Confessions of an eco-sceptic: how I came to believe in natural causes of global warming
86It's a Saturday morning in South London, circa 1989. My fellow Friends of the Earth activists and I (all white and mostly twenty-something) are standing outside the Brixton branch of Woolworths, placards in hand. The manager of the store is watching us from inside, to make sure that we don't step off the pavement onto the ceramic tiles in front of the plate glass doors - to do so would mean that we were stepping off the public highway and onto Woolworth's own property, which he doesn't want us to do. He's not worried that we'll go on the rampage and vandalise the place - we're obviously not that kind of activist - but he doesn't want us to pester his customers and dissuade them from actually buying any stuff.
The subject of our protest? I can't remember. I think it was something to do with CFCs in aerosols. When it comes to green issues I feel as though in some respects I've done a 180 degree turn since those days, although I do look back at them with a great deal of fondness - I learned a lot and met some very good, highly intelligent people, who genuinely believed in what they were doing. The feeling of belonging - and of having a worthwhile goal in common - is not to be underestimated. It makes it easy to understand those who say that a lot of people in Britain were actually happier during World War II than before or after, because despite the danger and the rationing, their lives actually had some purpose.
What has made me put the placards away and do the "180 degree turn" I mentioned? I could just glibly say it was down to the increasing conservatism of age. Winston Churchill's dictum ("The man who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at forty he has no head") could just as well apply to green issues and other causes. But it would be too easy to leave it at that.
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One turning point for me came about six or seven years ago, when I first started to participate in Internet forum discussions. Most of the people on the forums were Americans (probably that's still true now). And a lot of them were right-wing libertarians. I'd never come across libertarianism before, and it was quite a culture shock. At this point it's worth taking a little detour and explaining what "right wing" means to people in Britain as opposed to the States. For us Brits, being right wing is more to do with a "keep 'em out" policy on immigration - which can even translate to outright racism on occasion - allied with a hard line approach to crime. There is also some lip service paid to free market economics but in practice both mainstream political parties - Labour and Conservative - are pretty much alike these days when it comes to economic policies: firmly middle of the road. (And it's also true that in today's Europe, domestic political parties are becoming more and more irrelevant as we get closer and closer to an EU superstate. But that's a whole other hub, as Jerry Springer might say.)
Anyway, these libertarians said a lot of things I disagreed with. Still disagree with, in fact. (Some of them even reminded me of Marxists in their sheer dogmatism - not that they would have thanked me for saying this.) But they did bring a refreshing new perspective to the subject of politics. In UK mainstream politics/media, it's almost taken for granted that global warming is man-made, and that our carbon footprint must be reduced or The Sky Will Fall In. The libertarian people I spoke to on the Internet were of a different opinion. They said that the idea of man made global warming was at best a misconception and at worst a hoax. The current increases in temperature are part of a millennia-long cycle, they said - one that was in place long before humans burned fires, drove cars and made things in factories. Furthermore, the world is a complex system: humankind's effect on the climate (if any) is probably dwarfed by factors such as sunspot cycles and the ability of the world's oceans to absorb and release carbon dioxide. Lastly, they drew my attention to something else - something that had always caused me a little bit of disquiet, even in my activist days. Namely, the discriminatory and "anti-human" agenda that seems to be implicit in many initiatives that are supposed to improve the environment. For example, the severe caps on carbon emissions recently proposed by Hillary Clinton would prevent countries like India from making the improvements in their economy that would be necessary to lift many of its people out of poverty.
Have I completely rejected the things I believed in all those years ago? No. I still recycle (though I do often wonder whether some forms of recycling are worth it in terms of the amount of energy used to collect and process the waste). I believe in conserving energy, and eating locally-grown food as much as possible, not only because it cuts down on "food miles" but also because it benefits the local economy. It's just that I no longer believe in wearing a metaphorical hair shirt. People are part of the environment too, and perhaps we should remember that.
© M. Ibbotson 2009
I'm a libertarian and I recycle. Carbon cap-and-trade initiatives from Hilary Clinton are simple power grabs on behalf of the current administration. Assuming Obama is as smart as his followers believe, there's no way he could fall for global warming pseudo-science.
