There are many criticisms one can make of Dick Cheney: his indifference to public opinion is counterproductive and his obsession with enhancing executive power has probably done more to encourage Congress and the Supreme Court to restrain Bush than anything the ACLU has done. Rod Dreher’s criticisms of him, however, are not conservative.
Dick Cheney made some relatively uncontroversial points in a speech: that our economy depends on hydrocarbons in general and oil in particular; that despite massive subsidies, alternative fuel sources aren’t going to replace oil and gas any time soon; and that drilling for more oil would lower the fuel costs that are clobbering anybody who has to drive regularly. All of these are attempts to see what reality is and to deal with it.

A correspondent of Rod Dreher’s writes:

What plans do he and others have to reduce our consumption of this oil? Never in his speech, from what I have read, does he say that we need to reduce consumption. Could one argue that this borders on moral blindness?

And Dreher comments:

One could, if one wanted to be generous to the VP. What, exactly, is conservative about Cheney’s attitude?

Dreher seems to be conflating two issues: first, consumers and oil consumption; second, Dick Cheney and his take on the economy.

Let’s tackle that first issue of consumers and oil consumption. What’s conservative is letting the market work. Dreher’s correspondent might have noticed that, according to the Financial Times:

Petrol demand in the US has been falling since October as the financial storm from the housing sector crimps demand and Americans trade in their SUVs for more modest vehicles. Last month US petrol consumption fell by 130,000 barrels per day.

In short, people are driving less and consuming less oil—exactly as the correspondent presumably wishes—without the heavy hand of government forcing people to drive Priuses or bike to work. Perhaps Dreher would like Dick Cheney to impose restrictions on fuel use as FDR did during WWII and Carter did during his “moral equivalent of war,” but that can hardly be considered conservative.

Interestingly, proven world oil reserves rose from 645.8 billion barrels in 1978 to 1,052.9 billion barrels in 1998; as of January 2007, we’re at 1,317.4 billion barrels. As oil extraction technology improves, it seems likely that we’ll expand the reserves still further. Letting the market work will mean that investors are going to rush in and start pumping more oil since the prices are currently high.  Since people are also driving less, the increase in supply and decrease in demand will push oil prices down—assuming government doesn’t meddle.  A windfall profits tax on oil companies will get passed on to consumers (sort of like how taxes on tobacco companies have increased the cost of cigarettes).  Barring government intervention, I agree with Steve Chapman that gas prices will come down eventually.

Now, the issue of Cheney and our hydrocarbon economy. Dreher might not like it, but that’s how the economy works. The clothes we wear and the food we eat have usually been shipped some distance. The computers on which we type our blog posts are probably powered by coal (a majority of America’s electricity comes from coal burning power plants). I suppose it would be possible for families to take inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi and make all their own clothes and food—but nothing about primitivism is necessarily liberal or conservative.  Hydrocarbon technology has made living in suburbs and growing enormous quantities of food cheaper.  A revealing idea that Dreher once wrote is that “Cheap chicken is not worth a compromised conscience.” That attitude is a luxury only the moderately affluent can afford.  It is acceptable for an ordinary consumer or pundit to have this particular attitude and to spend his money on more expensive chicken and rice, but for a government official with Cheney’s power, deliberately making food more costly—as restrictions on oil would do—would make the current food riots seem like a Sunday School picnic.

If Dreher wants people to use less oil, the high prices that hurt their pocketbooks is almost certainly the most effective way to do it. Dreher has been theorizing that peak oil will encourage people to live how he wants them to live and that they’ll be happier once they get used to organic co-ops and bicycles, never mind the financial struggles they’re in now. Dick Cheney disagrees that socking it to people who need to drive a lot is worth it, and is intellectually honest enough to argue that more drilling, though it offends the granola crowd, will help the ordinary folks.  It seems rather weaselly for Dreher to hope high oil prices will push people who’d rather live in suburbs and big homes to living the way he wants them to; if he can’t convince them that crunchy conservativism is the way to go, maybe high oil prices will do it.

Both Jonah Goldberg and Florence King observed some unconservative tendencies in Rod Dreher’s thought. He may be socially conservative—but on economics, he has more in common with Al Gore and Ralph Nader than Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman.

Hubbard posted this at 9:20 PM EDT on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 as Philosophy, There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet, It's Economics - Stupid!

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The West Virginia exit polls asked voters how much they’ve been affected by “the recession.” 89% said that “the recession” had some or a great deal of effect on them. That’s amazing, since there is no recession.

Apollo posted this at 8:59 PM EDT on Tuesday, May 13th, 2008 as Journalism, It's Economics - Stupid!

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Demonstrating once again that liberals have no grasp what so ever on basic economics, I bring you Michelle Obama.

Most Americans, she said, don’t want much.

“They don’t want the whole pie,” she told the women. “There are some who do, but most Americans feel blessed just being able to thrive a little bit. But that is becoming even more out of reach.”

This is typical Marxtist tripe. People want whatever they can get for themselves. Everyone else is lying. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature, and consequently economics, to believe otherwise.

But wait, it gets better.

“If we don’t wake up as a nation with a new kind of leadership…for how we want this country to work, then we won’t get universal health care,” she said.

