Cafe Hayek

People Harmed by Capitalism or by "Green" Policies?

Indur Goklany's 2007 book, The Improving State of the World , is impressively fact-packed and well-argued.  I recommend it highly.  I recommend also his op-ed appearing in today's edition of the New York Post.  Here are a few paragraphs.

President Bush's call yesterday for a dramatic slowdown of green-house-gas emissions reflects growing concern for the consequences of climate change. But what about the consequences of the world's response?

The fact is, food riots resulting partly from the United States' alternative energy policies have arrived at our front door. Crowds of hungry demonstrators swarmed the presidential palace in Haiti last week to protest skyrocketing food prices.

In recent years, we've heard that climate change could be catastrophic for nature and humanity. But it's becoming increasingly evident that over the next few decades, climate-change policies could prove even more catastrophic.

....

Supposedly climate-friendly policies in the United States and the European Union - subsidizing the production and consumption of such renewable biofuels as ethanol and biodiesel - have diverted such crops as corn, soybeans and palm oil from food to fuel. This, in turn, has increased prices for food worldwide at a time when the highly populous and newly prosperous East and South Asian countries are demanding more of it.

Butt Out

Here's a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:

Senator Arlen Specter imagines that it is his and his fellow maharajahs' duty to investigate why the National Football League destroyed the Patriots' tapes of the Jets ("Goodell Defends Handling of Patriots' Spying Case," February 2).

If I were NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, I would respond to Sen. Specter's threat to call a Senate committee hearing to investigate this matter by saying only "Dear Sen. Specter:  The rule that the Patriots violated is one that the NFL, not Congress, created.  We are a private organization quite capable of enforcing our own rules.  So butt out; this matter is none of your damn business.  Sincerely...."

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

O'Rourke on Smith

P.J. O'Rourke appeared recently on Jon Stewart's Daily Show.  (The occasion is the release of the paperback version of O'Rourke's book on Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.)  Here's the Daily Show clip.

In this clip O'Rourke isn't perfect on Smith -- O'Rourke's chief goal in this clip is to be funny, rather than scholarly.  But he's got a few good lines.  I like especially the one about Smith wanting to "decentralize our badness."

HT Justin Cox

Virtual Salami

Since interviewing Edward Castronova, I've continued thinking about how prominent these virtual playgrounds are going to be in our lives. Then I came across this NYT article on hitting the clubs on the virtual Lower East Side of New York:

It began as a typical night on the Lower East Side. A few weeks ago a crowd of young urbanites gathered in the bowels of Cake Shop, the pastry cafe cum music club on Ludlow Street, to see a performance by an indie-rock band, the Virgins. A couple of minutes into the show the subterranean space was already packed to capacity and smelling of stale beer, so I left.

I walked a few blocks to my apartment on Avenue A, turned on my computer, directed a small, pixelated representation of myself to enter a small, pixelated representation of Cake Shop, and rejoined the show. There were no imperious bouncers or foul odors to contend with, and no fluids of any kind expectorated on my shoes. Except for a slightly choppy video feed, it was by my standards a pretty successful evening on the town.

Despite knowing that its real-life inspiration exists right outside my door, I have spent the last few months making such visits to the Virtual Lower East Side (vles.com), a three-dimensional, Internet-based social network fastidiously modeled on a small but influential swath of Manhattan real estate.

The article includes this nice shot of a virtual Katz's Delicatessen. You can just see the salamis hanging in the window if you look carefully: