Tim Blair has a post where he has over seventy links to posts by John Quiggin that mention Kyoto. We can conclude that Quiggin is a very careful writer because it looks like Blair didn't find any typos in all those posts. Stripped of his usual I-found-a-typo-therefore-you-are-wrong argument, Blair had to come up with something else. His substitute argument? Apparently he believes that the sheer force of this June 29 post had silenced Quiggin on Kyoto. Trouble is, Blair doesn't seem to have noticed that Quiggin posted this and this in July. Or maybe Blair is unaware that July is after June.
Quiggin comments further here.
Retraction time, fact-check boy. I linked to both those posts in the final (pre-update) paragraph, noting that they were the only recent mentions of Kyoto by Quiggin.
Looking forward to your correction.
I know that you linked to those posts, that's why I suggested you hadn't noticed when he made them not that you hadn't noticed them. You claimed that something had "happened to silence this outspoken Kyotologist". "Silence" would be zero posts, not one post and certainly not two posts.
Looking forward to your retraction, apology and correction.
And seventy posts in three years is about one post two posts per month. While two posts in July and August would be ... one post per month. He hasn't has hardly even posted less frequently about Kyoto.
The relevant line reads: "But recently Quiggin has barely mentioned his pet Protocol."
Key word: "recently". Links to his latest pieces at "barely" and "mentioned". And Quiggin -- who'd feverishly covered most every element of Kyoto pre-ratification -- was certainly silent on the issue of New Zealand's Kyoto problems, which was my point.
But if your ego can't cope with a correction, I'm happy to let it slide.
"And seventy posts in three years is about one post per month."
70 / (12 * 3) = 1.944, which would traditionally be rounded to 2 ;-)
*[Thanks. I fixed it. Tim]*
Oops!
The picayune disagreements entailed in posts 1-3 are silly.
Sorry, no dice. You wrote:
>What might have happened to silence this outspoken Kyotologist?
You imply that the NZ thing had silenced about Kyoto when in fact he had posted on it. If all you wanted to say was that he was silent about Kyoto+NZ you should have just listed his posts on Kyoyo+NZ. But I imagine that he had barely mentioned KYoto+NZ before.
Apologies for not writing down to your level; most people are able to fill in these sorts of gaps without having everything spelled out in the form you'd prefer, which would read something like a legal document. Incidentally, isn't a halving of Quiggin's usual rate of posting a little more dramatic than "hardly posted even less"?
A month ago, I told my buddy I was sick of the rain. As a result, the rate at which rain fell dramatically decreased to half of what it was!
Behold my power and tremble! Even the climate submits to my will!
"Read something like a legal document"? Are you kidding? All you had to write was this:
> John Quiggin [made a big deal](http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2002/12/11/good-news-on-kyoto/) when New Zealand signed Kyoto but he's gone all quiet about [New Zealand's current Kyoto woes](http://timblair.net/ee/index.php?URL=http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/w…).
Instead, you set some sort of record for obsessive linking in an overlong post that failed to express your point clearly. You sure could use an editor.
Fair point; although I did want to stress the sheer volume of Quiggin's posting on this. And most people seemed to get what I was driving at -- even you, apparently, although you pretended not to, for whatever reason.
Besides which, earlier posts had made that same point in much briefer form. Now, about this mathematical issue with recent Kyoto posts; from two per month to one per month is a 50% drop, right? (Admittedly, the sample size isn't great, but that's never worried you before ...)
Tim L:
I understood Tim Blair's point quite well, as I'm sure most other readers did. The point is Quiggin was saturating his readers about how inexpensive Kyoto was to sign up to. Now we know that instead of turning in a "profit" on the deal as the New Zealand electorate was told by its "numerate" government, the country has accumulated a loss of NZ$700 mill on the deal. Unless serious and painful adjustments are made New Zealanders are going to have to fork out a tidy sum in 2012. The $700 mill is a cumulative sum since signing up 2/3 years ago and needs to be settled in 2012. This could turn into a real tidy little amount: about equal to the retirement package offered to tenured professors in the soft sciences.
Because Quiggin is tenured and sure to make out with a healthy pension on retirement (not market determined) he favoured Kyoto. Hey what is a campus lefty supposed to do?
Now that the cat's out, so to speak, tenured Prof. Quiggin seems to have "reduced" his support of Kyoto and seems to only talk about the dangers of global warming (which I think he gets from you as he doesn't seem to know all that much about global warming science). Isn't it noticeable that he seems to get a lot of leads from your blog?
So I really don't get what your beef is with Tim Blair? Blair has simply made mention of Quiggin's reduced advocacy of Kyoto since the bombshell came out.
Let me ask you, do you support Kyoto?
The folks who commented on your blog seem to have read it the same way that I did: that the terrible news from NZ had silenced him on Kyoto. Examples:
>New Zealand is to Kyotologists what the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, or maybe the Prague invasion, was to hardline Western Communists. Some, it drove into madness, some into sanity, most into silence.
>Noting the gap, PrQ rushes in a half-baked reference
>Given the plethora of Pr. Quiggin's postings on Kyoto it would only be fair to apply the same standard to hm. Neither he nor any other blogger on earth is obliged to turn their blogs into all-Kyoto all-the-time.
(The last one got Jack banned, incidently).
A sample size of two is almost always too small for a meaningful result. But a sample size of about 1000 is pretty standard for surveys.
"Given the plethora of Pr. Quiggin's postings on Kyoto it would only be fair to apply the same standard to hm. Neither he nor any other blogger on earth is obliged to turn their blogs into all-Kyoto all-the-time."
The Strocchmeister got banned for that!!??!
Can skins possibly get any thinner at Blairville?
Those who attach the term "market based trading in carbon credits" have as much understnding of markets and their workings as did Stalin's economics minister about economic.
The term "market based" is used to describe the process where people make exchanges of goods and services free of interference.
Carban based credits trading is not a natural market process at work. It is a process forced by coercion. To decribe the avoidance of a tax imposition (carbon credits trading) as a normal market process is an abomination of the term.
>Those who attach the term "market based trading in carbon credits" have as much understnding of markets and their workings as did Stalin's economics minister about economic.
I guess I must have slept through 5 years of University level Economic then - and somehow bluffed why way through 10 years as an environmental economist.
Tell me, Joe, what are YOUR qualifications in this area?
Ian enough to say I was formally educated at uni. level.
I have read you pieces on Carbon based trading and the stuff you wrote relating to the Niger famine. Quite honestly it leaves me cold. Your criticsim of the market for inducing the Niger famine or at least not aleviating it left me comfortable with the view that you simply have no understanding of markets and market processes. Carbon based credit trading is another example.
By the way Ian, I did not learn all this in my Uni degree.
If you like I will be quite happy to discuss why off site. You can ask your friend Tim L for my email address.
"Tell me, Joe, what are YOUR qualifications in this area"?
Tell me Ian, other than takling about them, where is it that you have worked that allowed you to understand markets. I wok with them everyday. And you?
>you simply have no understanding of markets and market processes. ...
>By the way Ian, I did not learn all this in my Uni degree.
I guess the fact that the business which I own and manage has grown at over 50% per annum for the past several years and the fact the million dollar+ share portfolio I manage for a not-for-profit has beaten the ASX 200 virtually every year for the past decade are just further flukes.
The report which appears to have sparked Tim and Joe's malicious glee can be found here:
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/release/kyoto/kp-acg-jun05.pdf
I haven't read it yet but the following statement appears in the referring web-page:
>The Financial Statements of the Government of New Zealand for the Eleven Months Ended 31 May 2005 were released on 1 July 2005. These recognised, for the first time, the estimated cost of New Zealand meeting its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol in 2008-2012. The Treasury estimated this liability at $307 million.
I'm not sure how Joe gets from NZ$307 million to NZ$700 million but I'm sure it'll be entertaining to find out.
Tell me Joe, given your vast economic knowledge can you define, "contingent liability" and "accrual-based public accounts"?
while joe is enriching our minds with his vast economics knowledge he might also care to explain the difference between the cost to government of one specific element of Kyoto and the total economic impact of the whole agreement on the wider New Zealand economy.
JoeC,
Don't you draw a distinction between 'market-based' and 'free market'?
Do you also think the move from 100% public delivery of electricity to a regulated artificial market for electricity is somehow dodgy? ARe you aware that at the moment the Australian Govt is in the final processes of converting the public delivery of telecommunications services to an unnatural regulated market for telecommunications bandwidth and services?
Blair's source for the NZ$1 billion figure is... surprise... National Environment spokesman Nick smith.
http://www.secondbreakfast.net/archives/001968.html
>Revised projections released by the Climate Change Minister Pete Hodgson yesterday show we are likely to exceed our Kyoto target for net emissions of greenhouses gases by 36 million tonnes of carbon dioxide during the treaty's first commitment period, 2008 to 2012.
[...]
>At an indicative carbon price of $15 a tonne (the value used to set the carbon tax due to come into effect in 2007), that is a switch from a gain of nearly $500 million to cost of more than $500 million, which would fall to the taxpayer.
>Taking the current price of $34 a tonne taxpayers would need to find $1.23 billion to buy credits on the international market.
Well, obviously, we should accept the word of a politician (in election mode) over that of Allens Consulting - they obviously don't understand markets either.
Ian
I would be quite happy to answer all your questions about contigent, off balance sheet liablities if you will answer the one question I asked.
If you have never had the experience of working in markets how would you know how they work?
Also, can you please explain this absurdity in your logic. You decry markets for not working in Niger ( as though people at substence level even know how to spell the word) and yet you seem quite in favour of market(s) based trading for carbon?
Carbon based trading is an abomination. It is the ttransfer of tax from one producer of goods and services to another. It has nothing to do with open and free markets.
And I am not gleeful about what is going on in New Zealand. I feel bad for those people. Calling me malicious is a dreadful indictment on you for even suggesting it, Ian. I don't get glee from a car accident? Do you?
Steve:
The Liveral Government's idea of reform is also an abomination. I am your side on on this. They are certainly doing a number on the Austrlain public. No wonder people have no faith in free markets when you get shoddy "deregulation"like we are getting in Telco.
Ian
Carbon based credits trading is a scam. It is a ficticious creation by governments to impose a transfer tax. That's it.
Ian, would you have a better definition?
Well here's a surprise, tim and joe actually seem to have gotten one of their facts right - for once.
http://www.beehive.govt.nz/ViewDocument.aspx?DocumentID=23376
>Changes to the way scrub is accounted for and the qualification of forests planted on land that was scrub in 1990, have lead to a reduction of 19.8 Mt CO2e of allowable sink offset.
Of coursse, Tim B. somehow managed to miss the preceding paragraph:
> emissions, particularly from transport, have grown as a result of New Zealand having one of the highest performing economies in the world. They are up 38 Mt CO2e.
So, the changes to the forestry accounting rules has accounted for around 1/3 of the turn-out, economic growth has accounted for the rest.
Funny, I thought signing Kyoto was supposed to harm the economy - obviously those darn Kiwis (and their trading partners) just don't understand markets either,
>Ian I would be quite happy to answer all your questions about contigent, off balance sheet liablities if you will answer the one question I asked.