Aya Katz/nicomp: thank you very much for both your comments! I have wondered myself what role population plays in the environmental debate. If what you say is true, and that the population needs to be relatively low in order for the environment not to suffer, then what if any steps do you think should be taken to ensure that it stays low? My own hunch is that there is a natural ceiling on global population anyway. The population will be prevented from exceeding that ceiling by things like disease, warfare or economic prosperity - hopefully the latter. (From what I can gather, the birth rate goes down when a country attains a certain level of prosperity, because medical care and nutrition improve and child mortality rates go down. People therefore no longer need to have lots of children in order to ensure that at least one of them survives to have children of their own and look after their parents in their old age).
With regard to Obama, I hope you're right, although I'm not terribly optimistic. There's lots of money to be made out of cap-and-trade: the people who stand to make this money probably don't want any pesky politicians standing in their way.
"There's lots of money to be made out of cap-and-trade: the people who stand to make this money probably don't want any pesky politicians standing in their way."
I re-read this today and thought it sounded more than a bit flippant. But I do believe that people are mistaken when they think that politicians make decisions in a vacuum, when in fact they have to make compromises based on the desires of all sorts of other entities such as corporations, the civil service, unions and other countries/trading blocs, not to mention the voters. My first inkling of this came when I was a teenager watching a TV comedy programme called Yes Minister (which later morphed into Yes Prime Minister). In it, Prime Minister Jim Hacker is constantly having to mediate between conflicting demands and water down his original ideas. Even at the time, this struck me as much more realistic than the "leader of the country is the sole person in charge" scenario that many people appear to believe in.
Empress Felicity, I've no doubt that you are right and that all sorts of calculations go into the decision of a politician to support something like cap and trade.
As for the population problem, you might want to read my hub called "Facts about Homo Sapiens..."
What Aya misses is the fact that in advance nations like the UK, Germany, France, Japan, etc. population is actually falling. http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/nohuman
The reason for that is simple. It costs a lot to raise a child in an advanced nation and, more and more, kids are a drain that are not strictly needed to help the family anymore. In a pre-industrial farming society, kids have value as laborers. They do the work and take care of the elderly. Pre-industrial labor is hard. Not to mention that death rates are high anyway so there is an incentive for large families for that reason only.
Industrial nations are a bit different. Due to the nature of those societies kids are not valued for their labor, but are valued for other reasons. Fulfillment, desire to raise the next generation, having kids is what is expected of them, the reasons are far more complex and varied than those of a pre-industrial society. People also tend to have fewer kids because of the costs.
Ledefensetech, it's true that in industrialized nations of Europe the population is falling. The same is not true in the U.S., I'm afraid. To the extent that U.S. birth rates slow down, it's because women delay child birth. But I don't think, for the sake of the children who are born, that this is the best way to go. It's healthier to have children early, and then curtail child-bearing.
The only reason we aren't following Europe's lead in losing population is due to immigration. We're still having fewer and fewer kids. Still even with our insignificant population increase, the true danger from overpopulation comes from Third World countries.
Actually with out health care system, it doesn't really matter much if you delay childbirth or not. Even if it does, I can foresee a day when most births are done artificially. After all how many women wouldn't jump at the chance to use an artificial womb instead of being incapacitated for nine months or so. Yeah, I know, you're going to have your hardcore "naturalists" but that's fine too. To each their own.
Aya Katz: "As for the population problem, you might want to read my hub called "Facts about Homo Sapiens..."
I've read it and it was great! (Polyandry as a way of controlling the population... hmmm, sounds interesting.) I also enjoyed another of your hubs, The Evolution of Selfishness. Makes me wonder if humans are evolving (if that's the right word) into a hive culture. {{{Shudder}}}
Ledefensetech: "in advanced nations like the UK, Germany, France, Japan, etc. population is actually falling. http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/nohuman"
Thank you for the link; it kind of confirms what I've suspected for a while but never actually took the trouble to look up.
EmpressFelicity, thanks! And thanks for letting me carry on the discussion here as well. It's always nice to find a hub that touches on important issues in intelligent way.
Ledefensetech, women are already using artificial means to prolong their fertility and to overcome obstacles to successful birth. The danger is that if enough of us go this way, there might not be any turning back. Once natural methods disappear completely, it will be very easy for child birth and the care of young to be removed from the private sector.
I disagree. We may have taken control of fertility, but I just don't foresee a day in which people will allow their kids to be taken from them. I can, however, foresee a day that people will have kids but not want to spend time raising them.
