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Posts Tagged ‘economics’

Green Paradox

May 21, 2019

German Economist Hans-Werner Sinn identifies a ‘green paradox‘.

This is that the more we discuss lowering, and act to lower, CO2 emissions from fossil fuels to reduce climate turmoil, the more temptation there is for fossil fuel companies to excavate fossil fuels to sell them and make money out of them, before the assets become unsellable and worthless. I suspect that this is one of the reasons the Right in Australia is so keen on new coal mines, to protect mining giants and get support from them in turn.

We can add, that acting to reduce CO2 also increases the temptation the companies have to broadcast false information to delay action and keep the sales going as long as possible. Both selling to damage the market, and emitting misinformation to influence the market, are part of normal capitalist functioning.

Furthermore, if plenty of green power is available, then the price of fossil fuels may come down (especially given the pressure to sell them) so even more fossil fuels get burnt. If Countries have not committed to green energy, then they can freeload on the cheap fuel created by those who have rejected fossil fuel. This can then lead to further lock-in of fossil fuel technology in those countries.

Another way of phrasing this is “The more we need to go green, the harder it will become”.

Solutions are difficult, but apart from overthrowing capitalism which is not going to happen, we could have a worldwide carbon tax, which is also going to be hard (misinformation problems), we could reduce the massive subsidies that go to fossil fuels for historical reasons (we tried to make supply safe for social good), or we could simply buy, or nationalize the reserves (which is also going to be difficult).

What the green paradox tells us, is that we cannot solve the problem of greenhouse gases and energy without legislating, or finding some other ways, to keep coal in the ground. That has to be the aim

Tags:climate change, Disinformation, economics, free markets, technology
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Energy and Economy

May 16, 2019

Another attempt to theorise what seems to be both obvious and undertheorized…. This material is very basic and possibly wrong.

As I have argued elsewhere economies require the transformation of materials and energy, together with exchange from one person to another. The more energy that is available, through technologies of energy production, the more that can be done by those with access to that energy.

Energy production can mark military security, as it allows action at a distance, rapid manufacture of complicated weaponry and so on (assuming access to the materials etc). Most States take action to ensure they have excess energy and can defend themselves, or extend their range of attack, as well as extend the influence and power of their nation’s businesses.

All energy on Earth largely originates in two sources:
as ‘Interspatial energy‘,
or as ‘Planetary Energy‘

Interspatial Energy (IE) comes primarily from the Sun as electromagnetic energies, light and heat. There are also gravitational tides from the Moon, which affect planetary weather and water movements – this is energetically important. The consequences for the Planetary system of IE is huge, but the return effects of Planetary systems on IE is, so far, negligible.

Planetary Energy can come from weather, the water cycle, winds, tides and so on, which result from interaction between the Planetary system and Interspatial Energy. Other sources of Planetary energy, include Geothermal energy, fire, the interactive properties of materials, and potential nuclear energy. I want to summarise all this with the term ‘Planetary Energy and Materials’ (PEM). PEM largely depends on the existence of IE. This is an example of the laws of thermodynamics in action. Without continual energy input from an external source, the Earth system will run down. It would not have much available energy, and there is little likelihood of life evolving into anything particularly complex (not completely zero chance, we have hope for the moons of Saturn, but little chance).

The PEM leads to Planetary Ecological Cycles (PEC), which are complex living systems in which everything interacts with everything else, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.

Complex systems have numerous properties in general. Some of the important ones, are

that they are in flux and evolve

they can reach temporary equilibrium states

they are subject to accident, and rapid change at tipping points and

they are (humanly) unpredictable in specific (we might be able to predict trends and general events, but not specific events).

Eventually, the living system covers the planet, becoming planet wide, and we have something approximating the Gaia idea. PEC and PEM are linked. PEC depends on both PEM and IE, and can affect PEM on some occasions – as when early life changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

PEC provides us with coal, natural gas and oil from the long time decay and death of plants and animals. These materials are all stores of ‘Carbon’ in various forms, as that is one of the major materials of Earthly life. When burnt, or released into the atmosphere, they release stored material which forms Greenhouse gases, and effects the functioning of the PEC.

Eventually we end up with humans and human organisation. Human organisation involves technologies, relations of power, relations of kinship, relations of labour, relations of knowledge and so on (all of which we often lump together and call ‘culture‘), which make use of, and are influenced by, PEC and PEM. We will call this level the Social Economy (SE), it depends upon the workings of all ‘previous’ stages, and can influence the workings of those stages.