If you have never had the experience of working in markets how would you know how they work?
I have answered your question. how much additional detail do you require Mr. C?
As for your confustion about my position regarding markets - go back and actually read what I wrote abotu Niger - specifically the part where I say that markets are a tool and like any tool they have no innate morality and can produce both positive and negaitve results.
Now let's talk about those contingent liabilities...
Ian:
If the Kyoto scam is so good for the economy why sign it once. If it was that good let's sign it 100, 1000 times over. We would get richer, right, being so good for the economy and all.
I always test an idea by taking an argument to its logical conclusion.
The blow-out in New Zealand's contingent liabiltiy for Kyoto credits was reported in the May economic update.
As I noted previously, 2/3s of that blow-out was due to higher than expected economic growth.
The economic statements quantify the effect of that growth on governemnt fiannces:
http://www.treasury.govt.nz/financialstatements/month/may05/cfs11may05…
>Taxation revenue was $3.8 billion (growth of 9.5%) higher than the eleven months ended 31 May 2004.
This mainly comprised of growth in source deductions reflecting strength in the labour market, growth in
companies tax driven by strong returns and growth in goods and services tax.
The net surplus was around NZ$560 million higher than the previous year (after the usual pre-election splurge on health and education.)
So a single year's change in the public sector's financial position due to higher growth (NZ$560 million) more than offsets the gross (not discounted to NPV) Kyoto liability arising from that growth and the changes to the forestry rules.
>Ian: If the Kyoto scam is so good for the economy why sign it once. If it was that good let's sign it 100, 1000 times over. We would get richer, right, being so good for the economy and all.
Joe, how many life insurance and house insurance policies do you have?
My shops each have a first aid kit, I regard it as a sensible investment. that doesn't mean I'm going to rush out and buy 100.
Ian
.
You your solution to your comment above is
1. make sure the Government imposes economic policies that DO NOT promote growth, or
2 Have a humbdinger of a recession.
Great, Ian, thanks for the environmental economics lesson. You said you wanted to know my formal training? I must have lissed that class!
"The term "market based" is used to describe the process where people make exchanges of goods and services free of interference.
Carban based credits trading is not a natural market process at work. It is a process forced by coercion. "
This is shocking commentary coming from someone who writes for BrookesNews. How do you think trade in other goods and services works, joe? is there no enforcement mechanism that ultimately relies on 'coercion'? And I fancy that if you had been around when the commons were freed up and property rights in land were first introduced you would have decried the process as 'forced by coercion' too? Markets are all about creating opportunities for mutually beneficial gains from trade. Historically they have been reconfigured time and time again in refinement of this process of capturing further gains from trade. Reconfiguring and creating new markets to reduce negative spillovers from the production process (ie. pollution) is just a part of this gradual evolution which also gave us stock markets, derivativees, futures, insurance and water trading rights among other things. Or are these all also artificially coerced? BrookesNews for stone age economics?
"My shops each have a first aid kit, I regard it as a sensible investment".
First rule of economics, Ian, is that you don't confuse costs with investment.
Investment is the purchase of shops, fixtures, fittings etc. Your first aid kit is a cost- an expense.
You need to understand proper definitions in economics.
Your life policy example is an absurdity. The argument is if following Kyoto is such a good thing why stop there? Let's just get the government to keep lelislating more Kyoto type deals. If they are so good lets keep doing it, right?
A life policy costs me money. As money is finite I wouldn't have enough to buy limitless policies. A life policy is a cost, Ian, it isn't an asset. Ask your an economist, though not Prof. Quiggin as he seems to get this concept quite confused
Joe,
My case which I have stated repeatedly is that the costs of Kyoto are extremely small in comparison to the overall economy and as such are unlikely to have any significant impact in either direction.
New Zealand's continued economic growth bears that out.
It's 7.30 now and I'm going home.
I will not be responding to further messages from you until tomorrow.
In the interim can I suggest you
a. actually read what I wrote;
b. think about it; and
c. investigate the use of the spell check function.
Jason
"Markets are all about creating opportunities for mutually beneficial gains from trade".
So carbon credits trading which is nothing more than a tranferable tax is your idea of a market, which exchanges goods and services, Jason. Wow. Wish you were may consultant. Would be paying you all of 300 bucks an hour for that lesson?
While you are there Jason, I would suggest you teach you friend Ian Gould the proper definition of costs, assets and where first aid kits come into the picture. Texts books are allowed in this test for both of you.
"So carbon credits trading which is nothing more than a tranferable tax is your idea of a market, which exchanges goods and services, Jason. Wow. Wish you were may consultant. Would be paying you all of 300 bucks an hour for that lesson?"
Yes, Joe because a cost of production that was previously left out of prices (the resulting pollution) will now get more properly embedded into prices and buyers of goods will take account of that implicitly when making their purchases. Meanwhile those who are better at producing goods while minimising that particular cost get a benefit consonant with the benefits to the international community from reduction in pollution. Previously those were worse at dealing with that cost of production were implicitly subsidised. it's all about making markets work better. Hayek 101.
And I agree with ian. Get Tim Blair to proofread your comments.
Ian:
It's great to read comment about costs and how meeting Kyoto isn't such a big deal.
Take a firm with a cost base of $100 mill. A 1% rise in its costs structure means that up to 30 jobs would be lost at the Australian mean wage of $33,000. Of course, that doesn't mean anything to you or I because we don't don't need a job. How about those people that can't, they just get lost in the statistics of the day, right?
So I take it you're in favour of tariff protection and feather bedding at Telstra to protect jobs, Joe Cambria? Funny, I thought economic liberalism was about tweaking frameworks to make markets work better by reflecting all relevant information.
