[There is evidence] that a straight-out command and control approach might [be more efficient than] cap and trade …
It is well established that the lack of immediate financial benefits leads companies to underinvest in R & D …
[This is because the benefits of] pollution prevention [are poorly] reflected in the market price of goods and services … the incentives for private investment are weak.
Competitive forces just don't provide enough justification for the long-term investment required …
[When] government establishes a regulation, it creates demand [and companies respond with innovation.]
[There] may even be cost savings … as obsolete technologies are replaced with state-of-the art ones [— something companies would not have done] had they not been forced to.
(p 105, emphasis added)
The empirical evidence shows that … regulation provides a strong and continuous stimulus for invention.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and regulatory compliance is a powerful form of necessity.
(p 106)
November 10, 2012
Acid Rain
Naomi Oreskes: Merchants of Doubt
November 7, 2012
Power
Bertrand Russell
[It] must be evident that democracy … is an essential part of the solution [to the problem of the taming of power.]
[However, the] complete solution is not to be found by confining ourselves to political conditions …
[We] must take account also of economics, of propaganda, and of psychology as affected by circumstances and education.
(p 187)
[There] should be toleration of all propaganda not involving incitement to break the law …
[And] the law, should be as tolerant as is compatible with technical efficiency and the maintenance of order.
(p 189)
If there were ever an international government, it would obviously have to be a federation of national governments, with strictly defined powers.
(p 191)
[As] a result of modern technique, organisations tend to grow and to coalesce and to increase their scope …
[Hence,] the political State must either increasingly take over economic functions, or partially abdicate in favour of vast private enterprises which are sufficiently powerful to defy or control it.
If the State does not acquire supremacy over such enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
(p 194)
[And, if] concentration of power in a single organisation — the State — is not to produce the evils of despotism in an extreme form, it is essential that power within that organisation should be widely distributed, and that subordinate groups should have a large measure of autonomy.
Without democracy, devolution, and immunity from extra-legal punishment, the coalescence of economic and political power is nothing but a new and appalling instrument of tyranny.
(p 198)
[Fear,] rage, and all kinds of violent collective excitement, tend to make men blindly follow a leader, who, in most cases, takes advantage of their trust to establish himself as a tyrant. …
[And where] a spirit of ferocious dogmatism prevails, any opinion with which men disagree is liable to provoke a breach of the peace.
(p 200)
Revivalist enthusiasm, such as that of the Nazis, rouses admiration in many through the energy and apparent self-abnegation that it generates.
Collective excitement, involving indifference to pain and even to death, is historically not uncommon.
Where it exists, liberty is impossible. …
To admire collective enthusiasm is reckless and irresponsible, for its fruits are fierceness, war, death, and slavery.
War is the chief promoter of despotism …
[If,] once the world were freed from the fear of war, under no matter what form of government or what economic system, it would in time find ways of curbing the ferocity of its rulers.
On the other hand, all war, but especially modern war, promotes dictatorship by causing the timid to seek a leader and by converting the bolder spirits from a society into a pack.
The risk of war causes a certain kind of mass psychology, and reciprocally this kind, where it exists, increases the risk of war, as well as the likelihood of despotism.
(p 201)
The temper required to make a success of democracy is, in the practical life, exactly what the scientific temper is in the intellectual life; it is a half-way house between scepticism and dogmatism.
Truth, it holds, is neither completely attainable nor completely unattainable …
[It] is attainable to a certain degree, and that only with difficulty. …
Wherever there is autocracy, a set of beliefs is instilled into the minds of the young before they are capable of thinking, and these beliefs are taught so constantly and so persistently that it is hoped the pupils will never afterwards be able to escape from the hypnotic effect of their early lessons.
(p 203)
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Modern propagandists have learnt from advertisers, who led the way in the technique of producing irrational belief.
Education should be designed to counteract the natural credulity and the natural incredulity of the uneducated:
[The] habit
(p 204)
[Wisdom] is not merely intellectual …
[Intellect] may guide and direct, but [it] does not generate the force that leads to action.
[That] force must be derived from the emotions.
Emotions that have desirable social consequences are not so easily generated as hate and rage and fear.
(p 205)
Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970):
[In ancient times a] man who took no interest in politics was frowned upon, and was called an 'idiot', which is Greek for 'given over to private interests'.
(Wisdom of the West, 1959, p 11)
It is not ultimately by violence that men are ruled, but by the wisdom of those who appeal to the common desires of mankind,(Power, 1938, p 185)
- for happiness,
- for inward and outward peace, and
- for the understanding of the world in which, by no choice of our own, we [all] have to live.
The Taming of Power
[It] must be evident that democracy … is an essential part of the solution [to the problem of the taming of power.]
[However, the] complete solution is not to be found by confining ourselves to political conditions …
[We] must take account also of economics, of propaganda, and of psychology as affected by circumstances and education.
(p 187)
[There] should be toleration of all propaganda not involving incitement to break the law …
[And] the law, should be as tolerant as is compatible with technical efficiency and the maintenance of order.
(p 189)
If there were ever an international government, it would obviously have to be a federation of national governments, with strictly defined powers.
(p 191)
[As] a result of modern technique, organisations tend to grow and to coalesce and to increase their scope …
[Hence,] the political State must either increasingly take over economic functions, or partially abdicate in favour of vast private enterprises which are sufficiently powerful to defy or control it.
