Grand unified theory of everything

A quick thought on Brad DeLong's post on fiscal austerity and link to post on EPA regulations on carbon emissions. The Obama Administration would solve a number of problems in a couple of fell swoops if it (1) had the EPA draw up a state-level cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions to be phased in beginning in say 2012; (2) introduced legislation imposing a carbon tax phased in beginning in say 2012, with the proviso that proceeds would be used first for reducing the budget deficit, and offset by a payroll tax reduction only if the deficit was under control; (3) sell a bunch of gold to the world's insatiable gold bugs and use the proceeds to pass a "clean jobs bill" focused on teachers, cops, firefighters, and oil spill cleanup. We'll get BP to reimburse us for the cleanup later, if they've got any money left.

Scientists exonerated (round 1)

Associated Press reports:

LONDON — The first of several British investigations into the e-mails leaked from one of the world’s leading climate research centers has largely vindicated the scientists involved.

The House of Commons’ Science and Technology Committee said yesterday that it had seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming — two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues.

In their report, the committee said that, as far as it was able to ascertain, “the scientific reputation of Professor Jones and CRU remains intact,’’ adding that nothing in the more than 1,000 stolen e-mails, or the controversy kicked up by their publication, challenged scientific consensus that “global warming is happening and that it is induced by human activity.’’

A spirited debate over the climategate scandal

Thanks Ralph. The last three seconds do indeed tell the story.

Keynes vs Hayek

Circulating in the attention economy of the "internets" is this Austrian appropriation of the hiphop vernacular.



Moralist tone of the Hayekian critique of excessive borrowing aside, I find it quite interesting how the liberatory tinge of Hayek's "I want to free the markets!" is made to contrast with Keynes' "I want to steer the market". In a sense, hiphop (an erstwhile element of alternative youth culture) and discourses of freedom are mobilized to support a particular economic ideology (and I am not using ideology in a merely pejorative sense). No doubt, underlying this freedom versus planning dichotomy is the ultimate normative bedrock of neoliberal creed: freedom of choice. Nevertheless in this particular context, it seems that our choices are truncated; they are limited to either steering the economy or freeing the economy. As if these two are our only choices. What about embedding the economy, or socialising the economy, or ecologising the economy? The implicit common denominator that brings Keynes and Hayek together is that both place their bets on economic growth as the ultimate aim of social evolution and that they are both blind to the systemic nature of class and ecological injustices of these creatively destructive but also destructively creative cycles of boom and bust.

Bentham v. Hume

David Brooks writes an entertaining piece on our choices for health care reform and climate change policy. He contrasts "Bentham," who thinks he knows how to find cost savings in the health insurance industry and which technologies can reduce global warming, with "Hume," who confesses he's not smart enough to reorganize major sectors of the economy and therefore proposes market-based solutions.



On the economics, Brooks is absolutely right. On the politics, ludicrously wrong. His punch line:



I’ve introduced you to my friends Mr. Bentham and Mr. Hume because they represent the choices we face on issue after issue. This country is about to have a big debate on the role of government. The polarizers on cable TV think it’s going to be a debate between socialism and free-market purism. But it’s really going to be a debate about how to promote innovation.



The people on Mr. Bentham’s side believe that government can get actively involved in organizing innovation. (I’ve taken his proposals from the Waxman-Markey energy bill and the Baucus health care bill.)



The people on Mr. Hume’s side believe government should actively tilt the playing field to promote social goods and set off decentralized networks of reform, but they don’t think government knows enough to intimately organize dynamic innovation.



So let’s have the debate. But before we do, let’s understand that Mr. Bentham is going to win. The lobbyists love Bentham’s intricacies and his stacks of spending proposals, which they need in order to advance their agendas. If you want to pass anything through Congress, Bentham’s your man.



Notice that Brooks can point to real people with real policy proposals pushing the Benthamite view. By contrast, he can't point to any person or proposal pushing Hume's view. So the practical choice before us is not between Bentham and Hume, it's between Bentham and a character that I'll call Org. Bentham believes that government can step in and fix our problems through sheer intelligence. Org thinks that if he sticks his fingers in his ears and shouts Na-na-na-na loud enough, the problems will miraculously go away.