Jason:
I don't need a proof reader, I need a consultatant- to help you with economics. Who decides what externalities. You, as the resident consultant, Professor Quiggin as the economics guru?
We have a legal system in Australia, Jason, with a well developed idea of righting wrongs. If you feel you have been polluted by a firm that has affected you in some way there is no one to stop you from taking it to court. Otherwise you idea is simply drivel dolled out as high thinking.
"Yes, Joe because a cost of production that was previously left out of prices (the resulting pollution)"
We already have pollution laws, Jason, that carry heavy sanctions. Aren't you a little out of depth here by confusing pollution laws whcih we already have with carbon tax credit trading?
So under Hayek 101 amrkets would work better if there were carbon taxes along with the right to sale. Would you mind referring me to Hayek's work on this as I seem to have missed it?
I agree with Tim Lambert about focusing too much on spell check. Don't be shallow Jason, think a little harder about what someone is saying rather than the comma before and after a name.
Jason:
I really don't think you know much about anything, other than making sure the comma is sitting in the right place in a sentence.
Why on earth would I be in favour of Import taxes? How could you possibly unearth that nonsense about my thoughts?
About Telstra. I suggest you re-read previous postings about it. If you need any help because I didn't use spell check let me know.
"We already have pollution laws, Jason, that carry heavy sanctions. Aren't you a little out of depth here by confusing pollution laws whcih we already have with carbon tax credit trading?"
Sigh ... So JoeBloggs is going to sue Exxon for the marginal molecule of carbon dioxide that tips the aggregate level of pollution over to the tipping point level that leads to the melting of the icebergs, eh?
Joe, go consult a standard micro 101 textbook - look up concepts like 'transaction costs', 'holdout problems' or 'holdup problems', 'collective action problems' then perhaps we can discuss this at some future time. Better yet, go read that pro-Kyoto communist hippie Richard Posner
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2004/12/global_warming.html
Of course, I should know better than to argue with some Panglossian hardcore Austrian school cultist. Whatever is is efficient, right Joe? Markets don't need anymore refinement or input from economists, they were born perfectly formed. Perhaps Rothbard would have agreed, but not Hayek.
Thank the lord you consult on economics, Jason.
I practice it for a living, not by telling people carbon credits are a great thing to look forward to, but by putting my money where I think markets will go. Ever tried that for yourself, after all you keep advertising to all how smart you are and all?
Yes I have heard of some of the terms however then I went to school 25 years ago. But what are you actually saying here, Jason, other than adverising the fact you know a few economic terms.
You still haven't been able to answer why Carbon trading is little more than a scam,other than tell me my spell check isn't working or you know much more than I do.
The fact is, Jason, that you aren't able to put up a cogent arguument other than throwing in high sounding terms and quotes and hoping they all contribute to quashing the idea that carbon trading is a scam, which it is.
Joe
You asked me why I think existing pollution laws are insufficient to 'price in' all the costs of production and I've explained why, albeit indirectly. If you're not familiar with the rationale for pricing pollution then you should familiarise yourself with it before spouting off about carbon trading. Given that you write for Brookesnews I would've assumed you were familiar enough with the background to this. So explain to me why you think pollution laws which are enforced either by private citizens' complaints or public prosecutors with a budget constraint within nation states are sufficient to account for the effects of pollution that cross national boundaries?? Or why it's more efficient to resolve this problem by giving more money to regulators when carbon trading can help resolve this problem better by harnessing individuals' incentives to engage in arbitrage? Especially when a tax on a negative externality is far, far more efficient than raising taxes on elastic factors of production through income taxes?
"Markets don't need anymore refinement or input from economists, they were born perfectly formed".
Wow. How perfectly decent of you to help us understand how markets function. I, we ought to be so indebted. Thanks.
What refinement are you talking about?
If you mean economists telling us why tariffs is a bad idea. Go ahead, talk you're as much as you like: you will have my support.
Want to talk about the terrible regulations in the Telco industry? Well there is the lectern.
However, I think your idea of the word refinement is little different than the way I understand. If you are actually saying that you can make a free market work better I would suggest you simply take a long hike somewhere else, because we don't need any economist to tell us they have a better idea.
Take the foreign exchange market. The FX market is simply the biggest free market in the world. Very little interference is needed for it to function properly, participants engage willingly. Just what "refinements" would you or Professor Quiggin suggest here? Oh let me guess: the Tobin tax, right. That (like a carbon tax trading) would make it work better. Of course, it is not another hair-brained idea of an international tax to support the UN.
Or maybe you want to tell us that you agreed with the former Malaysian Prime Minister. After he and his cohorts lost US 7 billion dollars trading currencies he suggested that all currency trader be put to death. Are you in the least attracted to that idea Jason, or is my assumption about "refinement" too loosely understood?
jason:
The answer to 43 I would have thought is simple.
Just who has been injured by carbon? Can you name one person who is being affected across border pollution? Anyone?
I am not talking about my future grand kids grand kids as a result of 100 year projections that you and the rest of the pack are buying into.
After this I am busy with markets which we can leave for tomorrow. Thanks.
Just a friendly observation from a disinterested bystander - you're losing the pissing contest, Joe C.
