrous for the environment.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html?
The major candidates for President of the United States all support ethanol. If Time has correctly reported the consensus of expert opinions on ethanol, it seems to me that any candidate who supports it would be proved incompetent for leadership.
Is Time’s cover story wrong, or will the next leader of the United States be certifiably incompetent on day one, no matter what time the phone rings?
Any presidential candidate who claims they know right now how to solve America’s energy and environmental woes is likely to screw things up even more and isn’t worthy of our vote. Daniel has a great post about how policy makers should proceed sensibly when it comes to making energy policy.
8 Comments »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
I hate how every candidate falls all over themselves talking about ethanol and other biofuels to entice the corn lobby. I agree, there are very serious problems with many forms of biofuels.
I would point out that our overall environmental mess is a result of not being sensible in our techologization. We rushed willy-nilly into reliance on petroleum and mass consumption, without carefully considering the ramifications. Such is the way of The Market.
Comment by Derek — April 1, 2008 @ 12:51 pm
Derek,
What is the environmental mess to which you refer?
Also, what was this willy-nilly rush into reliance on petroleum? The first oil well was drilled in 1859 and at turn of the last century there was a healthy debate about using petroleum or ethanol to fuel automobiles. I don’t see a willy-nilly rush into using petroleum. It was an superior product to the alternatives.
Comment by Daniel Simmons — April 1, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
Derek,
I’d love to hear more of your argument against industrialization and how the “willy-nilly rush to reliance on petroleum and mass consumption” is a bad thing.
Of course it isn’t easy to come up with an idea of what history would look like if these things hadn’t happened but I’m still intrigued by your assertion that it was a mistake to create an economy based on mass production made possible by petroleum and other fossil fuels. Is the fact that the world can support more human life than ever before in an economic environment where the comfort and welfare of human beings is a higher moral priority than ever before a bad thing then? Whatever happened to the second great commandment?
Comment by Jeremy Manning — April 1, 2008 @ 3:19 pm
I think all candidates are looking for alternatives to energy dependence upon the middle east, and particularly find appealing renewable energy resources. But it is true, that ethanol will never seriously cut into our energy independence. It doesn’t make those candidates incompetent, but perhaps overly hopeful.
Comment by Obi wan liberali — April 1, 2008 @ 9:49 pm
I’m sorry if I was unclear. I’m not saying that industrialization and “growth” itself is unclear. It would be quite the irony to be a blogging luddite, wouldn’t it?
I’m asserting that industrialization, resource management, economic development, modernization–whatever you want to call it–could have, to paraphrase you, proceeded more sensibly. We could have, should have, and still should consider better the entire range of costs and benefits—including social and ecological costs –when deciding economic policy. While there have been many incredible benefits of modernization. The maximization of resource exploitation which occurred as a result of the free market ideology, and the conspicuous consumption which that ideology and the overuse of resources encourages, has wreaked enormous social, health, and ecological costs. Maybe the cost/benefit analysis comes out favorably, but the fact that free market proponents never seem willing to address or consider those costs is what really turns me off from the ideology.
Comment by Derek — April 3, 2008 @ 12:44 pm
Although it has a small chance of making a difference in this election, unfortunately, if people begin to realize–however lately–that Ron Paul is head and shoulders a better candidate than the Big 3 Doofuses, we can perhaps turn this country around, even if it’s not until the next election.
I respectfully disagree with Derek about the market being the cause of our energy and environmental problems. The ethanol fiasco is a prime example of how government intervention in the market is the common source of the problems we have.
Ron Paul thinks that the government has no business cozying up to the ethanol tycoons. I agree.
It will never be too late to remind ourselves that Ron Paul is/was the best candidate for President in 2008.
Comment by Frank Staheli — April 6, 2008 @ 10:17 am
Frank is right. The market isn’t the problem. I’m curious what solution Derek would propose to solve the problems of “overconsumption” brought on by market forces. Should we give the government more power to control what can and can’t be produced? How much control should we give the government? The fact that proponents of a command economy refuse to consider their principle’s costs (even in the face of recent history)is what turns me off to their ideology.
I’m sorry Frank but Ron Paul never really stood a chance. His ideology is often on target but he clearly isn’t the guy to carry the flag for libertarians. He lacks charisma and his inconsistencies cause him too much trouble.
Comment by Jeremy Manning — April 7, 2008 @ 9:12 am
[…] with hydroelectric power, with nuclear power, and now with much of the biofuels craze (nod to Jeremy). We have to realize that there are no perpetual motion machines, no magic pills to solve our […]
Pingback by Earth Day Reflections on Consumption « A Liberal Mormon — April 22, 2008 @ 9:03 pm