John Ringo has a series called the War of the Council which explores this phenomenon a bit. Extrapolating from current trends, he envisions a world that is awash in technology akin to magic, whose population is falling and what happens when one person decides to chart humanity's course for them. It's a pretty good read, you can find it here: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/18-EyeoftheStor
I consider myself a middle of the road environmental activist. I think there are many possible solutions to our current problem, and many environmental groups are dogmatic in their own way.
But there is no question that humans are seriously taxing the planet. We might well be setting ourselves up for extinction. Even if global warming is a complete hoax, there are still many other issues that need to be addressed, like overfishing of the oceans, soil depletion, pollution, water contamination and overuse, etc.
As for global warming, I urge you to take another look at the science. There is a chance that it is caused by a natural cycle, but the evidence overwhelmingly points to human CO2 emissions and land use changes. There is also a chance that the planet will adapt to our changes - but that is not likely. The arctic ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, which has the potential to set up climate feedbacks we can't even imagine.
You can call environmentalists 'anti-human', but consider the human costs of not taking action at all. The real 'anti-human' path might be ignoring our environmental crisis.
Thanks William for your comments. I felt the urge to do a bit of digging in response, so here's what I've come up with. I've taken chunks of what you've said and put it in quotes, with my answers in between.
W: "But there is no question that humans are seriously taxing the planet. We might well be setting ourselves up for extinction. Even if global warming is a complete hoax, there are still many other issues that need to be addressed, like overfishing of the oceans, soil depletion, pollution, water contamination and overuse, etc."
Tackling overfishing, soil depletion and water contamination/overuse should come far higher up the list of priorities than global warming, IMO.
W: "As for global warming, I urge you to take another look at the science. There is a chance that it is caused by a natural cycle, but the evidence overwhelmingly points to human CO2 emissions and land use changes."
Is the evidence really "overwhelming"? There are lots of queries that have been raised by scientists, some of which I list here:
1. Carbon dioxide isn't even the biggest cause of the greenhouse effect - water vapour is estimated to account for more of it - the estimated percentages are different depending on which articles you read. Guess what's the world's biggest source of water vapour? Not us humans, that's for sure!
2. According to this source, there has in fact been no global warming over the last ten years or so (http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9406), which wasn't predicted by the man-made global warming proponents and their climate change models. A model isn't much use unless it gives accurate predictions.
3. Even if global warming *were* man-made (assuming the underlying trend is still "up" and the cooling trend I mentioned above isn't a long-term thing), then is it actually worth trying to reverse it? Even some of those who believe in the "man causes global warming" scenario think that cutting carbon emissions will have a tiny effect on rising temperatures, and would just buy a little time (six years, according to one commentator - http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/doc
W: "There is also a chance that the planet will adapt to our changes - but that is not likely."
I dunno, the planet seems pretty adaptable to me. (This reminds me of a great George Carlin routine - Saving The Planet.)
W: "The arctic ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, which has the potential to set up climate feedbacks we can't even imagine."
Weirdly enough - according to this article
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/03/goddard_po
there is melting in the Arctic, but an actual *increase* in ice in the Antarctic, with the net effect being no change. Again, this wasn't predicted by the climate change models. Furthermore, a lot of the melting at the Arctic is due to soot from northern cities and oil fields in Siberia, which blackens the snow when it lands on it. (And dark objects absorb more heat from the sun than white ones, hence the melting.)
W: "You can call environmentalists 'anti-human', but consider the human costs of not taking action at all. The real 'anti-human' path might be ignoring our environmental crisis."
I think this is one case where the human costs of taking action will cause more harm than focusing that action on other, more worthwhile projects. Like clean water etc.
The funny thing is that simple economics will take care of most of your problems EF. Overfishing will make certain fish more scarce and cause the price to go up. Higher price will dampen demand and eliminate the less effective fishermen out there which will reduce pressure on fish populations. We don't need to do anything, cost will take care of the fish. Of course we could screw that up by subsidizing the costs of fishing, thus lowering the cost of fishing and increasing the chance of total resource depletion.
Water overuse, again simple economics. The more we contaminate/overuse water the more expensive it will get. Not only will new ways be found to decontaminate water, there will be a push to utilize what water we have more efficiently. Again cost will stave off total resource depletion.
