How Do You Spell Boondoggle?

Take, for example, the 350ft monstrosity familiar to millions of motorists who drive past as it sluggishly revolves above the M4 outside Reading.

This wind turbine performed so poorly (working at only 15% of its capacity) that the £130,000 government subsidy given to its owners was more than the £100,000 worth of electricity it produced last year.

Meanwhile, official figures have confirmed that during those freezing, windless weeks around Christmas, when electricity demand was at record levels, the contribution made by Britain's 3,500 turbines was minuscule.  http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7298

I'd also like to see how much oil is used to build, transport, install and maintain these things - with an auto, for example, it consumes as much oil to build the car as the car will use in its lifespan; what's the 'oil payoff run time' for one of these turbines?  IOW, how many hours does the thing have to run until it has generated an amount of electricity equavalent to the amount used to get it/keep it running?

Classic Quotes, Hemingway

"There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self."  Ernest Hemingway

Alternatives to Coercion? Or Does Might Make Right?

Greater negotiating power? The effect of unions, to the extent they are effective at all, is to make it harder for people to find work in particular areas. Unions try to raise wages above what they would otherwise be. Employers respond by trying to substitute capital for labor or more skilled workers for less skilled workers.  You want negotiating power? Get educated. Get a skill. What keeps wages up in a world of 7% unionization in the private sector is that I have alternatives. So stay in school and study something serious that has value alongside whatever else you’re interested in. Or study something interesting that has little market value. But if you do that, don’t complain about your low salary and lack of a union.  The bottom line–you don’t need a union to protect you from your employer. You need alternatives–you need to have a skill that more than one employer values. If you have no skills, you are in trouble and the union won’t help you either except at the expense of other workers.   http://cafehayek.com/2011/02/the-alternative-to-unions.html

The narrative that would make anyone sympathetic to unions is that the poor worker is unprotected from an amoral, unsympathetic boss.  The worker's safety, ability to feed his/her family, and human dignity are all protected by the union.

The primary condition from which unions derive power is their backing by federal law, which allows them a coercive monopoly on labor with a particular business.  Once a union has achieved its status in the law, the owner(s) of a business no longer control who can be hired or at what compensation level.  That means if a worker wants employment from the company, he/she cannot agree to work at a lower price, or to perform the work at higher quality/output for  the same price.  In other words, the union does not protect its members from management, except by protecting its members from non-members, in other words, at the expense of 'workers.'  

The defining condition of unions is they protect members from non-members, using the coercive power of federal law.

link This was the conversation that prompted me to post on something that most of my readers would consider mundane and obvious.  So, next, I'll discuss their points - relationships between safety, risk, pay, options, and unions.

Posting On Cafe Hayek Today

Saw a comment at the Cafe today that I wanted to weight in on - which you can find here.

They posted bits of Harsanyi's brilliant riposte to Krugman.

State Death Spiral

Many of Michigan's local governments have made retirement promises to their employees that they probably can't keep. A new study from the Citizens Research Council of Michigan finds that counties, municipalities and schools have built up huge retiree health care liabilities, most of which are unfunded. Dealing with these costs can no longer be avoided or postponed.


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110225/OPINION01/102250330/Editorial--Public-retiree-health-costs-must-be-confronted#ixzz1EzFwpGUZ

Why do folks continue to pen lines like that?  It can be avoided and postponed, and it will be; that is a fact.  The truth is, the damage that is being done to both parties, the citizenry and their employees, will worsen as the politicians play the Darwinian chicken that is part and parcel of being a politician.  But that won't stop them from avoiding and postponing the costs.

High Speed Rail and Other Fairy Tales

High-speed rail may be feasible in parts of Europe or Japan, where the population density is much higher than in the United States. But, without enough people packed into a given space, there will never be enough riders to repay the high cost of building and maintaining a high-speed rail system.
Building a high-speed rail system between Los Angeles and San Francisco may sound great to people who don't give it any serious thought. But we are a more spread-out country than England, France or Japan. The distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco is greater than the distance from London to Paris-- by more than 100 miles.
In Japan, the distance between Tokyo and Osaka is comparable to the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco. But the population of Osaka alone is larger than the combined populations of Los Angeles and San Francisco-- and Tokyo has millions more people than Osaka. That is why it can make sense to have a "bullet train" running between Osaka and Tokyo, but makes no sense to build one between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
However little President Obama knows or cares about economics, he knows a lot about politics-- and especially political rhetoric. "High-speed rail" is simply another set of lofty words to justify continued expansion of government spending. So are words like "investment in education" or "investment" in any number of other things, which serves the same political purpose.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/02/22/reckless_spending_108974.html

The Fiasco That Is Public Sector Unions

"In the private sector, the capitalist knows that when he negotiates with the union, if he gives away the store, he loses his shirt. In the public sector, the politicians who approve any deal have none of their own money at stake. On the contrary, the more favorably they dispose of union demands, the more likely they are to be the beneficiary of union largess in the next election. It's the perfect cozy setup."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/24/AR2011022406520.html

Democracy, naturally, can only be saved by public-sector unions, which attain their political power and taxpayer-funded benefits by "negotiating" with politicians elected with the help of unions who use, well, taxpayer dollars. And you know, that doesn't sound like an oligarchy at all.  http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/02/25/krugmans_third_world_fantasy_109030.html

What’s happening in Wisconsin is, instead, a power grab — an attempt to exploit the fiscal crisis to destroy the last major counterweight to the political power of corporations and the wealthy. And the power grab goes beyond union-busting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html?_r=1
Here's the funny part.  Krugman just figured out that politicians sometimes have bad intentions.  But he also figured out the cure:  Make sure the corruption runs both ways!  This way, unions and  union thugs can take money from their serfs and buy the votes of their elected officials, just like the wealthy!!!  This is a brilliant solution.  A simpleton like myself would think that perhaps there's far too much power in the hands of those who hold elected office, and the inevitable result of that fact is that politicians will abuse said power.  But what the heck to I know!  I mean, sure, the crux of the problem the founders of this nation were trying to deal with when they forged the US constitution was how to balance the need for a federal state strong enough to defend the States from outside coercion, whilst minimizing squabbling between the states, while not granting enough power to that Federal state that it could become tyrannical.  Yes, they were terrified of an over-arching federal or local government.  Good thing those bad times are past us and we can just trust those democratically elected to do the right thing.  Well, trust them to do the right thing as long as they are on OUR side of the political spectrum.  That must be the keen insight that super-geniuses like Krugman have that I'm just not getting. 


Though Walker -- who won office using obnoxious Third World oligarchic tactics, e.g., getting more votes than the other candidate -- is a cancer in the heart of democracy, union-funded Democrats evading their constitutional obligation to cast votes are only protecting the integrity of representative government by completely avoiding democracy.
You're getting it now, right?