Competitive Enterprise Institute
I watched a short "debate" online at:
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=013106&page=1
http://www.eande.tv/transcripts/?date=013106#transcript
The last speaker, Sam Kazman (of the Competitive Enterprise Institute), was especially blunt on his opinion and repulsion to any ideals of government interfering in markets, his example being that people largely accepted higher gas prices with Katrina hitting New Orleans, but it would have been very different if the government "decided" a future shortage would exist and applied an tried to control consumption to avoid it.
He ended with name calling, Duchess of Huffington, Arianna Huffington, and claims of aristocratic attitude, to suggest that freedoms of individuals should be limited in any way of consumption except limits provided by the markets.
Well, website was easy to find:
http://www.cei.org/ The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace. Since its founding in 1984, CEI has grown into a $3,000,000 institution with a team of over 20 policy experts and other staff.
http://www.cei.org/dyn/view_Expert.cfm?Expert=45 Sam Kazman is general counsel of CEI and heads CEI’s Death By Regulation project. This project focuses on raising public awareness of the often hidden costs of government overregulation—the lives lost, for example, when the Food and Drug Administration delays new medical drugs and devices, or the human toll of downsizing cars to comply with energy-conservation mandates.
I suppose its fair to come forth publicly with an agenda of "free enterprise" is as good as any other view for a deserved voice.
Ah, "overregulation", certainly I accept the risks of "good intentions" going badly.
And I accept some of the premise of "wait for crises" to demand reaction, rather than continuous worrying over the future and wasting energy on "unneeded solutions" because situations changed.
Of course the SAME logic applies to retirement. Why worry about retirement? It's depressing to thing of dying, or being beyond my productive peak, where mere existence must suffice, and the best I can hope for is a little comfort before I die. Okay, people don't think that way if they do think of retirement, but ultimately worrying about saving TONS of money for retirement is a rather wasteful activity, since there's no well definable "needs" of an undefined future. We can try to "manage" the future, projecting costs and investment income and savings and have some security, but mostly this problem is solved by people "working hard now" and "expecting" the future to take care of itself. i.e. Wealth accumulated will be sufficient.
I certainly can be on the "over conservative" side. I might "overregulate" my spending in hopes of protecting my future. Certainly I do that by not owning a car, not having internet access at home, not going on expensive vacations, and throwing my extra income into a mortgage. Certainly there's consumption I perhaps deprive myself from unnecessarily. If I had a split personality, I might "rebel" against myself, and perhaps I do - measuring wealth by savings rather than budgeting and setting goals.
It is a terminally ill question for me - how does a "minority" convince a "majority" that it is in their best interest to pay more for energy now just because there seems a good chance we'll pay more later and should "get used to it" now and adjust.
And the point is well taken by me - crises are what allow action, so the best the government can do is secretly "prepare" for choices when crises come, and present them when the people will listen. A more devious approach is to manipulate perceptions of crises to justify earlier action than actual circumstances may demand.
The republicans seem pretty good at painting liberals as "elitists" trying to moderate consumption while they would apparently call their neoconservative lead international interventions like Iraq as feel-good macho-american superiority - kick some ass if you're into that, and build democracy if you're into good will.
Actually living within our means is NOT an issue. We're superior, and we'll take what we can get, and no one will stop us.
Well, unfortunately beliefs like that are what generate my own "American hatred", or at least I've very happy to have others, like the president of Venesuela challening the U.S. and even China as well, not that I'd like to live in either country, just that I thing the sooner we'll have to deal with our own unsustainable demands on the environment.
Until then, organizations like CEI can offer their happy analyses of utopian visions of free markets under unlimited cheap energy, resources, and unlimited economic growth, and there's really nothing to be done except wait for reality to prove their short sightedness.
And it's not like CEI created our problem. They merely want to profit from it. They don't want "solutions" that destroy their free lunches.
I'm not even trying to put down enterprise and taking risks for rewards. Obviously I wouldn't be here now without freedoms that encouraged this temporary wealth and freedom.
I'm just putting my bets on 2025. If CEI can keep their arguments another 20 years, I'll be impressed. They're still wrong in the long term, but I'll be impressed with humanity's ability to keep pushing the limits, and also likely more depressed about the ever steepening fall that must come.