In ‘simpler’ economies the main energy source is human labour, powered by available food and water, and perhaps fire which primarily makes more potential food edible and safe, drives away dangerous animals, allows deliberate or accidental changes in ecology and may allow some processing of minerals (copper, bronze, iron etc), which then have unexpected consequences for human lives. The use and harnessing of animals also boosts energy availability, which affects the possible scale of agriculture, population density, warfare and so on. The more organised the labour the more energy is available. However, slave (or indentured) labour appears to have been the energy basis of many large scale societies prior to widespread use fossil fuels. People also use technology to tap the power of geography and weather with river power (water wheels) and wind power (sails and windmills). This again adds to possible production, and people work to use the technology when the power is available.

Then we get the use of fossil fuels and technology to generate steam power, mechanical motion and electricity. Finally we get nuclear energy and renewable power – all stages build on the complexities of earlier stages, and multiple paths are available, both taken and not taken – for example, many nations have not used nuclear energy. Each stage in this development comes with different forms of social and work organisation, and relationship to environment (including the capacity to damage it).

The more available energy becomes, the more people can do, the wider and more integrated their organisations can become, the quicker, longer and more voluminous trade routes can become, the more separated in space the relationships that can be built, the faster armies can move and damage be delivered, and the greater the distinction in class that becomes possible: those that own or control vs those who labour, or are controlled. With plenty of cheap energy it is possible to develop mass consumption societies, with large numbers of goods.

The State, where it exists, is part of the social economy, and often promotes and protects energy systems for the obvious reasons of building trade and production that is beneficial for it and its ruling factions, and to extend military security and aggression (often to increase easy access to raw materials and energy). The State also exists to protect unequal divisions of wealth internally. The State has tended to provide slaves, protect relations of slavery (along with other forms of property), promoted navies, wind power, river power, and subsidised coal and oil production and infrastructure, and also has often supported nuclear energy because of its costs and risks. Eventually, these subsidies and supports become familiar and invisible, and support for new energy sources (not managed or owned and controlled by the same people) can become a political issue. For example the IMF advises us that fossil fuel subsidies globally amount to US$5.2 trillion or 6.5% of global GDP. This is far more than given to renewable energy generations. The subsidies include estimations for the damage from pollution, which is both a silent subsidy, and an approval of the pollution as it is not penalized.

As proposed, initially organisation of human labour and food (energy) availability, together with a set of relationship to the environment determined what could be done and what could be produced. This is the domain in which the labour theory of value is almost correct, given the addition of cultural and religious values. Relations of power are also important in influencing value, but I shall discuss all of these factors elsewhere.

Labour is simply one form of energy generation. As economies get more complex, other forms of interconnection and energy generation are added, together with issues of supply, demand, control and power. Also it is quite clear that with easily available energy people may produce more of an item than there is a market for, and it does not really matter how much labour/energy goes into the item, it can still not bring a return on a cash/commodity market. So exchange value is not directly equivalent to labour or other energy expenditure.

One important concept for consideration of energy in the economy is ‘Energy return on energy investment’ (EREI). I prefer the phrase ‘Energy return on energy input,’ (same initials) as it avoids using financial terms with very specific meanings. This idea refers to the ratio of the amount of energy you have to input into a technical system, when compared to the amount you get out. The higher the ratio, (or the more energy is emitted per unit of energy input), then the more easily available energy there is. If the energy input is continually higher than the energy output, the system is likely to eventually grind to a halt.

EREI is also dependent on organisation, or the direction, of energy expenditure. Uncontrolled energy expenditure is not the same as energy availability, just as the directed energy expenditure in a nuclear reactor is different to the energy expended in nuclear bomb. Energy availability may also be directed towards particular social groups; aluminium factories amy get supported by higher prices for other people; those who can afford energy may get more of it, and so on. There is, inevitably, a social component, and restrictions, to energy availability.

Fossil Fuels radically changed social EREIs. Fossil Fuels have been easy to extract, relatively easy to transport and process, and emit huge amounts of easily deployable energy in return. This availability has allowed transport of food from distant locations, world trade, world empires, world war, mass manufacturing, industrialisation, mass electrical technology and mass computing. It has allowed technology to become incredibly complicated and small. All of these procedures require, and use, cheap and easily obtainable energy – they also require a large and complicated back drop of production and skills – so technology is enmeshed in complex systems. Cheap easy energy has increased the possibilities of general prosperity, especially when coupled with organised labour.

It might also be the case, that the more freely energy became available, the more extraction can shift into destructive modes, as it becomes relatively easy to destroy ecologies (especially distant ecologies), transport the extracted materials anywhere, and to protect oneself as destroyer (temporarily) through more technology and energy expenditure.

Human energy and technology use can, fairly clearly, have consequences for the PEC, and thus affect human life.