I'm curious, JoeC. Is the sole reason you're against carbon trading because you don't believe in global warming? if global warming were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, would you reconsider your opposition? or are you against all taxes that impose an additional cost on industry?
ever heard of sulfur dioxide trading, joe? was that also a 'scam'? it was used to address acid rain.
fine piece of rhetoric btw, equating my liberal economic utilitarianism with 'killing currency traders' or whatever demented imagery you have in your mind. in my past work for the CIS and in my current job i've done more for the cause of economic liberalism than you ever will preaching to the converted with Gerry Jackson. but dream on.
oh, and ever heard of 'division of labour', or is that another economics lesson you missed? I make a good living doing what I'm doing so why would I be so economically irrational as to chuck it in to engage in speculation just to please your ideological credentialising?
"I'm curious, JoeC. Is the sole reason you're against carbon trading because you don't believe in global warming"
I am not totally sure yet. Think we need more work that is extensively audited and not just peer reviewed. Why? Because money is involved.
The most pertinent question that I have never seen any GW sympathizer answer is this: Who is being damaged by GW and can they be identified. After all raising a carbon tax requires knowing who is being damaged, right? If you cannot name someone that has suffered damages then why raise carbon taxes?
"if global warming were proven beyond a reasonable doubt, would you reconsider your opposition? Or are you against all taxes that impose an additional cost on industry"?
No enough information. I could be persuaded it is happening. However I just don't want scientific projections by themselves. I would also like to know projections for technological change etc. that would mitigate possible effects. How about also including population projections in the equation?
I am not against a carbon tax per se as long as it is mitigated against other taxes. In other words other taxes ought to be dropped equally to allow for a carbon tax. If we are silly enough to raise taxes on personal income why not just base it on carbon. It is just as silly and would stop all the fighting.
I am against raising a carbon tax on industry because I don't want to see additional taxes imposed on commercial enterprises. The reason is because I believe the only way we can move forward is by increasing wealth.
Have you thought about the effects of nanotech and what it could mean to the future dynamics of the commercial world? It will simply revolutionize it. We could have nanotech changing the composition of the atmosphere to equalize it. The first fabricator is due out in the next 15 years. Have any "global warmers" even considered the effects of nanotech and what it will mean to GW. There are some computer science people who believe we will soon be entering a world where computer science will be changing in hours and not days or years. They call it a singularity in CS.
" i've done more for the cause of economic liberalism than you ever will preaching to the converted with Gerry Jackson".
Really, as you attack Exxon. I hope they aren't your client!
"why would I be so economically irrational as to chuck it in to engage in speculation just to please your ideological credentialising"?
Isn't forecasting one of the functions of economics or weren't you taught that? I was!
>First rule of economics, Ian, is that you don't confuse costs with investment.
>Investment is the purchase of shops, fixtures, fittings etc. Your first aid kit is a cost- an expense.
Actually Joe, the first rule of economics is that human desires are infinite but resoruces are finite and that economcis is the science of managing the resulting scarcity.
Shortly after that, you're introduced to some variant of the following equation:
Y = I + C
Where Y = income; I = investment and C = consumption.
In economics you see Joe, the distinction between investment and consumption is that consumption refers to all items and services which are consumed within the current accounting period and investment refers to all items and services which have a utiltiy which extends beyond the current accounting period.
Economics and finance are not the same thing Joe. Your period as a trader on Wall Street may have given you some insights into the latter (although I see little evidence of it) but you appear to know very little about the former.
I'm going to take a break from this discussion for a while. I'm sure you don't see it this way but to me you've gone from being amusing to being rather sad - a punch-drunk past-his-prime prize-fighter swinging blindly and too dumb to fall down.
45: Can you name one person who is being affected [by] across border pollution? Anyone?
I'll send you the Hong Kong telephone directory if you like.
Stephen:
Good point:
So under your Kyoto plan, China gets off vitually scot free in terms of paying up.
Great plan, must have been hatched up at the UN.
I wish Howard signed up to this great idea.
Ian
Just read your post.
Oh come on, don't be so serious about things. We can of course agree to disagree that you are wrong about most things. But you seem to have taken our recent debate to heart and I no longer "amuse" you.
The fact you run business, doing well and making money outta the stock market pleases me. I genuinely feel happy that you re doing well.
If I upset you, don't take it to heart as we all can be a little harsh on one another sometimes. Look at what you said about me! And we don't even know each other!
Contact me if you like as I would be happy to buy you a beer. Ask Mr. Lambert for my mail address.
Can you name one person who is being affected across border pollution? Anyone?
Anyone living in Yurp affected by acid rain. Or, if you mean a state border, anyone in the Northeastern US, affected by acid rain. Anyone in Japan affected by China's particulate pollution.
I'd go on, but to use Ian's metaphor, that'd be hitting someone while on the mat.
D
Example here of cross-border pollution, for the faint possibility that there's a doubter lurking here.
D
That's for the leg up there, Dano.
How silly of me, I thought Kyoto was/ís trying to reduce carbon/greenhouse emissions. I never realized they were actually trying to prevent acid rain.
Ha! That's what all that money is about. It's an attempt to compensate people affected by acid rain.
I blame George Bush, for not telling us.
Hey Dano:
You can show me a map with all theose nice colors on it and its great to look at: makes me homesick.
The problem as I see it is that you still haven't answered my question. Who is affected by pollution over borders? This doesn't mean that a few carbon molecules cross the border. Show how people's lives are being shortened as a result.
The problem as I see it, Dano, is that nice people like you and Mr. Lambert are comfortably situated in office type jobs and never see the real world.
In other words you are too far removed from the reality of what makes a first world economy tick over. Meat does not come from the supermarket. Cars just don't appear in a show room. Building materials come from somewhere other than the builder's truck.
Now I would be happy to see anything other 100 year chicken little projections that the world is going to hell.
I agree with Ian. I think we should leave Joe C be. Putting him in the intellectual boxing ring is like putting Mohammad Ali, in his present state, in a boxing ring with Mike Tyson.