Kudos, EF, I'm very surprised to see that an environmentalist has an understanding of economics and human action. Just goes to show that you shouldn't assume anything when dealing with people.
Thanks once again for your comments, Ledefensetech! When it comes to economics "taking care of things", I agree up to a point - certainly in regard to subsidies. All that subsidies seem to do is create a dependency culture among the farmers/producers/fishermen who receive them, and allow them to "dump" underpriced product onto other countries, with tragic results for those other countries' economies. (Don't even get me started on EU fisheries and agriculture policies.)
It seems to me that when there is a direct, easy-to-understand, rapid and simple feedback mechanism (like increased cost when fish supplies go down because of overfishing), then things are more likely to "correct" themselves. (Even then, it's not guaranteed by any means - the extinction of the American bison through commercial hunting is one example that springs to mind.)
Where it gets more complicated is when the consequences of an action don't have a direct effect on the person doing the action, if that makes sense. The example I'm thinking of is pollution. Before the 1950s, the air quality in Britain's cities was appalling, due to the smog caused by burning coal fires. In 1952, an estimated 4,000 people died during the so-called "Great Smog". But the people in charge of the country's coal industry (in Britain's case back then, it was the government but it wouldn't make any difference to my argument if it had been the government or private mining companies) weren't necessarily directly affected by the smog. It wasn't until the introduction of the 1956 Clean Air Act that air quality improved. So sometimes I think government intervention is absolutely vital. The question IMO is how much intervention - in my opinion, we (in the UK at any rate) have gone MUCH too far along the "too much intervention" end of the spectrum. I'm not just thinking of the environment but things like civil liberties, education and transport to name a few.
The bison extinction is one of those things erroneously attributed to the free market. General Sheridan, of Civil War fame actually petitioned Congress to destroy the bison as a way to cripple the Plains Indians way of life so they could be herded onto reservations and easier to control.
Railroads did get behind this because bison did have a detrimental effect on rails, but without General Sheridan's plea to Congress, other methods would have been found to limit the bison destruction of rails.
EF, the very fact that it was the government in charge of the coal burning makes it impossible to hold them responsible for their actions. Private companies would have had boycotts, newspaper writers after them, etc. etc. You can't fight City Hall after all. It's strange people trust the government to keep the environment safe when you consider things like the "Great Smog". Thanks, by the way, I'll have to look it up.
Most of the problem we have is that pollution costs are not added to the goods or services that produce those pollutants. If that were done, price would determine who and what products were used. Less polluting products would be cheaper and more polluting products would be more expensive. You might find the following article illuminating: http://mises.org/etexts/environfreedom.pdf
In response to some of your points:
"1. Carbon dioxide isn't even the biggest cause of the greenhouse effect - water vapour is estimated to account for more of it"
Water vapor is a feedback. CO2 is a forcing. That is, increased CO2 will increase temperature in the atmosphere and this increased temperature will in turn lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere - which will lead to more warming. Increased water vapor cannot cause global climate change on its own. It is a condition of climate change.
"there has in fact been no global warming over the last ten years or so"
Depends on where how you look at the data:
http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/08/warme
About the Arctic ice: so what if the Antarctic is growing? The arctic ice affects ocean currents and wind patterns by regulating the temperature and salinity of waters in the northern hemisphere.
This is a long predicted feedback of global warming, that could have disastrous consequences.
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/polar
"I dunno, the planet seems pretty adaptable to me."
Semantics. There are 6 billion humans on the planet. We are going to have to find a way to get food and clean water to those people, and dispose of their waste in some way. The planet may do just fine, but humans will not.
I don't disagree with some of your other points. Focusing on clean water and other problems should be a priority. The steps we have taken so far on climate change are too little, too late and will not likely have an effect, but that doesn't mean that we can't or shouldn't take further steps.
Ledefensetech: You said: "Most of the problem we have is that pollution costs are not added to the goods or services that produce those pollutants"
do you agree with Cap and Trade?
Hell no. Cap and Trade is just another scam. Read the link I posted. If you really want to have clean air and water, allow property owners to sue polluters. I can assure you they will take steps to clean their act up, if only to avoid lawsuits. Plus you'd have an entirely new industry spring up, pollution forensics that would determine where and if someone was polluting something.