In some cases, of long residence, it can appear that human life styles are ecologically harmonious, or even determined by ecologies. In these cases, the interactive system as a whole generates an implicit knowledge of how to survive, which may not be explicitly known by anyone. Such local harmonious systems are hard to replicate or transport elsewhere. They may also only be harmonious until external forces disrupt the system, or the success of particular internal forces generates tipping points.

Finally we get into the recognition of waste and pollution which we have discussed in other posts. Briefly, ‘waste‘ is defined as the by-products of production and consumption, which can (in relatively brief time) by reprocessed by the economy or the PEC. ‘Pollution‘ is defined as the by-products of production and consumption which cannot be processed by the economy or the PEC, and which has the capacity to disrupt or poison those processes. The more destructive the extraction processes, the less able ecologies are able to process waste and that waste becomes pollution. Pollution is often distributed according to relations of power, and dumped upon poorer or less powerful people, and poorer less visible places. Pollution eventually feeds back into the complexity of the PEM and PEC and affects a society’s ability to survive – at the least it generates changes in the Social Economy.

The problem we face is that pollution is changing the PEC to such a degree that the civilisation we participate in could fall apart in many ways. This is not that unusual. Previous civilisations have destroyed their ecologies by determined accident. In our case one of the prime dangers is the pollution from fossil fuels.

The same processes which give us a huge EREI and hence cheap, plentiful energy, will cause massively turbulent weather, storms, droughts, flooding, sea water rise and so on.

These are severe problems for us. It will be hard to tackle these problems if the EREI goes down, which it seems to be, and the problems will also increase if we continue with fossil fuels to try and keep the EREI up.

Oil and gas are no longer as easy to find and extract as they were, hence the use of tar sands and fracking. Their EREI is declining. Quite a lot of people, who claim to be experts, argue that rates of discovery of new oil and gas fields has declined since the early seventies. Some consider that no new massive oil fields are likely to be discovered in the future. Desperate attempts to keep going, may mean that oil companies are becoming overburdened with debt, which they will never be able to repay from profitable discoveries. Lack of oil will affect supply chains which largely depend on it for transport. Coal is now gained by open cut and other explosive techniques which are far more destructive of the environment and poisoning of nearby people. Any increased efficiency of use of fossil fuels is likely to require a fair amount of energy expenditure to implement, and may not be economic. Renewable technologies require far more energy input for their energy output than fossil fuel energy, at least at the beginning of their lives.

So far, the amount of coal and gas fueled energy is increasing at similar rates as solar and wind, increasing emissions.

There is a further economic theory which is of use here; the Jevons Paradox. This is disputed, and not everyone accepts it. Some of the rejection seems to stem from the recognition that, if correct, it has unpleasant consequences.

The Jevons paradox is basically that “The more, available, efficient or cheaper the energy, the more it will be used.” This implies that energy efficiency can result in greater consumption of fuel, rather than less consumption, and hence greater emissions. It is also in the interests of corporations who sell energy, to boost sales of energy, rather than to have unused energy on hand, so there are a few social drivers operating here, few of which favour reduction of pollution.

One consequence of the above, is that new renewable energy may not displace fossil fuel energy. Energy use may merely go up, as new renewable energy adds to energy availability, and is accompanied by even more Fossil Fuel burning – which seems to be what we are currently observing. India and China are building huge amounts of both renewable and fossil fuel power, and organisations may cut fossil fuel use at home and encourage it elsewhere in the world, where there are fewer controls. Renewable energy technology also requires energy input, for extraction, production and transport and this has been provided by fossil fuels. This increases Greenhouse gases. If fossil fuels remain stable, then building renewables at the rate required lowers energy available to run the rest of society. Any decline of the availability of fossil fuels, (due to shortage or phase out) may also mean that we cannot build renewables with the speed and financial return required to keep civilization going.

If we succeed and the percentage of renewables relative to fossil fuel increases then the amounts of cheaply available energy will sink, and the world will head for ‘degrowth’ and disconnection, whether voluntary or involuntary.

Involuntary degrowth could be disastrous. If emissions are to be reduced that will take legislation and regulation and a likely cut in living standards and the cut back of world trade, which may be culturally hard to accept. At the moment, working to satisfy consumption urges, drives the system. It is unlikely that this can be maintained, and that requires cultural work and change to make acceptable – and we are not good at doing this deliberately.

Tags:complexity, economics, Energy, technology
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Pollution and Extraction

May 10, 2019

Climate Change is not our main problem. Climate change is symptomatic of two other major problems:

1) Pollution and
2) Extraction

1) Let us define ‘waste’ as the byproducts of production and consumption that can be ‘re-cycled’ or processed by either the economic system or ecological system.

‘Pollution’ is then defined as the byproducts of production and consumption that cannot be ‘recyled’ or processed by the economic or ecological systems.

