Wieseltier Endorses Obama [Jonah Goldberg]
THE CORNER
Hardly jaw-dropping, I know. And I find the schtick of Wieseltier's writing much less interesting than I did, say, 20 years ago. But I did like this bit, which has the merit of being entirely true: tnr.com
>>>>>>>>>I must say that the Ayers affair rankles me, because I would not shake the man's dirty hand; and the fact that Obama was eight years old at the time of the Weather Underground is no more pertinent to his moral and historical awareness than the fact that he was six years old at the time of the King assassination<<<<<<<<<
Mankind is an open, thermodynamic system. We grow or we die.
Down With Economic Growth! [Jonah Goldberg]
From The New Scientist:
>>>>>>>>>>>>In recent weeks it has become clear just how terrified governments are of anything that threatens growth, as they pour billions of public money into a failing financial system. Amid the confusion, any challenge to the growth dogma needs to be looked at very carefully. This one is built on a long-standing question: how do we square Earth's finite resources with the fact that as the economy grows, the amount of natural resources needed to sustain that activity must grow too? It has taken all of human history for the economy to reach its current size. On current form it will take just two decades to double.
In this special issue, New Scientist brings together key thinkers from politics, economics and philosophy who profoundly disagree with the growth dogma but agree with the scientists monitoring our fragile biosphere. The father of ecological economics, Herman Daly, explains why our economy is blind to the environmental costs of growth ("The World Bank's blind spot"), while Tim Jackson, adviser to the UK government on sustainable development, crunches numbers to show that technological fixes won't compensate for the hair-raising speed at which the economy is expanding ("Why politicians dare not limit economic growth").<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
I liked this bit (via Steven Milloy's summary):
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> University of Maryland ecological economist Herman Daly claims that we've passed the point where economic growth provides benefits and that we need to "transform our economy from a forward-moving aeroplane to a hovering helicopter," but that such a "steady-state" economy "doesn't have to mean freezing in the dark under a communist tyranny." In trying to explain his latter comment, he says that "Most of the changes could be applied gradually, in mid-air," by which he apparently means replacing the income tax with a tax on goods to "encourage people to use them sparingly." Although he acknowledges that this regressive policy would hurt the poor, he says taxes could be used to provide welfare.<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Something tells me we'll be hearing a lot more of this nonsense in the years to come. |