So maybe I should "go religious" and put my hopes in the after life? At least then I wouldn't have to worry about greed finishing off our yet beautiful world.
http://www.eande.tv/main/?date=013106&page=1
http://www.eande.tv/transcripts/?date=013106#transcript
The last speaker, Sam Kazman (of the Competitive Enterprise Institute), was especially blunt on his opinion and repulsion to any ideals of government interfering in markets, his example being that people largely accepted higher gas prices with Katrina hitting New Orleans, but it would have been very different if the government "decided" a future shortage would exist and applied an tried to control consumption to avoid it.
He ended with name calling, Duchess of Huffington, Arianna Huffington, and claims of aristocratic attitude, to suggest that freedoms of individuals should be limited in any way of consumption except limits provided by the markets.
Well, website was easy to find:
http://www.cei.org/ The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of free enterprise and limited government. We believe that individuals are best helped not by government intervention, but by making their own choices in a free marketplace. Since its founding in 1984, CEI has grown into a $3,000,000 institution with a team of over 20 policy experts and other staff.
http://www.cei.org/dyn/view_Expert.cfm?Expert=45 Sam Kazman is general counsel of CEI and heads CEI’s Death By Regulation project. This project focuses on raising public awareness of the often hidden costs of government overregulation—the lives lost, for example, when the Food and Drug Administration delays new medical drugs and devices, or the human toll of downsizing cars to comply with energy-conservation mandates.
I suppose its fair to come forth publicly with an agenda of "free enterprise" is as good as any other view for a deserved voice.
Ah, "overregulation", certainly I accept the risks of "good intentions" going badly.
And I accept some of the premise of "wait for crises" to demand reaction, rather than continuous worrying over the future and wasting energy on "unneeded solutions" because situations changed.
Of course the SAME logic applies to retirement. Why worry about retirement? It's depressing to thing of dying, or being beyond my productive peak, where mere existence must suffice, and the best I can hope for is a little comfort before I die. Okay, people don't think that way if they do think of retirement, but ultimately worrying about saving TONS of money for retirement is a rather wasteful activity, since there's no well definable "needs" of an undefined future. We can try to "manage" the future, projecting costs and investment income and savings and have some security, but mostly this problem is solved by people "working hard now" and "expecting" the future to take care of itself. i.e. Wealth accumulated will be sufficient.
I certainly can be on the "over conservative" side. I might "overregulate" my spending in hopes of protecting my future. Certainly I do that by not owning a car, not having internet access at home, not going on expensive vacations, and throwing my extra income into a mortgage. Certainly there's consumption I perhaps deprive myself from unnecessarily. If I had a split personality, I might "rebel" against myself, and perhaps I do - measuring wealth by savings rather than budgeting and setting goals.
It is a terminally ill question for me - how does a "minority" convince a "majority" that it is in their best interest to pay more for energy now just because there seems a good chance we'll pay more later and should "get used to it" now and adjust.
And the point is well taken by me - crises are what allow action, so the best the government can do is secretly "prepare" for choices when crises come, and present them when the people will listen. A more devious approach is to manipulate perceptions of crises to justify earlier action than actual circumstances may demand.
The republicans seem pretty good at painting liberals as "elitists" trying to moderate consumption while they would apparently call their neoconservative lead international interventions like Iraq as feel-good macho-american superiority - kick some ass if you're into that, and build democracy if you're into good will.
Actually living within our means is NOT an issue. We're superior, and we'll take what we can get, and no one will stop us.
Well, unfortunately beliefs like that are what generate my own "American hatred", or at least I've very happy to have others, like the president of Venesuela challening the U.S. and even China as well, not that I'd like to live in either country, just that I thing the sooner we'll have to deal with our own unsustainable demands on the environment.
Until then, organizations like CEI can offer their happy analyses of utopian visions of free markets under unlimited cheap energy, resources, and unlimited economic growth, and there's really nothing to be done except wait for reality to prove their short sightedness.
And it's not like CEI created our problem. They merely want to profit from it. They don't want "solutions" that destroy their free lunches.
I'm not even trying to put down enterprise and taking risks for rewards. Obviously I wouldn't be here now without freedoms that encouraged this temporary wealth and freedom.
I'm just putting my bets on 2025. If CEI can keep their arguments another 20 years, I'll be impressed. They're still wrong in the long term, but I'll be impressed with humanity's ability to keep pushing the limits, and also likely more depressed about the ever steepening fall that must come.
So maybe I should "go religious" and put my hopes in the after life? At least then I wouldn't have to worry about greed finishing off our yet beautiful world.
posted by Ares Olympus at 4:34 PM
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