Sometimes, what would normally be waste can be produced in quantities which exceed the capacity of the ecology or economy to reprocess and it becomes pollution, as has happened with CO2 emissions. It is theoretically possible that pollution could likewise become waste, but I’m not sure this has ever happened easily or well. It is often hard to make reprocessing pollution profitable or even cheap (financially or energetically).

The changes to geological markers which define the Anthropocene are largely down to pollution. Climate change is mostly generated by pollution from excess greenhouse gas emissions made from energy production.

2) Extraction is the process of extracting food, minerals, materials, fuels etc. from the earth’s ecologies.

Extraction can likewise be of two types.

‘Tame extraction’ which allows the ecological system to repair itself after the extraction occurs. This takes time.
‘Excessive extraction’ which damages the ecological system, either through straightforward destruction, or through not allowing the ecology the time to regenerate.

The more ecologies are damaged the less they can process and recycle waste, therefore excessive extraction increases the chance that waste will become pollution.

For example, the amount of carbon dioxide we can produce safely goes down as we increase deforestation and poisoning of the oceans. Instead of being absorbed, as it should be, CO2 increases and traps in heat, changing the climate. This is compounded by massive increases in the amounts of CO2 and other Greenhouse gases being emitted, largely through burning fossil fuels (or dead forests), but emissions from warming seas and tundras are also starting to accelerate, and the weather becomes more tumultuous and unstable.

Politics of pollution and extraction

Pollution has both an economics and a politics. Pollution is emitted because it is cheaper to emit it than to restrain it, or to reprocess it. Pollution increases profit. We might say a key technique of capitalism is to freeload costs onto taxpayers or those who cannot resist. This is why pro-corporate politicians, such as President Trump, often boast about how they are reducing green tape and making it easier to pollute and poison people. So any political or economic system with people in power who consider reprocessing pollution too expensive, too diminishing of corporate (or other) profit, or as inhibiting some other beneficial project, will increase pollution, and that will have consequences; in some cases that will include direct harm to people. One, not yet recognized problem for polluters, is that some forms of pollution cannot be confined; they affect everyone detrimentally.

The politics of excessive extraction is similar. It is cheaper and more profitable (in the short term) to destroy ecologies than it is to preserve them. This is especially the case if the companies involved do not have a local base. They can then move elsewhere leaving a trail of destruction behind them. A good example of this is coal mining in Australia. Anyone who travels to the Hunter Valley can observe this, if they are careful, as the destruction is often hidden by high green mounds alongside the roads. We also have massive over-fishing in the world’s oceans because it is cheaper to take huge amounts of fish than to fish selectively. This is helping to causing a complete destruction of ocean ecological cycles, which is furthered by plastic, oil and other pollution. Small fisher peoples cannot compete and they end up having to change their lives and buy the fish they used to catch or starve. It is no longer true that if you teach a person to fish you feed them for a lifetime.

The politics of pollution and the politics of extraction mean there is a tendency to put the pollution and the destruction from excessive extraction onto relatively powerless people. Powerful people, by definition, often have the ability to push poison and mess away from themselves, and the wealth to import food from places that have not yet been destroyed. It is almost always the poor, or those living in relatively remote places that suffer poisoning, or destruction of their land and surroundings. However, the effects of destruction cannot always be confined (it spreads) and as poor and remote areas get destroyed, the destruction is likely to move into more prosperous areas. For example, with the NSW government’s determination to poison residents, and destroy their homes, with the Westconnex highway and tunnel system so a toll company can tax travel forever. Pollution may also have a psycho-political component as putting it on others indicates dominance over those others, and is a literal way of making a mark on the world – hence the apparent joy some people appear to take in polluting.

The problems we face increase because pollution and destruction go hand in hand. They reinforce each other, or feedback into each other, making the situation worse. They further reinforce and are reinforced by relations of power. Governments want to encourage business, economic growth and development and, in current terms, that means pollution and excessive extraction. There is little corrective available, unless governments can be recaptured by the people being damaged, and regulations imposed on the amount of pollution that can be emitted and the amount of destruction that will be tolerated. This in itself generates a problem in an age of international neoliberal capital. Capital will likely move to them areas of lowest regulation and highest permissible destruction, because this is more profitable, leaving the area without the investment. The oceans are a particular problem as it is easy to escape observation of destruction and pollution at sea, and there is confusion over who controls what is done.

So while local regulation is important, it is also important to have international regulation, and then international competition for capital and investment can get in the way.

Unfortunately, neoliberal governments tend to believe that the State exists to protect and encourage corporate business and wealth, and regulations are only worthwhile when they prevent opposition to business, or protect established business, and hence the idea that business should be regulated for the general good, or for self-protection is anathema, and hard to achieve. People also tend to think that more consumption is good, and this supports destruction by business.

