Re: Canada's Oil Reserves Attract U.S., As American Media Ta
When I say that the Left doesn't understand economics, this is what I mean.
Reverend Blair said:
Yet your policies push people into poverty and starvation, creating the very conditions where people do not care if there's pollution.
Markets do not drive people into poverty, they lift people out of poverty. That is why countries like China and, to a lesser extent, India, following the examples throughout the rest of Southeast Asia, are throwing off the shackles of government restrictions and instead allowing people to invest and create jobs and turn a profit. Markets do the exact opposite of what you claim.
Reverend Blair said:
And yet current right-wing politics, including those of your president and of that woman in your avatar, insist that the markets should be allowed to dictate other policy. You insist on that yourself, including in the post that I'm responding to.
No, what they say is that if government is going to intervene, there has to be a very good reason. The price system creates the most wealth for the most people most of the time. To assume that we have enough wealth is to assume that there are no more poor people, that there are no more diseases to cure, etc.
The unemployment rate in the nation the lady in my avatar ruled is half that of France and Germany, the social models of which the Left would like to replicate in Canada. There is no better social policy than a job.
Reverend Blair said:
So why haven't you created and developed technologies for environmental sustainability?
This is to assume that we are at the end of history. You said earlier that if there was going to be environmentally-friendly technologies, it already would have been invented. That's like saying if there's going to be a cure for cancer, it would have already been discovered. Energy companies spend tens of millions of dollars a year on environmentally-friendly technologies. The largest spender on solar energy technology is BP.
Reverend Blair said:
If it is a science, then you have to discard or revise your theories when they fail.
Because they don't work. That's why there is less government involvement in the economy, or at least in the functioning of market clearing today than there was in the 1970s. We have learned that government trying to dictate the economy is generally a failure. The failure has been on the government intervention in the economy. And like I said,
toro said:
The problem with any social science is its difficult to construct a test and a control group. You can't say, "Okay, we're going to collapse this country's economy here and not this country's economy and see what happens." But what you can do is understand economic history and model the data from history.
Reverend Blair said:
Since the theory that free markets solve problems have been shown to be devastatingly wrong, causing the debt crisis, environmental disaster, unbalanced distribution of wealth, and even economic collapse, you should be discarding the theories. Since you have not done that you are either being unscientific or disingenuous about what the conclusion of the theory really is.
This was the thinking that permeated on the Left in the 1960s and 1970s. The answers provided by the Left lead to unemployment and inflation. Debt crisis? Social spending pushed New Zealand to the wall and gave Canada a debt/GDP ratio of 100% in the 1990s - higher than America ever reached. Government spending on infrastructure in Japan has lead to a debt/GDP ratio of 150%. That ain't because of the market. Environmental crisis? The worst environmental disasters occurred in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China. Unbalanced distribution of wealth? I'd rather have that then no wealth creation. Its no coincidence that the US and the UK have grown faster than Western Europe. Economic collapse? Where? Besides, looking through such an ideological spectrum fails to understand that there is a role for government in modern economies, particularly when it comes to monetary policy. Its not that simple.
Reverend Blair said:
Sustainability is not a matter of opinion. Since you use oil as an example....Consider the cost the problems caused in the Middle East since WWI. Consider the environmental problems caused. Consider the health problems. Consider the social impacts. Consider the economic problems that have spun off from those things.
Consider all the good things. In 1900, the country with the longest life span was Sweden at 56 years of age. Today, even most of the poorest countries in the world have a life span as long. Life spans are longer, infant mortality rates are lower, life is easier, people are not as susceptible to disease, technology has made our lives so much easier, etc. This has occurred because of progress, in particular economic progress.
Reverend Blair said:
Consider one more thing while you are at it...the world economy is dependent on oil so to change anything we have to revise the entire world economy which makes change very difficult. You use oil as an example, but focus only on the price and availability of oil. It is a highly flawed construct that you are using.
No, the price and availability is key to it all. If the price is higher, more research will be channelled into other forms of energy.
That's how markets work. If other forms of energy are not discovered in time, then growth will slow. But that can't hide the fact that the 20th century saw tremendous economic progress using oil as an energy source. That wealth and knowledge accrued won't disappear.
Reverend Blair said:
No, this whole debate started when you attempted to deny that NAFTA gives the US massive influence over Canadian resources.
No Rev. Go back and read what has been posted. You said that Canada cannot cut back exports to the US even if our consumption falls because of NAFTA. I refuted that.
Reverend Blair said:
She is a journalist, Toro. ...If you read McQuaig's writing,
She has her right to her opinion but she is not an authority on trade or energy matters. Just because she's a journalist does not make her so.
Reverend Blair said:
See, this is where you get it wrong. At the heart of economics are people. Real living, breathing people.
At the heart of economics are people. Real living, breathing people
buying and selling, investing and saving. In other words, a market. People
are the market. Real living, breathing people. Rocks and trees aren't transacting goods and services. People are.
Reverend Blair said:
Again, you have it wrong. You show a complete lack of knowledge of the left. While we would limit corporations, we do not think they are evil. Corporations are completely amoral by nature.
In my career, I have looked at over a thousand corporations. Its what I do for a living. The idea that corporations by definition are amoral is flat out wrong. Corporations are entities run by people. And like all people everywhere, some are ammoral, some are immoral, but most are moral. The morality of a corporation, just like the morality of a government or a union or an NGO, are as moral as the people involved. Most people and corporations are moral. Some are not. Just like most people are moral but some are not.
Reverend Blair said:
Corporations are not repositories of wealth, they are profit making machines.
This, again, demonstrates that the Left does not understand economics. Economic wealth is a function of profits. Unless an economy is sitting on a wealth of natural resources, such as Dubai, Qatar and the other Gulf states, the health of an economy is highly dependent on the profitability of an economy.
