In a recent post I asked about Klaus Schwab, he of the World Economic Forum, and George Soros, he of the Open Society Institute and the notion of “reflexivity.”
Are they monsters? Idiots? Or just monstrous idiots?
I incline towards to monstrous idiot theory because I hesitate with regards to the monster theory. Even the greatest monsters in history thought they were doing good. Stalin thought that his first Five Year Plan would transform the Soviet Union for the better. Mao thought his Great Leap Forward would do the same.
Notice that it was after the failures of their Big Plans that these worthies resorted to their purges and show trials. That’s how politics works. When you’ve screwed up, big time, it can’t be because of your stupid Big Plan. No, it must be saboteurs and wreckers.
Yeah. So that shows a bit of light on our current cancel culture.
What sort of monstrous idiocy is Klaus Schwab proposing this week? Well, there’s report out from his World Economic Forum:
The WEF paper argues for the past 15 years, democracy has been in decline worldwide. To protect and promote freedom, “leading democracies must strengthen their economies and safeguard liberty.”
So what the report say that the leading democracies should do?
[I]gnoring progress toward a “low-carbon economy could put democracies in greater economic peril, not less” while repeating the broader demand of environmental activists for companies to stop investing fossil fuels.
One of the problem is “underpricing of fossil fuels.” By that the report means that there were $5.9 trillion in “costs of local air pollution, global warming, and other economic damages” in 2020 that weren’t charged in fossil fuel prices.
Of course, the problem is that the costs are not based on market prices but experts estimating costs that can’t really be quantified. Especially the cost of global warming.
It’s a big problem in the whole question of “externalities.” We’ve all decided that imposing costs on other people by, say, polluting the air and giving them diseases is bad. But other costs of pollution are aesthetic: it’s nice to have clear air.
But global warming? Sorry, Klaus, old chap. The future costs of global warming are speculative. If you and George Soros would like to place a bet on global warming costs, committing your own wealth and the wealth of any investors that might want to join you, then I’ll be willing to climb aboard. But when you propose a program to force people today to convert to non-fossil fuels, based on your say-so and the experts that get grants from you? For me it’s no sale.
To me, it’s all a repeat of the glorious plans of Joe Stalin and Mao ZeDong. It’s real cool for the political leaders if they are right about the future. And real bad for ordinary people if they are wrong.
Then there is George Soros and his no-bail prosecutors. Hey, I agree that the criminal justice system is a mess. But I’ll tell you, George: the criminal justice system is an organic thing that has developed over the centuries: trying, and usually failing to figure out what to do about violent poor people. But you know what? The first job of government is to keep the peace, and that means beating up on violent people. Oncce we’ve got the violent people off the street, then we can talk about what to do with them. And you know what? Nothing works, except keeping violent offenders out of society.
And as for policing, we know what works. What works is “broken windows” policing, or harassing low lifes for minor acts of criminality that are witnessed by police. You know why it works? It’s because the residents of low-income neighborhoods won’t testify against the accused criminals — even accused murderers. Partly it’s because of ethnic solidarity, and partly the fear of “snitches get stitches.”
Yes, of course, it’s unjust that criminal defendants are usually minorities, or members of “oppressed communities.” We should have solved all problems of discrimination and racism and sexism by now. Of course, some of us, racist-sexist-homophobes that we be, think that the reason we have high-crime areas in inner cities is because of progressives and a century of progressive government policy. But that is another story.
It all comes down to this, from Henry IV, Part One.
Glendower: I can call the spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come, when you do call for them?”.
It’s all very well to call for Change. But what happens if your Change makes things worse? Are you noble activists going to pay reparations to those who lives you have ruined.
I have a radical idea. Let’s let the price system take care of this, certainly by charging fossil fuels for known external costs.
In the future, if the oceans rise, we can talk about the costs of moving people and/or cities to higher ground. If the crop-growing areas of the world move north, then we can help the farmers move, or adapt to different crops.
I just know one thing. Whatever we do, right now, to enforce a transition to “clean energy” with governments and WEFs in charge, it will turn out, in retrospect, to be the wrong thing to do. We will look back and we will note various mistakes in the forecast, ignorance about the science, unexpected events, completely new technologies, and the inevitable corruption of politics and government.
And we will note, as historians note about Stalin’s Five Year Plans and Mao’s Great Leap Frward, that, just like “the best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men,” the plans of the various governments and foundations and government subsidized technologies, “gang aft a-gley” and Make Things Worse.