“Green Economics�? Turning Mainstream Thinking on Its Head
Thomas Prugh �?February 15, 2008 �?6:00am

A few years ago, a homeowner in Las Vegas—a place that gets maybe five inches of rainfall a year—was confronted by a water district inspector for running an illegal sprinkler in the middle of the day. The man became very angry. He said, “You people and all your stupid rules—you’re trying to turn this place into a desert!�?

Ideas about how the world works that don’t accord with reality can be unhelpful. That’s especially true about mainstream economics, which is based in part on ideas that made a lot of sense at some point in the last 250 years but that have outlived their time and usefulness. These ideas—such as the reliance on GDP as the key index of general wellbeing—still dominate assumptions and thinking about economic matters in the media, governments, businesses, and popular consciousness.

 

 

---Apparently, I've come to equate Libertarians with economists.  The general wellbeing does not concern most people arguing against social security, for example, and most Libertarians do argue against it and public education.   Those are two government sponsored activities that have flaws, but I would say in the main those flaws could be corrected, but that is not what Libertarians, dedicated to the reduction of government in our lives, argue:  it's broken, get rid of it.

 

I'm no Libertarian, apparently, though I would like government reduced.   It suffers greatly from job creep, and is telling people how they should live their lives and manipulating states if not coercing them into following federal preferences about things that should be none of their concern, and at our expense.  Government is not the boss of us.  Ninth Amendment!   I recognize the need to put government back on track, doing the federal government's job within the limited powers that we have acquieced, deferred, and ignored that it should be following.   Voices have risen against it, but nothing has caught fire in the imagination of the people, and people rule.

 

Emotional people, not economists.  What is cool about economists though is that they can use numbers, facts, to disprove certain myths about the machinations of government, whether those machinations function for the people, or do something harmful to the people.

Thomas Sowell argues persuasively, imho, against special programs to help certain sectors of the population, like the equal opportunity advantages, which as he points out, actually halt the progress minority populations were making before implementation, and these helpful though supposedly temporary programs never go away, despite their sunset clauses.  As you peel away the "do-gooder" activities of the federal government, you expose them, and reduce the size of government through simply the anticipation of ridicule.  It's tough to argue against school lunches, but the federal government has no busines funding them.  What about Saturdays and Sundays and all summer long?  Who feeds the children then?  ... and yet they show up for school on Monday.   NO.  Taxayers are being exploited. 

 

School buses are another exploitation of taxpayers, and by the automotive industry's lobbying skills!

They only used a few hours per day that they are in use, AND they sit all summer long, while public transit needs go wanting.  In a few years, seniors will be on the road who have no business driving, but they will drive despite the risks because they have no alternatives in public transportation.  Roads keep widening to accomodate the vehicles; railroads got too big for their breeches; bus systems can't take the losses in ridership.   

 

What a bus system can reasonably charge passengers, only covers the cost of collection and accounting for the fares....and it delays the passengers from getting to their destinations.   A pre-paid system fills the bus, reduces traffic congestion, and the need for widening roads, improves the air quality of a valley subject to inversions.  A libertarian, I suspect would argue against any such service being provided by the government. 

In the regional system I'm describing the businesses in small communities were adamantly opposed, but they found that more shoppers came their way with the bus service than would drive the distance.  Not what you'd expect.  The businesses in my community haven't quite got their heads around it yet, but our aging population will clue them in eventually.