More press for the candidacy of Libertarian Candidate Eric Schansberg in Indiana’s 9th Congressional District against Democrat Baron Hill and Republican Mike Sodrel. This story by David Mann in the Clark County News & Tribune gives a lot of ink to Prof. Schansberg’s positions rather than merely focusing on the horse race aspects of the race.
The short version.
Agriculture: End government subsidies to farmers.
Immigration: Crack down on illegal employment & secure the borders.
Gas prices: It’s supply & demand. OPEC has limited supply; India & China have increased demand; Democrats are on the wrong side of the issue by complaining about prices while inhibiting supply by adding environmental regulations and restricting drilling.
Horse race: Libertarians may draw young people away from the Democrats but also may draw fiscal conservatives away from the Republicans.
Quoth the Schansberg:
The Republicans are spending money like drunken sailors,†he said. “The Democrats are talking about silly stuff.
(For some reason this reminded me of the Animal House quote, “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”)
I disagree with Schansbergs take on energy/gas prices. Not suprised that an economics professor falls on his “market will fix it” sword, as they all do.
Economists ignore the science of depleating fossil fuel extraction at our peril. A realization of significant depletion in oil fields (up to 8% in other current large fields) in OPEC nations could have a debilitating effect on the economy. If “fixing-itself” means a depression which will drop demand; I’d care not to follow the Professor’s advice.
And I would argue tht Democrats are beginning to wain on regulations and environmental limitations for energy issues. The problem is there is a lack of conventional oil fields left. We need a diverse energy portfolio and need to incentivise conservation. This is Barons platfrom, which he will be unvailing this August and hopefully articulate in his debate with Sodrel.
I meant “hopefully” as in… he will articulate it, and “hopefully” it will be appreciated by voters on Nov. 7th.
Were Schansberg to follow Brian’s advice there wouldn’t be much use in him running as a Libertarian. Incentives for conservation and government programs to divisify the sources of energy are programs that Democrats and Greens can be expected to make the case for, and in the case of the Greens, should make the case for. We need the Libertarians to make the alternative case.
I agree Paul, haha; why run if youre not going to offer a choice? I doubt the professor should heed any advice from me if I give it. I’d just like to point out that I disagree with his platform and want to let people know that Baron is out discussing the issue with residents and formulating ideas and future policies, while Sodrel and Schansberg seem content with a “head-in-the-sand” strategy to energy.
Brian, *Hill’s debate with Sodrel*? Why, I believe it would be Hill’s debate with Sodrel and Schansberg, no?
One thing that has made gasoline prices so high is the lack of the opening of a new refinery in the USA since the late 1970s. While demand has skyrocketed, government’s involvement in energy has prevented this from happening. There is a certain amount of head-in-sand action in the willful ignorance of this fact by those who at once embrace environmental policy that prevents new refining capacity from coming online in the US, all while complaining about high gas prices. That’s called trying to have your cake and eat it too.
So, we can’t wait to see what kind of tax code tweaks Baron will unveil. We’re sure he has all the unintended consequences nailed down- just like the people who made it impossible to open a new refinery did.
So why is it, exactly, that we are supposed to greet the unintended consequences of government regulation with fear and loathing, but take the unintended consequences of market forces in our stride?
Some opportunities are foreclosed, others open. Some people get screwed, and others find entreprenurial opportunity. These happen regardless of the ideology driving the policy.
Do Real Libertarians(tm) really manage to successfully console themselves when they get cornholed by market forces that “at least it wasn’t due to government regulation”?
If so, I think the Libertarian Party might want to draw on some of the teachings of Zen Buddhism. As a meme complex it’s proven vastly more successful. All life is suffering, but as long as that suffering is imposed by the invisible hand of the market, we can meditiate and achieve peace, man.
Mike,
Exxon Mobile recently told members of congress that they have no plans to build new refineries despite the House GOP pushing legislation aimed at making the process “easier”.
There’s no incentive for them to build new refineries. Why invest a bunch of money only to lower the end price of the product you’re trying to sell? With record profits pouring in every quarter why would anyone expect them to change? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Of course for the average Joe, it’s not only broke, it’s a train wreck…
Jeff- Because you can count on the profit motive to encourage at least one oil producer to build new capacity if allowed to. Doing so would give that player a new edge over Exxon Mobil. We see this play out all the time with OPEC, a real cartel, where sooner or later one country decides to buck the status quo and release more oil into the market in order to squeeze extra money while the others are holding back. Before you know it, the floodgates are open and the prices drop sharply.
And when the floodgates open, we’ll just use up the oil that much faster. Sure, high gas prices sting, but that is the beginning of the pain, not something that we can try to get rid of.
Put another way, would you rather have less pain now, and then a huge shock when we can’t do anything to increase supply? Yes, it is greed on the oil company’s part, but in this case their greed helps us learn to wean.
One thing that drives economists to have faith in the market is the profit motive. In the case of oil, when prices get high enough, investors and researchers will look more stridently for alternative sources and methods of producing energy.
So, Jason argues in favor of higher prices as a mechanism to change. I agree that it works. Higher prices have the effect of limiting consumption.
However, what we have seen is that although prices have risen sharply, consumption has not fallen a bit. It’s going to take significantly higher prices for price to take effect.
And, as the prices get higher, the public clamors for a reaction from government to lower the prices. So, Baron goes to the drawing board to give the people what they clamor for. He could as easily work to release restrictions on refining capacity. It would be political suicide to argue for higher prices, so nobody’s going to do that.
Beyond all this, reactionaries have long advised that this commodity or that, being finite, would run out to huge world panic. If I’m not mistaken, we were supposed to run out of oil anywhere between 10 and 20 years ago. And yet… We were supposed to have exhausted the supplies of gold, copper, and other metals. We were supposed to be unable to feed our growing world population. Etc.
As long as entrepreneurs are free to innovate and experiment, chances are excellent that better substitutes will emerge. But I agree, the prospects for that are best when the prices are highest for the existing technology, and a substitute becomes most desirable.