0 Responses to “LIVE BLOG: Gonna Take Some Money”

1. Seth Halpern says:

   June 24, 2008 at 10:52 am

   “Obama…is usually so filled with ideas about how he is going to change the country….”

   Come again? (a) prolonged bloviations are not ideas; (b) more government (w/the same old Chicago politics) is not change.
2. Ted Turner says:

   June 24, 2008 at 11:01 am

   This is a very ripe area for McCain to exploit, and it’s his best chance of having a winning domestic issue. Obama’s “Just Say No” stance reflects both his obeisance to various liberal constituencies as well as what the left really believes – that energy consumption, in of itself, is a “problem” and that higher prices, leading to lower demand, are thus a very good thing. The only thing the left has profferd on this is that we need to “invest in research and development of alternative energy sources.” What these alternative sources are is rather mysterious; but it’s interesting that the same lefties who have such faith in the abilities of Modern Science to come up with some magic energy source (maybe dilithium crystals???) always assure us that there is no way, ever, that science can ever design a working missile defense system.
3. MagicalPat says:

   June 24, 2008 at 11:30 am

   What these alternative sources are is rather mysterious; but it’s interesting that the same lefties who have such faith in the abilities of Modern Science to come up with some magic energy source. ..

   In addition, they like to pound into our heads that wherever the location of our own oil, it always seems to take ten years before that oil is ‘on line’. However, their magic solution that does not yet exist will be ready before that.
4. BrooklynCouch says:

   June 24, 2008 at 11:31 am

   Well, one could argue that it’s more effective to first dwell on the “no free lunch” aspect of things, and later go more positive. Doing the reverse sounds more pollyana/light/Obamessiah-ish.
5. J.E. Dyer says:

   June 24, 2008 at 12:01 pm

   I do always enjoy the “Stop using gas, people, and the price will go down” argument. Sure, and if we stopped eating, you couldn’t sell food. Wouldn’t that be clever.

   Here’s my solution for gas prices. All the rest of you, stop using gas. I’ll keep using it myself, and reap the benefits as the price plummets. (Of course, at some point my demand won’t be a strong enough force to even justify pumping the oil, much less bringing it, refined, to convenient local pumps. But that too will be the fault of Israel, the Saudis, Big Oil, the speculators, Republican Subsidies, and YOU.)

   I’m afraid McCain doesn’t sound positive because he isn’t positive. He’s a process guy, and process guys are never positive. It takes seeing the big picture to be positive — like the fact that human ingenuity and the free market have produced all the advances we need, in all the centuries up to now, in energy production, transportation, public sanitation, housing, and food and water supply. There is no reason to assume that we’ve hit a brick wall. There are more than 6 billion people in the world, and that’s where the good ideas come from, and the will to implement them.

   Who knows? The quantum leap in carbon emissions over the last century could be GOOD for mankind — and not just because it helps with growing crops and trees. But McCain buys too much into the Leninist “kto-kogo” idea of cosmological truth: that everything comes down to who is doing what to whom. A lot of people do today; McCain is not at all unique in that regard, even among Republicans. Every new development must be a problem — not a possibility — and require an invidious political approach, with the objective of restoring a status quo ante (or, in default of that, at least punishing someone for its demise).

   History illustrates amply that this is not analysis, but pessimism — an a priori attitude. In the matter of the power of economic freedom, history in fact justifies an a priori optimism. When people are free to make their own economic choices, new developments (such as China’s and India’s dramatically increased oil market power) are opportunities, disguised as problems only to those whose horizons are limited.

   Government restrictions never produce either abundance or opportunity. All government regulation is pessimism, assuming the worst about the alternatives to regulation. The only way to be positive in this situation is to have a radically different perspective from McCain’s on government regulation, and the idea of government directing societal objectives. (Obama is obviously not the guy for that.)