[mdlug-discuss] Ethanol vs gasoline economy [Was: [mdlug] Automotive technical info ...]

[allen]

Ingles, Raymond wrote:
>  Um... there *is* a fairly broad middle ground between laissez-faire, Upton-
> Sinclair's-"The Jungle"-style-capitalism and Marxism. One can believe some
> regulation is necessary without believing that everything should be regulated.
>
>   
Oh sure but the phrase "there ought to be a government program" flows so 
easily from so many people's mouths that the broad middle ground is 
claimed by the Marxists and the somewhat less brightly shaded of the 
same hue. Something along the order of "if it absolutely, positively has 
to be done, is there any way to do it without involving government?" is 
a more accurate summation of my point of view.

I recognize that there are some functions that can only be performed by 
government, many more can be performed by government but needn't be and 
some functions which should never be performed by government. Of the 
functions that needn't be performed by government I believe the 
long-term interests of society are best met by determining if there's 
any other way to perform the function other then via government if the 
necessity of the function is inescapable.

The reason is that anything born of the political process never escapes 
the political process. Whatever the function is becomes a vehicle for 
satisfying the demands of the most politically potent interest group 
involved. That's why government-owned farms and factories are inevitably 
models of inefficiency, the political process taking precedence over the 
organization's ostensible reason for existence and all else suffering.
>  Oh, I dunno about that - a difference of degree, at most, not kind. Look
> up Ford's "Sociological Department" some time, or the "Dearborn Independent"
> newspaper. Or the Pinkerton agency used by most of those 'robber barons' of
> the day. :->
>
>   
To quote Joseph Stalin, and in this context I hope the irony is 
inescapable, quantity has a quality all its own. The Pinkertons were 
naive amateurs compared to the NKVD and Henry Ford's tenure on the 
planet was a net plus for the human race, increasing as he did the 
effective wealth of everyone who bought a Model-T. Any offsetting 
virtues Pol Pot can lay claim too?

>  Sincerely,
>
>  Ray Ingles                                     (313) 227-2317
>   
> Robert Adkins wrote:
>     A manufacturing base has far more benefits to a nation than simply 
> being able to retool in the event of war.
>
>   
I'm not sure about "far more" but the benefits to a nation of a 
manufacturing base are a function of its economic value. If the 
manufacturing base isn't economically justified it requires 
subsidization which would be a bet favoring the likelihood of war and a 
drag on the nation until the advent of war.

It's an insurance policy and an insurance policy balances the likelihood 
of loss (war) against the cost of insurance coverage (the subsidized 
manufacturing sector). How much of a manufacturing sector do you propose 
to subsidize, keeping in mind that even the fighting of war, along with 
manufacturing, has become a much less labor-intensive enterprise, i.e. 
one laser-guided bomb, one airplane and one pilot being the equivalent 
of several hundred bombs, a thousand or so airmen and a couple of dozen 
B-17s?
>     How exactly will that be done, in the US, if nobody has the know-how 
> or interest (Because there are no to few jobs in manufacturing) to have 
> a reason to pursue such a course of action?
>
>   
And what opportunities do we forgo if an economically non-viable 
manufacturing sector is sucking up money that might go to fund the next 
generation of manufacturing technology? A next generation of 
manufacturing technology that other nations most assuredly will not 
forgo which would put us exactly where you claim you don't want the US 
to be: in danger of being unable to defend ourselves because we have no 
manufacturing base, or in the case of your prescription, an obsolescent 
manufacturing base which is the functionally equivalent, in a time of 
rapid technological change. Which is now.

Besides, all this "national defense" stuff is just eye-wash, isn't it? 
It's just another way to sell a mandatory full-employment policy using 
current affairs to make the idea more palatable. That's been shown to be 
a bad idea everywhere its been tried and I don't see any reason why 
it'll work any better with a flag being waved vigorously over it.

By the way, I'm still waiting for an explanation of why a little war is 
economically bad and a big war economically good. I'm familiar with the 
concept of "economies of scale" but I don't quite see how manufacturing 
ten thousand airplanes to be shot down results in, you should pardon the 
expression, boom times and manufacturing a hundred airplanes to be shot 
down results in economic stagnation. Care to clarify?

Allen