Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture

Unsustainable Pseudo-​thinking

One of the fashionable thought-​killing words offered by the cliché-​recycling movement is “sustainable.”

In the common tongue, as spoken by many, many environmentalists, this term implies that we will run out of all our stuff pretty soon unless everybody on the planet (except maybe Al Gore) is put on a strict low-​consumption regimen.

The environmental movement has adopted the color “green,” but “drab-​gray” is what comes to mind when I’m told that we must treat economic goods as existing in a fixed quantity, only to be skimpily apportioned (by regulators), never massively expanded (by profit-​seeking producers, as they’ve done whenever free to do so).

In fact, as economist and Cafe Hayek blogger Don Boudreaux argues in his article “Unsustainable Platitudes,” market actors tend to swiftly counteract shortages that occur in a market context. When supply of a good slumps for whatever reasons, prices for it rise. Rising prices yield predictable effects. That is, they

  • nudge customers to economize; and
  • entice profit-​seeking producers and vendors to create more of the good, or
  • provide good-​enough (or better) substitutes for it,
  • or both.

This is Economics 101, teachable in one lesson.

The Wall Street Journal saw fit to quote Boudreaux, provoking the ire of enviro-​cliché aficionado Joshua Holman. He contacted Boudreaux to accuse him of “[emitting] word pollution … to block the work of the many activists struggling to save our planet from overuse, exploitation and destruction.” In reply, Boudreaux suggests that reality “cannot be grasped, and it certainly cannot be improved, with slogans.”

Slogans do have their place. They’re just not a sustainable substitute for reasoning.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

How Not to Help Haiti

Haiti has suffered horrific devastation. It didn’t have to.

There was no way to prevent the 7.0 earthquake itself. But estimates of as many as 200,000 dead? That didn’t have to happen.

Economist Donald Boudreaux recalls that in 1989, an equally powerful quake hit the San Francisco Bay area. It caused lots of trouble but killed fewer than 70 people. But Haiti is a much poorer country than the U.S., with weaker buildings and roads, for starters.

Why so poor? 

Haiti is not a free society. It’s had one corrupt tyrant after another, recently emerged from the terrorizing rule of Jean-​Bertrand Aristide, who was sent packing in 2004.

Many pundits are saying that the way to strengthen Haitian society over the long haul is torrents of foreign aid. Economist Jeffrey Sachs wants Washington to spend billions on a five-​year development plan, which he says it should fund by taxing Wall Street bonuses.

Charity and rescue efforts are wonderful. Government-​to-​government foreign aid, not so much. Haiti has remained desperately poor despite the massive flow of foreign aid, which, over the years, has mainly subsidized corruption. What Haiti needs is stability. The ability to attract investment. Less propping up of corrupt politicians. Less foreign aid, more freedom. 

But a free society is something Haitians will have to build themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.