This implies nothing will change without a general change in philosophy, as well as encouragement and support for those who are resisting pollution and excessive extraction in their local areas.

To reiterate, climate change is, itself, not the problem. The problem is that we are destroying and overloading our ecologies through pollution and excessive extraction, and this is occurring for political and economic reasons; often to reinforce the power and wealth of the corporate elites. Climate change is just a very destructive symptom of these processes, which makes everything worse.

Tags:Anthropocene, climate change, economics, free markets
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Carbon Markets

April 30, 2019

Elaborations on a lecture by Gareth Bryant (Political Economy, Sydney University) although probably not accurately, and I’ve probably added some inaccuracies.

The aim of carbon trading and taxes is to keep capitalism and economic growth while making them more ecologically sensitive. We are in no way certain that we can keep corporate capitalism or keep economic growth while reducing pollution and ecological destruction, but that is the hypothesis. It could be wrong to begin with.

Assuming that it is possible, the idea is that by allowing the market to set prices on Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, they become more expensive and this diminishes their attractiveness. It lets ‘the market’ seek the answer to how this reduction is done. That contemporary corporate markets can succeed in this, is also a hopeful hypothesis.

If you go with emissions trading you have to set up an artificial market in which emissions can be traded. The idea is that people who cut emissions have ‘carbon credits’, ‘carbon permits’ or ‘carbon allowances’ which they can sell to others, allowing those others to pollute. What this does in reality is keep the emissions stable, unless permits are regularly removed from the market – which can be difficult unless taxpayers buy them.

Both allocating and removing the credits are political processes open to influence, so large companies usually end up with larger amounts of credits than they should have. In the EU trading system there was a massive over-allocation of permits, which may have made the market under-priced and under-responsive with little incentive to reduce GHG.

Some companies, predicting a trading system is coming, can increase their emissions deliberately, so as to receive larger numbers of credits than they should have. When the credits are introduced, the companies reduce their emissions back to normal and sell off the excess. This increases emissions rather than lowering them.

If people don’t want to change, or there is a severe lock-in effect, then this can just increase prices for everyone, without reducing emissions.

‘The market’ is advocated, because it is supposed to remove the knowledge and planning problem from the process. That is, if the State is going to promote Green energy, reduced emissions and so on, then it has to know what it is doing. It has (in the terminology) to “pick winners”.

In neoliberal theory, the State is inefficient and always stupid and the market always knows what is best or finds the best way of doing it. Neoliberals do not like the possibility that ordinary people could influence corporate behaviour or diminish profit, through effective use of the State.

The problem with this idea is that the ‘best way’ can just mean cheapest and most profitable in the short term, Or, perhaps, the method that requires the least actual change. The market may crash or opt for destruction in the long term.

The idea also forgets that many uses of the environment are actually destructions of the environment, and once the environment has been destroyed, or transformed into waste, it takes massive amounts of energy to put it back together again (more than it took to demolish it). Corporations are nearly always primarily concerned with whether the process of destruction and waste makes them a profit. They are unconcerned about generating waste and pollution, especially if it could significantly diminish profit to tidy it up.

While government planning is given up, as it potentially interferes with the market, the scheme pretends that there is no significant corporate planning, and that corporations do not crony together for their own benefit. Unfortunately this happens – many boards have shared members for one. So the markets get distorted in the interest of the more powerful players, and this is not perceived or considered to be part of the market process, while State planning (which could possibly be in a more general interest, and have a general input, not just a corporate input) is defined as interference in the process.

In general, carbon markets diminish the tools available to a government, and make politics become about saving the carbon market rather than dealing with climate change. As already suggested, any governmental action, or target setting, whatsoever can be construed as interfering with ‘the market’ and as stopping it from working with its supposed efficiency. It is always possible to blame the State for market failure.

However the market does not have to go in the direction intended. Markets do not force emissions reduction. If it becomes more profitable to increase emissions (perhaps they are under priced because of market collapse), or prevent decrease, or to emit false information, then that can happen.

Financial markets, such as carbon markets, depend on volatility for both their profitability and financial-trader interest. We would essentially be trying to use a volatile financial market with its continuous stream of bubbles, crashes and information corruption in order to stabilise the ecology we depend upon for life. This makes no sense at all.

Let us be clear, there is no evidence that carbon trading anywhere in the world has successfully reduced emissions by any significant amount, but such markets do reduce the possibility of demanding emissions reduction in a relatively democratic way.