If the State does not acquire supremacy over such enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
(p 194)
[And, if] concentration of power in a single organisation — the State — is not to produce the evils of despotism in an extreme form, it is essential that power within that organisation should be widely distributed, and that subordinate groups should have a large measure of autonomy.
Without democracy, devolution, and immunity from extra-legal punishment, the coalescence of economic and political power is nothing but a new and appalling instrument of tyranny.
(p 198)
[Fear,] rage, and all kinds of violent collective excitement, tend to make men blindly follow a leader, who, in most cases, takes advantage of their trust to establish himself as a tyrant. …
[And where] a spirit of ferocious dogmatism prevails, any opinion with which men disagree is liable to provoke a breach of the peace.
(p 200)
Revivalist enthusiasm, such as that of the Nazis, rouses admiration in many through the energy and apparent self-abnegation that it generates.
Collective excitement, involving indifference to pain and even to death, is historically not uncommon.
Where it exists, liberty is impossible. …
To admire collective enthusiasm is reckless and irresponsible, for its fruits are fierceness, war, death, and slavery.
War is the chief promoter of despotism …
[If,] once the world were freed from the fear of war, under no matter what form of government or what economic system, it would in time find ways of curbing the ferocity of its rulers.
On the other hand, all war, but especially modern war, promotes dictatorship by causing the timid to seek a leader and by converting the bolder spirits from a society into a pack.
The risk of war causes a certain kind of mass psychology, and reciprocally this kind, where it exists, increases the risk of war, as well as the likelihood of despotism.
(p 201)
The temper required to make a success of democracy is, in the practical life, exactly what the scientific temper is in the intellectual life; it is a half-way house between scepticism and dogmatism.
Truth, it holds, is neither completely attainable nor completely unattainable …
[It] is attainable to a certain degree, and that only with difficulty. …
Wherever there is autocracy, a set of beliefs is instilled into the minds of the young before they are capable of thinking, and these beliefs are taught so constantly and so persistently that it is hoped the pupils will never afterwards be able to escape from the hypnotic effect of their early lessons.
(p 203)
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Modern propagandists have learnt from advertisers, who led the way in the technique of producing irrational belief.
Education should be designed to counteract the natural credulity and the natural incredulity of the uneducated:
[The] habit
- of believing an emphatic statement without reasons, and
- of disbelieving an unemphatic statement even when accompanied by the best of reasons. …
(p 204)
[Wisdom] is not merely intellectual …
[Intellect] may guide and direct, but [it] does not generate the force that leads to action.
[That] force must be derived from the emotions.
Emotions that have desirable social consequences are not so easily generated as hate and rage and fear.
(p 205)
November 5, 2012
The World 1
George W Bush
And yet I doubt, if there be a more reprehensible human act
than to lead a nation into an unnecessary war …
— Richard Cobden (1804 – 65), 8 August 1855.
Reza Deghati (1952)
(David Smith, Behind The Photo — War Zone, part2 pictures, 2009)
than to lead a nation into an unnecessary war …
— Richard Cobden (1804 – 65), 8 August 1855.
Surgical Airstrike
Reza Deghati (1952)
(David Smith, Behind The Photo — War Zone, part2 pictures, 2009)
Socrates (c470 – 399 BCE):
[To] inflict injustice is more disgraceful than to suffer it …
(Plato, Gorgias)
Matthew:
Do not resist one who is evil.
But if any one strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
(5:19)
Romans:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil …
Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
(King James Bible, 12:17-21)
Quran:
Do not let the injustice of others lead you into injustice …
Bruce Bartlett (1951):
[George W Bush understands] Al Quaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy … because he's just like them.
He truly believes he's on a mission from God.
The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.
Ada Louise Huxtable (1921 – 2013) :
Whose afraid of the big bad buildings?
Everyone.
Because there are so many things about gigantism that we just don't know.
The gamble of triumph or tragedy at this scale … demands an extraordinary payoff.
The twin towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age, or the biggest tombstones in the [history of the] world.
(1966)
George W Bush (1946):
More than 3,000 suspected terrorists have been arrested in many countries.
Many others have met a different fate.
Put it this way: they're no longer a problem to the United States and our friends and allies.
[Applause]
One by one, the terrorists are learning the meaning of American Justice.
[Applause]
(State of the Union Address, US Congress, 28 January 2003)
[The people] we have liberated will not surrender their freedom.
Democracy will succeed because the United States of America will not be intimidated by a bunch of thugs!
October 29, 2012
Big Ideas TV
ABC Television
Sam Harris (1967):
Values reduce to facts about the wellbeing of conscious creatures. …
[We] are right to be more concerned about our fellow primates than we are about insects.
Because … there is an inner dimension there that can be modulated to a much greater degree by changes in the universe.
For changes in the universe to matter, they have to matter to some conscious system. …
(Can Science Determine Human Values?, 10 May 2011)
Mark Lewis [Lawyer]:
[The initial prosecution into phone hacking was the responsibility of] Assistant Commissioner Andy Hayman.
[He subsequently left the Metropolitan Police to become] a journalist for The Times newspaper which belongs to Rupert Murdoch …
[He] wrote an article which said, the phone hacking investigation in 2006 [— which uncovered one 'rogue reporter' —] was a 'proper' investigation [in which] 'not a stone was left unturned'. …
[His article was reprinted in the News of the World —] the very paper he should have been investigating …
(Politics and the Murdoch Press, 23 April 2012)
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