One of the seven wonders of the Ancient world are the Pyramids. Ancient tombs built to honor and glorify ancient kngs … or public works/werkfare projects for a starving populus looking for gainful employment in a system in which production was centrally controlled? Is there a lesson there for today?
From the Biblical (Genesis) account, a clever man (Joseph) forsaw drought. In response, the advise of that same clever man implemented an enconomic policy destroyed the private economy of the Egyptian populus. But att the end of the fourteen years, grain production was wholly owned by the state. Such a wonderful turn of events, no? What to do with all that labor? Now that grain production (?), storage and distribution is centrally controlled, and a surplus of labor is available, how might those that excess labor (in the absence of course of any economy independant of the state) be put to use? Why to building greater and greater … monuments. Whether pyramidal labor served as primitive workfare is certainly not known by me, but it seems a possiblity. Money pumped into the “military-industrial complex” and the high tech industrial capacity of the west spurred on by the modern wars and the moon race likewise put millions to work and drove economies forward to new heights.
In the last century, war (two world spanning ones), the arms race, and the moon might serve similiar purposes. That of harnessing the excess capacity of a civilization to push toward a greater goal. Mr Bush has suggested putting men on Mars might serve a similar purpose. Liberals like Mr Mondale were firmly against the Apollo project because, “money would be better spent fighting poverty”. But Mr Mondale seems to be unaware that money spent on projects like that is not burned in the air, but is actually paid to men for their gainful labor and with the added benefit that the spirit is lifted being engaged in a higher purpose be it building a pyramid or a liquid fueled booster aimed at the moon or beyond. I would seem that civillizations are healthy when they strive for something bigger than prosperity. Liberals scoffed at Mr Bush’s Mars project, but they are wrong to not propose an alternative. The particulars of the project might be wrong … but having a project is very right.
The problem with the solutiosn proposed to by those hoping to fight CO2 and global warming is unfortunately a different tack to a big problem. Setting aside the part where I’m still skeptical about global warming in the first place, after all I’m of that generation which grew up wherein the global climate mantra was a screed against global cooling. The warnings in the 70s and 80s were all about staving off the incipient ice age. Now 20 years later, much of the same data is used to demostrate the opposite (and I’d bet if the “new data” was shown to scientists back then it would have been argued that the same (ice age) hypothesis would be proven from it as well). Two other factors lead to my skepticism, first other solor bodies (mars and saturn) also evidence global warming … so perhaps CO2 is not the primary cause and more importantly understanding of the climate is a nascent science. Professor Eugene Parker at U of Chicago used to dismiss the hypothesis of those who confidently expressed their understanding of stellar evolution because so many basic things (he studied magneto-hydrodynamics of the solar plasma) were not at all understood. He was dismissive of the confidence in so many models of things much farther away and understood in even less detail. Similarly the climate is very complex. Given that we don’t understand very much about solar dynamics (which is just one of many factors affecting the climate) or how the dozens (or more) of other complicated interactions play into each other … the hubris of making predictions that man-made CO2 is definitively having a known effect is not something well supported by theory it would seem to me. Anyhow, I digress. The point is that the solution to the CO2 problem, while possibly attractive to a monastic culture, is not attractive to human nature. The action required is to not do. Acting is what humans want to do to solve a problem, not abstention. Abstention is not a project which millions can get behind. It doesn’t so easily engage the spirit of the modern Western man. It is a negative action, choosing not to do a thing. Doing without. Passing up. Letting go. These do not engage the modern man. Modern society wants to do.
If the global warming/climatologists want to get their civillization to get behind their efforts (for better or worse), they need to propose solutions which require pyramids to be built, Great Walls, Manhattan projects, or Apollo moon shots. The solution to global warming needs to be found which is laking to those projects which will engage minds, hearts, end perhaps more importantly employ millions.
There are numerous issues here:
1. You want to run a budget deficit to stimulate the economy when the economy is at less than full structural employment (of labor & capital). While the US economy is at less than full employment of labor, it is well above full employment of capital. A Mars project would merely skew this distortion further. The USA is presently importing an average of $2 billion per day NET capital from abroad to finance the public debt.
2. A principle of conservative governance is that the state has a hierarchy of functions to carry out; preserving the existence of the state is one, followed by the provision of public goods. The US government under George W. Bush has manifestly deteriorated in its performance of basic social functions, for reasons too long to discuss here.