Carbon taxes are better because they set a relatively predictable price and can be moved up or down depending on the results being attained. Money from a carbon tax can also be distributed to the consumers to lessen their costs nd allow them to make market choices with greater ease. However, Carbon taxes do not seem politically possible, as all Australians know. This is probably because they are step towards letting the State interfere with the markets, rather than letting corporations interfere with markets.

Tags:carbon price/carbon trading, climate change, economics, Energy, free markets, technology
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Coal Mines and jobs

April 29, 2019

In Australia we have a large dispute over coal mines. In particular, people dispute over the proposed Carmichael coal mine in Queensland, run by the Indian company Adani which would be one of the largest coal mines in the world. Some say that if it opens then we may as well give up trying to stop climate disruption.

Politicians frequently defend the mine by saying it will result in at least 10,000 jobs in a fairly depressed area. This is also the figure that Adani chuck around when they are not in court.

In court where they can charged with perjury, the story is different.
Adani’s expert witness in the Land Court, Jerome Fahrer from ACIL Allen consulting, claimed (and please read this carefully)

“Over the life of the Project it is projected that on average around 1,464 employee years of full time equivalent direct and indirect jobs will be created.”

1) This is over the *life time* of the project.

2) “1464 employee years” (so if everyone works two years that is 732 jobs for two years, if every job lasts for 4 years that is 366 jobs. If the life time of the mine is a mere 20 years, and all jobs last 20 years, then that is 70 or less jobs. The mine is forecast to be operating much longer than that (I have seen predictions of 50 to 60 years). It is likely the opening years of the mine will consume most of these “employee years” while it requires construction.

3) “Direct and indirect” – this figure includes all the jobs that will be created in response to employment at the mine – bar tenders, contractors, motel staff and so on.

4) Be created – this means on top of the jobs lost elsewhere, as other mines are forced to shut down, because of competition.

So we would be in high risk of destroying the Great Artesian Basin, Queensland’s agriculture and world climate stability, for less than 70 extra jobs over 20 years. Adani are notorious for not paying tax and royalties, so we might as well stop pretending that Australia will get anything for all this destruction.

That was for the big mine. Adani will no longer open the big mine as it is too costly at the moment, so the jobs figure will be smaller. So we should not keep telling everyone this will come anywhere near solving Northern Queensland’s unemployment problem. This seems false rhetoric designed to persuade people that the mine should go ahead, and profits should be made and taken elsewhere.

Mining jobs make up less of the workforce than retail jobs, accommodation and food, and far less than the arts. But of course people in the arts don’t count.

Mining jobs have traditionally been well paid so miners are naturally attached to them, but this small number of jobs in Queensland is probably not going to maintain a field of high paying jobs, and it is a trivial number of well paid jobs given the risks….

Mining jobs are also becoming increasingly automated, so it may be that even fewer extra jobs will be created – although this will probably be blamed on Green politicians, rather than on mining company automation.

All of this suggests that coal mines do not benefit the country in any significant way, but they do endanger it for profit.

Tags:Disinformation, economics, technology
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The Difference between libertarianism and fascism

April 24, 2019

The way it seems to work is like this:

A whole lot of business suited guys are holding a person to down and stealing their money. They are also pouring poison on them, maybe gassing them, and taking their land and freedom away. Often they appear to miss and destroy the ground everyone is standing or lying on, but that is part of the fun. Eventually, the suits get a bit bored and they hire a few politicians and think-tank people to do the work for them – as long as they get most of the money and the pleasure of doing the poisoning themselves.

Maybe the person being robbed and poisoned stands up and says “I’m going to sue you guys”, but the person finds out that the suits buy all the best lawyers and they got the politicians to write the laws they wanted, because they can. In pure Capitalistland you get the justice you can afford.

Finally, the person is coughing blood and a group of libertarians comes up and kicks them down again, yelling in perfect unison that: “The rich are better than you. Everyone can do what they want. The only reason you aren’t doing the kicking, thieving and poisoning is because you don’t work hard enough and the market is not free enough. Be grateful. If you give the market what it wants then you will benefit. Give business even more power and you will be free! If you don’t benefit, its all your own fault. Everything you suffer now is the fault of the State!”

The person being beaten up must be stopped from allying with anyone in the same position so as to defend themselves or assert their liberty from suits. And they must be stopped from objecting to the violence in the system and the destruction of the world around them.

Libertarians seem to exist to support the authority and hierarchy of wealth (and hereditary wealth at that), while pretending this hierarchy and power is entirely voluntary. They appear to be prepared to temporarily ally with anyone who wholeheartly supports this hierarchy, and attack anyone who does not. This is why they appear more comfortable supporting Republican authoritarianism or Christian totalitarianism than they are in supporting social democracy, even when the social democracy movement is attacking the power of the state to dictate people’s lives.

