March 07, 2023

Bureaucracies Utterly Incapable Of Making Reasonable Tradeoffs

March 07, 2023/ Francis Menton

Often I focus on bureaucratic regulation of energy because the ability to restrict use of energy is the ultimate societal control. Once they have obtained the ability to restrict use of energy, bureaucrats could, if they choose, take away most of our freedom to enjoy life and return us to the income levels of the Stone Age.
Will they stop before going that far, making reasonable tradeoffs to enable the people to flourish economically? Or will they instead pursue environmental purity without concern for the well-being of the populace?
So far all indications are that bureaucracies — and environmental bureaucracies in particular — are utterly incapable of making reasonable tradeoffs. You don’t go into a career as an environmental bureaucrat if you think that your concern for the environment is something that can or should be compromised.

March 03, 2023

The Humanities: Another Example Of Leftism Ruining Everything It Touches

March 03, 2023/ Francis Menton

The New Yorker is a magazine that I have barely noticed for decades. It is the epitome of the “New York groupthink” that I mention on my “About” page.
But the current issue has a long (10,000+ words) piece by a guy named Nathan Heller, titled “The End of the English Major,” that I thought might be worth a look. Perhaps here we might find some liberal introspection about how infesting everything you control with racialist and gender obsessions and Critical Race Theory might not be such a great idea.
Who was I trying to kid?

March 01, 2023

March 01, 2023/ Francis Menton

In Chicago on Tuesday, current Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her bid for re-election.
In a race where only the top two finishers would advance to the final round, Lightfoot finished third, with 17.1% of the vote. Of nine total candidates, the top two vote-getters were Paul Vallas (33.7% of the vote) and Brandon Johnson (20.3%). Those two will now compete in a runoff in April.
The New York Times, which provided those voting data, described Lightfoot in its February 28 report as someone “whose outsider status and promises to enact sweeping reforms propelled her to office four years ago,” but who “saw her popularity plunge as homicides reached generational highs and as Chicago struggled to rebound from the pandemic.”
It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.

February 26, 2023

February 26, 2023/ Francis Menton

“Stranded assets.” You know what those are. Probably you’ve read a hundred or more articles over the past few years confidently proclaiming that oil and gas fields and coal mines owned by large energy companies will soon become worthless, as production of energy shifts to “cleaner” and “cheaper” things like wind and solar.
The owners of the fossil fuel properties won’t be able to sell them for even a dollar. The assets will thus be “stranded.”
The “stranded assets” predictions unsurprisingly come from the same crowd who are also ordering up the electric car future. For just a tiny sample of recent pieces making the stranded assets point . . .

February 23, 2023

February 23, 2023/ Francis Menton

It seems like all the smart people have made up their minds that the future of automobiles belongs to electric vehicles.
In August 2022, California, by regulation, adopted a ban on gasoline-powered cars by 2035; and in September 2022, New York promptly followed with its own ban, also by regulation, and also set for 2035. And at the federal level, in 2021 the Biden Administration ordered that all agencies move toward 100% procurement of electric vehicles, also by 2035. Meanwhile, by means of a thicket of regulations — from vehicle mileage standards to pollution caps and more — the administration overtly seeks to force manufacturers to convert their lineups to EVs as fast as possible.
So, are electric vehicles about to sweep the country and become the dominant form of transportation? I bet against it. This is just a specific instance of the general principle that it is always wise to bet against central planning of the economy.

February 21, 2023

February 21, 2023/ Francis Menton

A recurring theme here at Manhattan Contrarian is that the “smart” people who seek to run the world are not really very smart.
They may have gotten high scores on the SATs, and they may have attended fancy universities, but when it comes to practical knowledge of how the world works they are often complete idiots.
A special case of this phenomenon is that the highest gurus of high finance — the people who are most trusted to have mastered basic numeracy, and who get to pass out trillions of dollars of public funds — are completely innumerate.
As obvious as the conclusion of increasing electricity prices may be, our government, represented by EPA and the Justice Department, either claims, or pretends, not to recognize that conclusion. Could seemingly smart people really be so dense?