3. As a former space exploration fanatic, I believe the moral stimulus of space exploration is both overstated and very perverse. It’s bad for science, since money is drawn away from welfare-enhancing sciences and towards speculative theoretical physics. The science-awareness bonanza of the Apollo Project was a manifest bust, and I now confess that the entire scheme was a pure was of $50+ billion at current prices. Perversely, it was a “tower of babel,” promoting hubris in relation to the human habitat.
4. It disturbs me very deeply that a very large number of people professing conservative beliefs will, on the one hand, denounce the New Deal as an insidious endeavor that failed to end the Great Depression, while on the other, insist it was WW2 that ended the depression. I would invite one to apply simple logic.
Suppose WW2 never happened. Suppose Stalin lost the power struggle in the USSR, and was replaced by Bukharin. Hitler was never appointed chancellor by Hindenberg, and the Weimar Republic pulled back from the brink. The Feb 26th incident caused a massive Japanese public demand for an all-civilian government and withdrawal from Manchuria. In 1939, the major powers are in a state of relative harmony. The Americans open their markets to Commonwealth products, while a Labour government liquidates the empire in India and Africa.
Suppose, finally, that ALL THE MONEY the great powers spent on WW2 (you know, bombing and killing their neighbors) was spent instead on a SUPER DUPER New Deal. No guns, no pyramids, just hospitals, schools, streets, bridges, universities, libraries, and national parks. All US cities are furnished with a subway system and modern utilities. The South is transformed into a showpiece of modern capital improvements. No Europeans or Asians are killed in combat; no air raids; no Holocaust; no Manhattan Project or 39 aircraft carriers; no occupation of a bombed out Germany.
Would that suffice to end the global depression? I would say, “Yes.” Death is not required.
The hubris of making predictions that man-made CO2 is definitively having a known effect is not something well supported by theory it would seem to me.
The hubris of making statements ex vatic about something one does not understand is pretty serious. The volume of evidence supporting global warming is now immense. Remarks like this are the equivalent of shouting “LALALALA CANT HEEEEEEER YUUUUUU!”
James,
I’m not arguing contra global warming’s existence, just the man-made CO2 as the primary (or significant) cause, e.g., there is also evidence of global warming (receding ice caps) on Mars and recession in the ice rings of Saturn. CO2 cannot be the cause. If solar forcing for example is the primary cause of warming, what can men do?
My suggestion is that even if drastic reduction of CO2 is required to fix things (that is accepting “your” thesis) then the problem is the fix is not “proactive” but requires abstention. Abstention is not a “goal” which is a stimulating and inspiring as a goal which requires development and action.
James,
On the former comments, I suspect if all that resources went into a New Deal that we would be even further on the “Road to Serfdom” ala Hayek than we are now.
On the former comments, I suspect if all that resources went into a New Deal that we would be even further on the “Road to Serfdom” ala Hayek than we are now.
You’ve missed the point entirely.
My counterfactual is: WHAT IF World War 2 never happened, and the event we call “WW2″ was instead a gigantic public works project by the belligerant powers. I chose my public works carefully: edifices, roads, trains, and electric power grids. The counterfactual excludes the appearance of totalitarian regimes, and concomitant military-industrial complexes. In fact, I very carefully excluded state planning of the secular economy (i.e., manufacture of private goods).
No Stalinism, no Japanese militarism, early demise of Italian & Spanish Fascism, and, obviously, no Naziism. No Holocaust, no blitz, no incineration of Dresden or Hiroshima, no Stalingrad, no Balkan wars. No Israel either, since there was no exodus from Poland, Romania, or elsewhere.
I humbly submit I’ve defined any road to serfdom out of the picture.
Now, straight economics: would such an event end the Great Depression?
If yes, then you must concede that the problem with the actual New Deal was that it was too small.
If no, why was it necessary for 75 million people to die?
James,
First, on the economic question, perhaps you’ve missed the point of the essay above. I don’t think, without a identifiable goal, ala pyramids, moon-shots, or even countering Axis aggression people will put out the same effort that they might otherwise do.
But, setting that aside, if the money was put into public works (and not socialist policies) then I don’t think poverty would be solved. And it was necessary that so many die, because a web of men’s choices and their consequences aligned axis powers to act aggressively and other men (in my opinion of good conscience) had to oppose them or worse would have befallen global civillizations. We didn’t go to war to end a monetary depression. I’m writing a post tonight, actually a book review, which has something I think to say about the avoidablity those same deaths (and what economics might have to say about it).
On the cure for global poverty, public works, handouts, and projects are not, I think, the answer. As I was convinced by this book some time ago.