“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”

Forget for a moment that Socialist Healthcare may not be the best system. Mrs. Obama fails to understand a basic tenent of economics. The “pie” as she puts it is NOT static. We can grow, and god forbid shrink, said pie. The best way to pay for all of her socialist programs is to put in place economic policies that make the pie bigger and consequently generate bigger pieces for everyone eating it. Taking money from one group and giving it to another may benefit one group in the short run, but in the long run it will stifle innovation and growth in our economy. This is the fundamental paradox of socialism - its own policies prevent it from achieving its goals.

If the rich want to get richer, won’t they do things like start companies and invest in others thereby creating jobs and benefiting the economy? I don’t know about the rest of you but a poor person never gave me a job.

Jamie posted this at 11:02 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 as It's Economics - Stupid!

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Paul Johnson has a neat piece up on J.P. Morgan—the man, not the institution.  I particularly like this aside:

I know a little about [his] library because I once gave a series of lectures on American history there. Housed in Morgan’s own splendid mansion in Manhattan, it is one of the most agreeable places in the world in which to learn and reflect. It contains a choice selection of Old Master drawings but its chief treasure is its immense collection of rare books and manuscripts, which puts it fourth in the world after the Library of Congress, the British Library and the Bibliothèque Nationale. It was not entirely Morgan’s own creation because, in 1905, he appointed the ravishing Virginian, Belle da Costa Greene, then 21, his librarian, and sent her on buying sprees all over the world. He encouraged her to stay at the Ritz in Paris and Claridge’s in London, and to get her clothes at the leading couturiers. It says a lot for Morgan’s impeccable reputation that no one ever questioned the propriety of their relationship, and his judgment in picking her so young was fully vindicated by the shrewdness and taste of her purchases.

I don’t want to be J.P. Morgan, but I wouldn’t mind working under those kinds of conditions.

Johnson’s point in this piece, though, is how much Morgan was worth because he singlehandedly fixed three financial meltdowns.  How much would such a man be worth today?  Easily more than Bill Gates. 

Hubbard posted this at 1:23 PM EDT on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 as It's Economics - Stupid!

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Obama says that people with mortgage problems were “trick[ed] … into buying bigger houses than they could afford.”

Not five minutes after I read that, apropos nothing, Dorothy read to me a bit of wisdom from Groucho Marx:

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.

It’s hard to think of a better way to describe the Democrats’ approach to the current housing market.

Apollo posted this at 10:50 AM EDT on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, It's Economics - Stupid!

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I just watched a bit on ABC news interviewing two of the “average” people being hit by the housing crash. The two were an upper-middle class couple in their mid-30s. Nice house, a kid or two, good incomes. So they decided to invest and buy two (2!) investment condos near Miami. They bought the condos pre-construction and they planned to sell them for a profit before the buildings were finished. Now that they can’t sell them, they’re actually having to pay for the mortgages for the two condos, and the rent only covers half of the mortgage.

Reasons not to feel sorry for these people:

1. They acknowledged that their investments were purely speculation. Anyone who invests more than they can afford to lose in a speculation is asking for it.
2. If rent is only covering half of the mortgage, they paid way more for the condos than they were worth to begin with. It was a foolish investment, or else they had so little capital for the down payment that the monthly mortgage payment too high (which is a way of saying that it was a foolish investment for them).
3. They planned on buying the condos before they were built and selling them again before they were built, and making a profit off of this. They planned on adding not one whit of value to these properties. Walter Williams defines capitalism as being paid to provide a service to your fellow man. These people were wanting money for nothing.

Let’s review instead why these people should feel sorry for me:

1. As my wife and I are advancing through young adulthood, speculators are driving the price of housing up just when we need to buy. People like this couple, who want buyers like me to pay them a premium for…um…well, for being there, are part of the problem. Their behavior had socially unproductive consequences.
2. It’s pretty much guaranteed that one of the major parties is going to run a candidate who wants to raise taxes on the upper-middle class (I’m going to law school precisely because I want to be part of that class), and who wants to use tax dollars (i.e. my dollars) to bail out speculators getting bitten by the housing crash.

So after being priced out of the housing market I went to law school. If a Democrat wins the White House, the money I make from being a lawyer will be taken from me at a confiscatory rate and given to those people who made foolish investments and priced me out of the housing market. I hope in those circumstances Charlie Gibson comes around to feel sorry for me.

Apollo posted this at 6:12 PM EDT on Monday, March 31st, 2008 as Journalism, Grumblin Mumblins, It's Economics - Stupid!

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HP VII will actually be HP VII…and VIII!

LOS ANGELES (AP) - entertainmentminute Harry Potter was the center of seven novels, but he’ll star in eight films.The final book in the wildly successful series will be made into two films, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Producers are expected to announce Thursday that J.K. Rowling’s last “Potter” installment, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” will be split into two parts on the big screen. The first film is slated for release in November 2010, with part two following in May 2011.

“It was born out of purely creative reasons,” producer David Heyman told the Times. “Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book.”

You know, it’s one thing for Mr. Heyman to squeeze a couple million dollars more out out of the Harry Potter franchise. It’s another for him to subject us to the unedited version of that interminable 100 pages of Harry, Hermione, and Ron playing Lord of the Rings together when they should be busy destroying Horcruxes.

Tom posted this at 10:54 PM EDT on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 as Nerdom, It's Economics - Stupid!

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