When global warming first came upon the scene I was immediately a bit sceptical. After listening to the debate for a year or so I became convinced that global warming/global climate change was not being driven by humans, but rather by the sun, over which we have no control. Do we exacerbate the change in some ways? Maybe, but I think a large volcanic explosion can do more to alter the weather than man can accomplish with all our 'carbon emmisions'.
And hey, I've got a whole lot of carbon in me. Oxygen, carbon and hydrogen are the top three components for my body.....I don't plan on changing that while I'm alive.
Ledefensetech: "EF, the very fact that it was the government in charge of the coal burning makes it impossible to hold them responsible for their actions. Private companies would have had boycotts, newspaper writers after them, etc. etc. You can't fight City Hall after all. It's strange people trust the government to keep the environment safe when you consider things like the "Great Smog". Thanks, by the way, I'll have to look it up."
This is an interesting question - is it easier to hold governments accountable for their actions than private companies, or vice versa? It may have been a nationalised coal industry that was responsible for the smog, but it was also a piece of government legislation (the Clean Air Act) that cleaned things up to a large extent. So there must have been *some* pressure brought successfully to bear somewhere - even if it was just self-interest. (Having large numbers of your electorate die from entirely preventable causes is not good for your credibility, or your prospects at the next election.) I'm not convinced that it's necessarily any easier to hold a private company accountable for its actions though. You get all sorts of factors coming into play - such as links with government, or advertising in the media (a newspaper is IMO a lot less likely to get on a company's case if they depend on that company for advertising revenue). I tend to think that it's less about government versus industry than about small versus large (the individual versus the collective, if you like).
Ledefensetech: "Most of the problem we have is that pollution costs are not added to the goods or services that produce those pollutants. If that were done, price would determine who and what products were used. Less polluting products would be cheaper and more polluting products would be more expensive. You might find the following article illuminating: http://mises.org/etexts/environfreedom.pdf "
Having had a chance to read the article, I found it very interesting. The author's whole argument hinges on the "environmental forensics" aspect, and being able to trace the causes of pollution to a specific person/organisation. There are a couple of questions that spring to my mind: one is the question of nuclear power. The waste products of nuclear power go on polluting the environment for hundreds and even thousands of years, long after the demise of the nuclear power company - how would this be dealt with in Block's system? Another question is liability - does the buck stop with a specific person, with managers/employees, or with shareholders... who?
Getting slightly off-topic, I have often wondered what a "pure" libertarian society would look like. My hunch is that it would be - ironically - a lot _less_ technologically advanced (and a lot more socially conservative) than what we have in the West today. Perhaps things like nuclear power wouldn't have had a chance to develop under pure libertarianism, because it's a product of the "military-industrial complex" and has needed a vast injection of government cash to get it off the ground. It's all very interesting stuff, anyway.
William R. Wilson: "Water vapor is a feedback. CO2 is a forcing. That is, increased CO2 will increase temperature in the atmosphere and this increased temperature will in turn lead to more water vapor in the atmosphere - which will lead to more warming. Increased water vapor cannot cause global climate change on its own. It is a condition of climate change."
Maybe I'm missing something, but I'd have thought that water vapour was perfectly able to cause climate change independently of carbon dioxide. (Why is water vapour present in the air at all? Because of sunlight hitting the earth's oceans, seas, rivers and lakes.)
With regard to your Yale link - and looking at that graph with the "spike" at 1999 - it's still obvious that the trend after 1999 is different to the one before it (i.e. flat rather than going up). The best you can say on that one is "wait and see".
William R. Wilson: "About the Arctic ice: so what if the Antarctic is growing? The arctic ice affects ocean currents and wind patterns by regulating the temperature and salinity of waters in the northern hemisphere."
I don't think you can necessarily "write off" the Antarctic just like that. After all, el Ninio has effects that reach all over the globe.
EF, it's much easier to hold private companies liable for the damage they do. "You can't fight City Hall" pretty much sums it up. Politicians will never admit that they did something horrible, because then they'd lose points in the political game. Consider that the US government is the biggest polluter, the DOD is the granddaddy of polluters. Heck they've lost nuclear waste and don't know where it's been buried. No private company has done that much damage to the environment. I'd go into the whole TV, radio, newspaper is good for propaganda thing, but that's another topic entirely. Prior to the Internet the government could get away with a lot of shady things.