Nabakov Says: September 5th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
Not only can I not post comments on Tim Blair's site, I cannot access the site on the web at all. Every time I click on my bookmark for the Tim Blair site I get the following warning page:
I guess Andrea Harris, the System Administrator, has instructed her domain hosters to prevent anyone with my IP address from even viewing the web site. I wonder if this is legal or in accords with internet conventions? Or is the Tim Blair site actually down for repair?
I can see his blog, but it seems too petty for even Harris to do. More likely some random glitch. If Harris knew how to block access by IP she could have blocked my proxy from access. Though I suppose Blair's complaints were more about being indignant than actually trying to stop it.
If you really want to access his site, you could try going through [this proxy](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/cgi-bin/nph-proxy.cgi/010110A/http/timb…).
Working fine for me, Strocchi. This is unprecedented if she's actually gone to the lengths of banning you from looking at the site. She needs help.
Speaking of which, Mr Computer Scientist Lambert, why isn't your blog remembering my details? I have to keep typing them in.
Jason, the "remembering you" thing is just a cookie stored by your browser, so you may have cookies disabled somehow.
You could also try creating an account on my blog. If you login once you can stay logged in for as long as you want and avoid having to enter details.
"welcome comments here, especially from people who disagree with me. There is one rule that I ask commentors to follow — please do not make personal attacks on other commenters. Such comments tend to cause discussion to degenerate into a slanging match so I will usually delete or disemvowel them. If you think some other commenter is dishonest or stupid, you should show us, by presenting evidence and letting the rest of us make up our own minds rather than telling us".
Tim:
Does that just apply to people who don't necessarily agree with your views, or are intellectual giants like Mr. Soon exempted from your policy. No great shakes. I am old enough enough and certainly ugly enough to take it.
Also does your comma and full-stop criticism just apply to Tim Blair and not to people who post on your site. I am a real lazy critter and generally don't spell check, although I should. I noticed Mr. intellect and Ian Gould ( who I quite like) criticised me for not doing so. Again, just a thought about consistency and what you think about it?
Thanks in advance.
Joe,
I normally don't criticise peoplr for spelling or punctuation errors - I make enough of my own that it'd be sheer hypocrisy.
The point I was trying to make to you on Monday was that your messages were bordering on the incoherent - the spelling errors were only part of that.
As for the "who is being injured by cross-border pollution" question, I refer you to any of the reports on the Asian Brown cloud and the Sumatran logging fires - in both cases thousands of people outside the countries primarily responsible for the pollution (India and Indonesia)are being affected.
Hospitalisations and deaths have increased dramatically in Kuala Lumpur and other Malaysain cities every year when the burn-off starts.
One of the problems with advocating a purely market-based (or litigation-based) approach to pollution is that there's often no simple one-to-one causal relationship.
To take the case of air pollution in Brisbane, we have very good evidence that hospitalisations and deaths increase when ozone levels rise. Around 500 people per year die as a result.
Ozone here comes primarily from vehicle use. The problem is we can't say: the heart attack suffered by Person A, who was asthmatic and had the flu and which occurred during an ozone exceedance was caused by Person B's car use.
It makes it kind of hard to sue.
Joe, the Tim Blair approach is to find a speling mistake and pretend that he has refuted the writer. That's not what Jason and Ian have done. Bad spelling makes your comments harder to read and detracts from whatever point you are trying to make. They are right -- you should use the spelling check button.
Ian:
Is it the first world that is causing the stench or are we simply graduating to the 3rd world now?
Is Kyoto going to reduce those problems you mentioned? Is New Zealand's cumulative "loss" going stop one of these deaths?
The truth is, Ian, industrialization is a process. Only the very wealthy nations are really able to afford pollution controls that would help in eliminating some of the problems you spoke about. Poor countries cannot afford to have stringent pollution guidelines that we in the west take for granted.
Two years ago I travelled through Vietnam on vacation. I saw things there that I believed didn't exist. I saw rivers that were nothing more than waste dumps. It was disgusting. However, I also realized the country could not afford to clean the place up just yet. They are too poor to do so.
Therefore what is the best solution this issue. My proposal is really quite modest. Rapid industrialization of the poor countries will allow them to safeguard their river systems etc. How do we do that? Well, how about the rich world opens its markets to the poor countries. The EU and the US could certainly help out there.
I believe that even the rich world is moving through stages of history. Technology will solve most of our problems such as dirty air. I differ with you on how we go about it. Placing taxes and other impediments does one nasty thing. It reduces the savings pool. Reducing savings means there is less money for R&D etc., which constipates the process of capital accumulation (the savings pool) and hence R&D.
If you want to reduce carbon in the atmosphere etc. the best way to do it is by ensuring the savings pool is raised. More money devoted to R&D means our technological base is broadened. That's the reason why I am so against Carbon taxes etc. To be honest, Ian, I am far more extreme in my views when it comes to the environment than what you or Tim Lambert are. You guys are prepared to accept token gestures like Kyoto, which will do nothing to stop greenhouse gases: nothing at all. I want to move towards a strategy where not even one molecule should escape into atmosphere if it does not belong there. However taxing carbon taxes is a dumb idea. Funding research to find ways how we can manipulate gases at the molecule level is even better. We have to be rich to be able to afford this research. And you don't do it by introducing even more taxes!
Let me tell you why I am also extremely dubious of all these 100-year Global temp projections.