Indeed, democracy seems a bad word for them, as it might impact negatively on the ‘natural’ plutocracy. The people might decide they are as worthy as the rich, and don’t want to be ruled by the rich, and this form of evil ‘majoritarianism’ has to be stopped. They also seem to oppose any action which would weaken gender and race hierarchies, by pretending that this would disappear when capitalists had full control. Any other action is, in their minds, an attempt to compel the already dominant to accept equality, which cannot be allowed.

However, Libertarians can be distinguished from fascists as they probably would not support attempts to make these hierarchies more rigid in themselves, to the extent they are not based on wealth. Libertarians also would probably not support the fascist State when it tried to curtail the power of the rich and the market. Indeed it often appears they cannot tell the difference between social democracy and fascism for that reason.

The difference between real anarchists and libertarians is that anarchists realise all capitalism is crony capitalism, all capitalism both requires and sets up a state to protect capitalist power and property, and all capitalism leads to plutocracy and destruction.

Tags:economics, free markets
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Clive Palmer and the Australian Election

April 23, 2019

In Australia, we are in the middle of a Federal Election at the moment. It should be the case that the current Coalition government gets voted out, but they have the support of the Murdoch Empire and most of the media, despite their amazing incompetence, forceful suggestions of corruption and total disinterest in facing the problems of climate change.

We also have a variety of odd politicians competing. One of whom, is Clive Palmer a mining magnate, who has spent a lot of time in court…. It has been alleged that Mr. Palmer has budgeted $80 million for his parliamentary campaign, based on being Australia’s Donald Trump. This budget is plausible given that it is more or less impossible to avoid his adverts on the road, in the paper and on youtube, and has been for months.

The big questions we should be asking are: “Why is Clive Palmer spending all this money to get elected?” and “What’s in it for him?”

A plausible answer is that he is probably trying to get the huge Alpha North coalmine going in the Galilee basin near the proposed Adani Carmichael mine. Alpha North is as big as the Carmichael mine, and the Carmichael mine will probably destroy the Great Artesian Basin which inland Australia depends upon for its water. Two such mines make this almost a certainty. Adani has already been promised unlimited water access.

If Adani can get up, then his mine should be approved (after all he has the advantage of being ‘Australian!’), and he gets the rail line he needs which will have been built for the Adani mine to work.

If Adani is rejected, then he can still agitate for the money and infrastructure to get his mine going.

He apparently wants the coal mine to support a massive coal fired power station which he also wants to build in Queensland. This is despite Queensland already having more energy than it knows what to do with, but it would lock Australia into coal.

He can also probably challenge any attempts to get decent royalties out of mining companies, or to tax mining companies at a reasonable (non-zero) rate.

This is especially the case if his party holds balance of power in the Senate which is quite likely.

If any of this is true, the massive investment in his party has been worthwhile for him.

Tags:Disinformation, economics, technology
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President Trump on Energy

March 29, 2019

This is a commentary on Donald Trump speaking about Energy Policy from a speech to raise funds for Republicans in New York August 13, 2018.

While this speech is not about Energy Policy, it contains points he repeats elsewhere and is as complete a presentation of his views as I have seen.

You know, uh considering the fact that we have the highest taxes in the nation in New York, and we should have no taxes if Andrew Cuomo, if he took over and if he — think of it — if they would have allowed a little bit of fracking and taken some of the richness out of the land, which by the way is being sucked away by other states. You know, they don’t have state lines underground. You know what that means? That means it just goes down, down, down.

Gas does not always flow everywhere in fracking fields. This is why you have so many short lived drilling points.

However by fracking and blowing up the geological barriers you can get gas leaking into the water table and making water poisonous. You can also get gas leaking into the air. With Gas you also get large leaks through ancient pipes, particularly in big cities. Gas is heavily polluting, breathing methane is not pleasant and it adds to global warming.

We don’t get it. You look at what’s happened in Pennsylvania with the money they’ve taken in, you look at what happened in Ohio with the money they’ve taken in. They’re fracking, they’re drilling a little bit, they’re creating jobs, and this place, it’s just so sad to see it.

Would fracking in New York really create a significant number of jobs in New York, given New York’s population? I’d doubt it. But he never gives any figures, so who knows.

You look at what’s happened in Pennsylvania with the money they’ve taken in, you look at what happened in Ohio with the money they’ve taken in….. Because stuff flows — do you understand that? It flows, and they probably have those little turns, you know, they make the turns at the border. It goes like this, right? And all of a sudden someday you’re not going to have that underground maybe so much

If gas under New York Flowed to Pennsylvania and Ohio, then taking the gas out in New York would diminish the benefits and jobs produced by the gas in Pennsylvania and Ohio. So he is effectively suggesting that New York get rich at their expense.