As for nuclear power, there are actually several power designs that either eliminate or produce very little waste byproduct. The reason we have the problems we do is because most of our power plants double as feeder lots for nuclear weapons. Those reactor designs produce a lot of waste byproduct. Again, if the government enforced private property conventions, a nuclear plant operator would be forced to show that their plant was "clean" and how they disposed of any waste. You'd also the the development of an industry dedicated to storing, cleaning and eliminating nuclear waste. In a free market if there is a demand for something, someone will create a way to meet that demand. We'd still have nuclear power, but it would look very different from what we know of it.
That's why I believe a libertarian society would be far in advance of what we have here today. Things like the Manhattan Project or the Apollo missions make people think that only the government can do these things, but if you really look at where scientific progress comes from, it comes from people looking for solutions to problems that people are willing to pay for those solutions. It's a little known fact that the Human Genome Project got bogged down with red tape and empire building, so some billionaire set aside some money to finish the project. Not only did he finish the project, but it was done long before the government team projected they would have finished it.
LDT, I've been ruminating over your post and have only now worked out a reply (sometimes it takes ages for me to do that LOL). With regard to the government getting away with things, I don't think the Internet has made a huge amount of difference. It's made people more *aware* that there is shady stuff going on, but there's a difference between awareness and having the actual power to do anything about it. And you also have to factor in the unfortunate truth that most people just don't give a toss.
In any case, I think we're both on the same page as far as governments' lack of accountability goes. Again, a lot of it comes down to the fact that (a) voting doesn't change anything because in my country at any rate, the main political parties are very much alike, and (b) people tend to vote for whoever promises the most freebies and handouts. (Do you detect a touch of cynicism in my comments here?) It's a very rare individual IME who takes the long view and tailors their behaviour to their own long-term best interests and those of society in general.
When it comes to libertarianism: the truth is that a pure libertarian system has never been tried out. So nobody can be sure one way or the other whether a libertarian society would be more technologically advanced than the one we have today, or less so. But I take your point about nuclear weapons - it's not called the "military/industrial complex" for nothing.
I don't think you're cynical at all, it's much the same here in the States as it is in the UK. I just think you're a bit further along than we are. You might be surprised at the impact of the Internet. It was communications technology, after all, that destroyed Communism. Good information will always beat out bad.
No pure libertarianism has never been tried, but it should work. Look at how well China and India are doing since their market liberalizations. Heck your old Crown Colony of Hong Kong showed us how a free market society can take an otherwise barren rock and turn it into one of the largest economies in the world. Too bad you gave it away.
I'm not sure that too many people take a short term view of things. At least those of us with children. Parents, after all, want their children to have a better life than they did, and I think more and more people are realizing that you can't get "freebies" and make things better for your kids.
I don't know how the process works in the UK, but I've been mulling starting a "vote for none" movement in the US. The thought being that if enough people vote for none, the Congress will not be able to get any work done because they won't have a quorum. Sure it sounds crazy right now, but by 2016, if the parties don't straighten up, "vote for none" might be a viable option. Especially if the "other 50%" get out and vote for none.
LDT: "No pure libertarianism has never been tried, but it should work."
Ah, but it depends on what you mean by "work"! Presumably you mean it would be more stable. Would a libertarian society be more stable? I don't know. I understand that the tenets of libertarianism include a gold standard, no central bank and no fractional reserve banking either. This means that a lot of the economic activity you have now (which is debt-fuelled and *relies* on fractional reserve banking and credit) simply wouldn't exist. And when a bank fails under libertarianism, it fails. No bail-outs, and no compensation for people who lose their money either. You would still get bank runs and "bubbles" but these would burst a lot earlier than they do now. In other words, you wouldn't get greater stability than you have now, you would just get shorter cycles of a lower amplitude, if that makes sense. (Perhaps we in the West have yet to see the full consequences of how our economy is set up though; maybe a Zimbabwe- or Weimar Republic-style hyperinflation is coming at us a few years down the line.)
I also think that for some people, a libertarian society would be more unpleasant. I don't think women would have a very happy time of it. Whatever your opinions on welfare/benefits, the fact is that it's welfare which enables a lot of women to escape violent relationships and start afresh. Take away the welfare safety net, and they would have less choice about whether or not to stay put. I think a libertarian society would be socially very *unfree* (i.e. a lot more conservative).
When it comes to the "vote for no-one" idea, it would give voters the satisfaction of expressing their dissatisfaction (LOL), but I doubt if it would actually change anything. I think democracy is deeply flawed. But as Churchill said, nobody's come up with anything better.
How would a bank fail if it were fully reserve? The only money they would risk in loans would be the general find they make available to their customers. Sure economic growth wouldn't be double digits like it is right now, but how is that a bad thing. Since we don't see double digit gains we won't see precipitous falls either.
One thing I don't think you understand about a libertarian society is the sanctity of contracts. That, coupled with arbitration, rather than lawyers will help reduce the conflict between people. Also I think you put too much stock into "men dominate women" through history. There are plenty of examples where women have held socially prominent positions and power comparable to men. Queen Elizabeth comes to mind.
You also don't take into account private charity taking the place of public charity. People are generally charitable. Look at the whole Noah Biorkman thing if you need an example of how charitable people can be. Conservatism is not necessarily more unfree, conservatives tend to be more careful.
We've come up with something better. It's called the free market. You vote with your money and nobody can force you to do something you don't want to do. If one person doesn't meet you needs, you're free to go to someone who will.
LTD: "How would a bank fail if it were fully reserve?"
I suppose it could fail for the same reasons that any other private company could fail - for example if the director(s) misappropriate money for their own use (e.g. if they play the stock market and lose the lot). Or if whoever they loan the money to defaults on the loan. I agree that you wouldn't see the precipitous rises or falls that you get now. But the lack of a safety net might well put off all but the wealthy from placing their money in a bank at all.
LDT: "One thing I don't think you understand about a libertarian society is the sanctity of contracts. That, coupled with arbitration, rather than lawyers will help reduce the conflict between people."
I would love you to be right about this. But it could also mean that you get even *more* reliance on lawyers as a means of resolving issues than you have now. It all depends on how willing people are to go down the arbitration route, rather than the lawyer route. What could happen is that you get a perpetual upping of the stakes, where all the power ends up falling into the hands of those who can afford the best lawyers.
LDT: "Also I think you put too much stock into "men dominate women" through history. There are plenty of examples where women have held socially prominent positions and power comparable to men. Queen Elizabeth comes to mind."
Elizabeth Tudor was an exceptional woman, to say the least! And under the social conditions of the time, she felt obliged to avoid marriage in order to hold onto her position.
LDT: "You also don't take into account private charity taking the place of public charity... Conservatism is not necessarily more unfree, conservatives tend to be more careful."
I doubt if private charity would ever fully take the place of public charity in terms of the amount donated (although I do concede that private charity is probably more efficient and less bureaucratic). But if you go back in history to the 19th century (before welfare was introduced in my country), there must have been an awful lot of people who didn't benefit from charity - at least if what you read about poverty in Victorian times is anything to go by.
If bank directors misappropriate their customer's money, well that's theft isn't it? In which case those people would be prosecuted and the proceeds of their theft would be sold to reimburse their victims. You'll agree, I think that the reasons banks are in business is to make money, right? A fully reserve bank would make money by charging a storage fee. In addition most banks would set aside a general fund that they'd encourage their customers to but money in and this is how they would originate loans. Of course they'd pay interest and probably a better interest rate than you'd get at a fractional reserve bank. I'll even give you an example of a fully reserve bank, the Free Lakota Bank: http://freelakotabank.com
Lawyers run a scam. They encourage their clients to fight each other in the name of "standing up for their clients rights". All you have to do is look at divorce proceedings to see how the only people whose welfare is being served are the lawyers. Arbitration is a bit different. Arbitrators would be expected to do the best deal they could. In this case, both sides would need to feel that they got a fair deal. It's quite a bit different from the contentiousness you see in a court proceeding. I am, of course, speaking of civil matters. Criminal matters are probably better left to our current system.
Catherine the Great, Catherine d'Medici, Mary Queen of Scots, all of them and more have wielded power just as men have. Now it's hard to do so and it's not an expectation of women like it is of men and that could be why so many women who wield power have been exceptional when you compare them to the men who have wielded power throughout history. So that's not necessarily a bad thing. Another example I can think of is the Tuskegee Airmen. They knew that their opponents in the government wanted to shut the program down and send those men to war as riflemen. That added incentive make the Airmen one of the most exceptional units in the Second World War. Sometimes it's a good thing when you have something to prove.
Private charity is far superior to public. For one thing, money gets to people who really need it, not to those who will offer political support in exchange for being on the dole. That alone is worth the difficulties charities have in raising money.
Hi LDT, thank you for your comment - this is turning into quite a discussion! When it comes to banking: you've explained how a fully reserve bank would work, but my point remains: it's still possible for such a bank to fail due to either dishonesty or incompetence at the top. In the case of the former, the bank will have folded by the time the police and courts have caught up with the culprits. Yes, people can get restitution but they might not get all their money back, especially if said culprit spends it all or is too good at hiding their ill-gotten gains! A fully reserve bank might be a lot *less likely* to fail than a fractional reserve bank would be (government bailouts notwithstanding), but such failure is still possible. As is failure in all human endeavour. (BTW, interesting link.)
I suppose what it all boils down to is how much if any effect a particular political system has on human behaviour. The impression I get from having talked to libertarians is that they believe that since communism is so all-corrupting (and they're right - no arguments from me there!), then its opposite (libertarianism) would have the contrary effect. I tend to be more sceptical. I think that in any society, you will always have a few "sociopaths" who will use the system as it stands to exploit and abuse other people within it. I can't believe that's going to disappear under libertarianism. In fact, unless the general populace learns to think for itself and not allow itself to be exploited, then it could be a rather bleak society for all but the minority.
For me the jury is still out on the issue of man-made global warming. I'm not keen on what the human race is doing to the planet, but I'm also not convinced that our mad, bad, polluting ways are entirely responsible for climate change either. It's very possible that we are simply seeing a natural cycle in progress. It is well documented that Northern Europe enjoyed a pleasantly temperate 'warm period' in the Middle Ages, only to be followed by 'the Little Ice Age' which lasted around two to three centuries. There are a number of well-known paintings of skaters on the frozen Thames. I'm not a meteorologist, but I suspect that only a very deep and prolonged period of sub-zero temperatures would freeze a large, fast flowing river like the Thames. I doubt carbon emmissions were directly responsible for the eventual thaw on that occassion either. I believe the whole thing is out of our hands, but in the meantime it gives us all something extra to worry about.
Again, you assume, I think, that people would not understand where their best interest lies. Would there be crooks and charlatans? Of course. The amount of damage they would be able to do would be much less than one in which they are able to use the power of the State to either hide their actions, or have their marks lulled into sleep. Look at Madoff. He ran an end run around the SEC, which people assumed were doing their jobs, but weren't. Without organizations like the SEC, people would be more apt to ask questions and figure things out for themselves. Which is all to the good, I think. A populace which asks questions is a free populace.
A libertarian society would not eliminate the evils that one human can perpetuate against another, what it would do is limit the scope of those evil acts. Would, for example, the mass killings of the 20th century been possible without the State and the propaganda machinery which supported it?
Confessions of an eco-sceptic: how I came to believe in natural causes of global warming in the News
- Inhofe claims victory on global warmingTulsa World3 days ago
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, perhaps Congress' most vocal skeptic of man-made global warming, essentially declared victory Wednesday in a lengthy speech on the Senate floor.
- Hackers leak climate change e-mails from key research unit, stoke debate on global warmingMinneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune24 hours ago
LONDON - Computer hackers have broken into a server at a well-respected climate change research center in Britain and posted hundreds of private e-mails and documents online — stoking debate over whether some scientists have overstated the case for man-made climate change.
- Biases must be recognized on both sidesStillwater Gazette13 hours ago
Whether one believes in man-made global warming or not, it should be clear to any unbiased, rational person that there are legitimate arguments on both sides of the issue.
Aya Katz says:
2 months ago
EmpressFelicity, I enjoyed reading this hub. It was well written and thoughtful. I worry about ecological issues, but global warming is not at the top of the list. Overpopulaton really worries me precisely because it undercuts people's right to enjoy their environment and make the most of it. In a situation where there are few people, each of us can go out into the woods and hunt and cut down firewood, treating nature as our private pantry and all around store. But when there are many people, we have to be so careful to leave some for others that in the end nobody has enough. It isn't that each of us is greedy. It's only right we should want to enjoy life. But in order to do so, I think we have to conserve the ratio of "other stuff" to people.