Can you think of the institution, which has one of the largest research facilities in the world? It the Federal Reserve, employing around 2400 economists. Their economic model for the US economy is the most complex or any by far. Yet even the Fed cannot be relied on to forecast US economic fortunes. In the early 1990's the Fed had to cut interest rates 22 times before they got it right. There are some really smart guys working at the Fed. Now call me dumb, but I think the world's atmosphere is a little more complex than an economy, even the US in lots of ways. And yet you want to believe projections made from wood chips that forecast out 100 years of climate. Call me, what you want, but I find this a little hard to chew on. You, Tim Lambert and the rest expect me to doll out cashola (let's face it we are all going to get our pocket picked) because some smart guys cut some bark from a tree and they tell us they can interpolate global temps. from several hundred years ago. Not only that but only peer review of their calculations is all that's required! Ian, aren't you just a little bit sceptical when I put it this way?
Joe,
first up, you asked for examples of peopel who'd been killed or harmed by cross-border pollution - not by cross-border pollution originating in first world countries or by global warming. I can provide exampels of both if you like.
Second up, the assumption that economic growth will magically and automatically fix environemtnal problems is false. You might also want to take note that the countries which have addressed these problems have done so by the sort of direct regulation and market interference that you find so objectionable.
Thirdly, go take a look at what the average income in the US and the UK in the 1950's and 1960's when the first serious attempts to address pollution occurred.
Fourthly, the global climate models don't seek to predict climate trends with the same degree of accuracy as the Fed needs. Additionally its easier in some cases to predict long term trends than short-term fluctuations.
I can't predict what the maximum temperature will be in Brisbane tomorrow, I can predict tha the average maximum temperature next January will be higher than the average maximum daily temperature next July.
fifthly, the reason the Fed raised rates in 25 base point steps wasn't so much because they didn;t know the "right" interest rate as it was because of what's known as the Goldfarb Hypothesis which factors market expectations into changes in market behaviour.
Because each announcement of a rate rise has an impact on demand, announcing two 25 base point adjustments has a greeater effect than a single 50 base point increase.
>Not only that but only peer review of their calculations is all that's required! Ian, aren't you just a little bit sceptical when I put it this way?
Yes but that description of events is wildly inaccurate.
Climatologists were predicting global warming as far back as the 1980's (remember the Rio Earth Summit?)since that precedes Mann's paper by more than a decade I find it difficult to accept that he somehow manufactured a global warming hoax.
Ian:
If you favour Carbon taxes of some sort, would you also support an equal drop in other taxes, without resorting to the idea of "fairness" or some such difficult concept to understand.
By the way, the fed was lowering rates during the period I mentioned. Whether the market discounted the affects or not they were still too tight with monetary policy and only realized when it was too late. A mistake.
>If you favour Carbon taxes of some sort, would you also support an equal drop in other taxes, without resorting to the idea of "fairness" or some such difficult concept to understand.
Absolutely - in the cases of the US and Australia it isn't hard to think of much more economically harmful taxes which could be reduced or eliminated.
(Actually after writing that it occurred to me that in the current economic situation in the US you could argue that the revenue should be reserved to pay down the national debt. I wouldn't advocate using it to expand the public sector though.)
Also, I think so far New Zealand is the only Kyoto signatory to introduce a carbon tax - there are other ways to meet your Kyoto obligations. For starters you could grandfather allowances to existing businesses covering say, 90% of their existing emissions, for free and auction off additional permits to them and new entrants.
In the case of the US, the first step in any rational greenhouse policy would probably be to remove the existing legislative bias in favor of SUVs and make them compete on an equal basis with cars.
Tim
Just saw your explanation. Sorry to accuse you of carrying double standards and being one-sided.
joe c wrote,
Hmm...but land ownership is defined by the government, and is certainly enforced by government coercion. Does that mean the "real estate market" is not a "market"?
LOL! The "real estate rental market" is a transfer of wealth to agents (viz, landowners) which themselves qua landowners produce absolutely nothing.
By the way, presuming you have a libertarian bent, are you a real libertarian or a Royal libertarian?
A better example of the sort of thing Liberal is talking about is probably trademarks and copyrights.
I'm sure there were plenty of printers; booksellers and theatre owners claiming they'd all be roon'd when the government interfered with the free market for printing and performing to impose wasteful new imposts.
Mr. Liberal:
Great points! You present a very interesting perspective. I am sure most of the readers here would agree as well.
Ian Gould wrote,
So-called "intellectual property rights" is certainly a good example, because (1) the right is wholly created by government, and (2) income accruing from the right is economic rent, hence (as economic theory tells us) leads to inefficiencies (for example, there's a gross disparity between the marginal cost of production, which in the modern electronic era is often about zero, and the price charge).
However, you're absolutely wrong to claim that land isn't a good example. A landowner in his role as landowner contributes nothing of value; land has value because of activities of the government and the rest of society.
Don't believe me? Ask Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations):
Or ask these more modern economists, all Nobel laureates:
efficiency. -- Paul Samuelson
value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago. -- Milton Friedman
government revenue. -- Franco Modigliani
land should be required to make an annual payment to the local
government equal to the current rental value of the land he or she
prevents others from using. -- Robert Solow
collect some of the rent of land, they do not collect nearly as much
as they could, and they therefore make unnecessarily great use of
taxes that impede their economies -- taxes on such things as incomes,
sales, and the value of capital goods.
-- William Vickrey
I should add that property rights in land are defined by government, just as much as so-called intellectual property rights are.
Liberal:
you seem to have a bug in your head about land. What happened, did you forget to pay property tax one year and your property confiscated.
What nonsense are sprouting on about? Land ownership in the US and Australia is not free. There are property taxes in the US and similar taxes in Australia. So your idea that property owners get a free pass is slightly delusional, to say the least.
"A landowner in his role as landowner contributes nothing of value; land has value because of activities of the government and the rest of society".
How about a farmer. Last time I heard that's where food come from.
Homes? They just don't float on air do they?
Stores? You ever go to the store to shop? Or does someone else do that?
joe c wrote,
It's true that property owners don't get an entirely free pass, just mostly free.
The tax on property:
(i) usually recoups only a fraction of the land rent;
(ii) falls on improvements, which are not land but rather productive assets.
The problem here is that you're referring to land, including improvements. "Land value taxation" refers to taxing the unimproved value of land. Improvements represent capital, not land, in economics.
See the Wikipedia entry on land (economics).
joe c wrote,
Funny, isn't it, that all these Nobel laureates in economics have the same bug?
Liberal:
What is it exactly you wanna do with land etc.? You think property taxes are too low? I really do get what your bug is here?
Looking forward to hearing about it.
Seeya
joe c wrote,
It's pretty simple (did you read the Adam Smith quote?): land rent should be taxed to the fullest extent practical.
A reasonable estimate of land rent is 15% of GDP (for the USA), ample revenue for taxation.
The essential effect of land value taxation is to make the capitalized value of land zero. (Because of practical considerations---namely, the inability to exactly estimate the rent---the value wouldn't be zero, but would be quite low.)
In addition to increasing tax on land,
The nice thing about land value taxation is it's one of the few taxes where (a) the regime with the tax is actually more efficient than the tax-less regime (because hoarding is prevented, yet price signals remain undistorted) and (b) the tax is equitable, since landowners (in their role of landowners) contribute nothing to the economy, so the tax is just.
If you want to actually understand the topic, here are two good links. They're written from a libertarian perspective, which I don't completely agree with (namely, the idea of the land tax as a single tax), but they're well-written:
If you want to debate the issue, USENET is much better than a blog comment section. You could post to sci.econ.
Hi Liberal:
I don't want to dismiss your idea out of hand because I have given it some thought and I need some time to digest it.
I want to add a few comments and then may visit the website you suggested.
Imposing much higher property taxes in the US would immediately cause a fall in the price of land. As you know, a very large % of loans are property based and therefore you would experience dislocation in the loan markets. Needless to say it would have some very adverse economic consequences, as valuations would sink against which loans are based.
One good example of what can happen means revisiting the 1986 Reagan Tax changes. The 1986 Tax changes plugged the real estate taxation loop-holes and forced all those real estate tax rorts to close. Combined with that, the end of decade closing down of the S&L balance sheet deposit insurance protection caused a real estate down turn right up to the mid 90's. Real estate prices did not recover in NYC where I lived for 7 years. In other words tax rorts that were no longer there and a real estate focused credit crunch forced real estate values to drop big time.
Raising property taxes would immediately cause land values to fluctuate wildly. Why? Because carry costs would increase. A good example of this again is the NYC co-op market where carry costs are very high. A four- bedroom apart., say on Park Ave, can run you $6,000+ per month in maintenance costs comprising of property tax, service people, etc. This is all well and good when jobs are plentiful in NYC. However the moment Wall Street catches the flu co-ops can drop 20-30% in value. It's hard servicing monthly charges of that magnitude if you lost your job.
So in effect, your suggestion is the economy ought de-leverage from real estate (and not in a painless way).
You understand that under your tax system real estate would become a very volatile "commodity". A friend did a volatility model for Australian real estate and figured that historic volatility for Aussie R E is about 10%. I would say US would be about the same.
My other question is: I assume that under your proposal, nothing would change in terms of how people use their land, right. In other words John and Betty would not be thrown out of their apartment under your suggestion, right? You are moving the tax anchor away from labour- generated earnings to property tax. Is that correct?
I don't really see a big problem with this. However, try selling it to Congress. It has as much chance of getting through as Saddam becoming the next head of the UN.
joe c,
Sorry, not much time to reply---gotta labor so I can pay labor-based taxes :)
In theory, if the tax were levied on 100% of the land rent---not possible, insofar as it's not clear exactly what the land rent is---the land would become worthless for exchange value.
In essence, if the tax were 100%, landowners would effectively be renting the land from the government.
It's not a collectivist scheme, in the sense that the market would still dictate how land is used. Why? Because land rent is, by definition, the market value of the right to use a parcel over a fixed time period (a year, say). So if demand is high, the rent is bid up, and if someone isn't using the parcel efficiently, he won't be able to pay the tax, and will have to give up the parcel. (The practical issue here is what to do about improvements (e.g. buildings) tied to the land.)
As for de-leveraging real estate, etc, I'm not an expert on credit markets, but my impression from reading around is that huge amounts of credit get recycled through the land market. That's just grotesquely inefficient---the function of (financial) capital markets should be to finance capital, which represents true wealth creation, rather than a kind of Ponzi scheme involving natural assets like land. It is true that a lot of assets would be wiped out, but for many people, that would be balanced by decreased future tax payments on labor and capital. People who earn a living doing nothing more than charging others a toll for access to land, of course, would be screwed.
Like I say, gotta get back to work. I'll take the liberty of posting your comments to sci.econ (I'll post a google groups link here after it shows up on google). People who have a similar mind as me but know more will reply.
Finally, note there's nothing Marxist about this line of thought. Marx, in fact, realized that Henry George (the father of these proposals, if not all the economics behind them---that largely goes back to Ricardo and his theory of rent, though Ricardo disagreed with George's normative conclusions) was really a friend of capitalism. People say (I haven't checked) that George and Marx didn't like each other, as a result.
joe c,
OK, my repost of your comments showed up on USENET via Google (pretty fast!).
Here's a link---there should an ensuing thread over the next week.
Cheers.