This could have been Boom Town USA.

Ok New York has no business, and never booms? An odd view perhaps.

We got ANWR, one of the largest fields in the history in anywhere in the world. One of the great, one of the great energy fields anywhere in the world. That’s in Alaska. They’ve been trying to get that long before Ronald Reagan.
Nobody could get it approved. We got it approved. That’s going to be one of the great energy [Inaudible].

Yes you do have access to the Artic National Wildlife Refuge – largely because of climate change (which is good for you), but with oil drilling, spills and flares, construction and transport, you will not keep it as a wildlife refuge. This may not be a problem to neoliberals. So lets not push it. Trump has been trying to overturn National Monument protection to allowing mining and drilling. This is more of the same. Profit not wildlife.

We approved the Keystone and the Dakota-access pipelines in just about Week 1. They were dead. They were dead. I had dinner the other night with one of the gentleman involved in the Dakota access. He said, “Sir, we were dead.” — I never met him — “We were dead. It was not going to happen.”
Now it’s open. Tremendous numbers of jobs were produced in building it and everything else. We got it started. Likewise Keystone. I think it’s gonna be a total of 48, 000 jobs during construction and also environmentally better than the alternatives.

Stages 1-3 of the pipeline were completed before Trump became President. Stage 4 (the Keystone), which he gave the go-ahead to, is not yet completed or open. Yes people were protesting against the pipes, because they risked despoliation of water supplies and land, and they are now going ahead. Profit before people and land. The job figures appear to be fantasy, but I’m open to correction. And what is better about oil covered land?

We have clean coal — exports have increased, 60% last year — clean coal, which is one of our big assets that we weren’t allowed to use for our miners. You remember Hillary with the coal, right, sitting with the miners at the table? Remember? That wasn’t so good for her. So the people of West Virginia and all over, you look at Wyoming, you look at so many different places where they just, Pennsylvania, where they loved what we did, and it’s clean coal and we have the most modern procedures.

We don’t have clean coal. Clean coal is largely an expensive fantasy. Burning coal can be more, or less, polluting but it is not clean. Let’s be clear; coal is poisonous. Mining it damages water tables and can give people lung diseases. Burning it produces greenhouse gases and poisons. The ash which remains holds heavy metals and is poisonous; Trump’s EPA now allows the ash to be dumped in streams.

Four months after this statement, Trump’s EPA would abolish or modify Obama’s requirement for low emissions and Carbon Capture, so his point about coal being clean is largely irrelevant due to his own policies.

But it’s a tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way — think of it — coal is indestructible.
You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the windmills, [mimics windmill noise, mimes shooting gun] Bing! That’s the end of that one.

Coal actually works as an energy source because it is easily destructible. Burning coal destroys that coal. Sun and Wind are not destroyed by using them for energy – this is what is usually meant by “renewable”.

However, even if Trump really means coal infrastructure is more resistant than wind to attack or disaster, you still have a problem. Coal mines and power stations can be bombed or set alight. It is hard to put out fires in coal mines. Cables and grids can be cut or hacked. Coal power can collapse with high temperatures as we learn in Australia regularly. Because wind and solar are more widely distributed, and less concentrated in a small place, they are probably more resistant to attack.

If the birds don’t kill it [the wind farm] first. The birds could kill it first.

It is nice to see the President concerned about birds, but does anyone know of him ever expressing any concern about wildlife in any other situation? See the point about the Artic National Wildlife Refuge above. As far as I know, birds have never taken down a modern windmill.

And you know, don’t worry about wind, when the wind doesn’t blow, I said, “What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?” Well, then we have a problem. OK good. They were putting them in areas where they didn’t have much wind, too.

Strangely energy companies seemed not to be too worried about this problem. But if people were putting windmills in areas without much wind, it was probably because of a bad subsidy – say one that rewarded them for numbers installed rather than power generated.

And it’s a subsidiary [sic] — you need subsidy for windmills. You need subsidy. Who wants to have energy where you need subsidy? So, uh, the coal is doing great.

There are indeed subsidies for Wind power. However Trump is forcing people to buy coal power to keep coal power running, because of supposed security concerns. This is effectively a subsidy reflected in higher prices for consumers. Coal usually receives tax concessions, and exemption from its pollution costs, so coal is subsidised already.

American oil production recently reached an all-time high in our history and it’s going higher. We’re now the No. 1 in the world in that category. We’re No. 1 and there are, nobody ever thought they’d see that, but we opened it up in a very environmentally friendly way.

People who live in fracking fields may dispute how environmentally friendly this gas is: that is, if they did not have to sign confidentiality agreements.

Withdrew the United States from the job-killing Paris climate accord. That was another beauty. That was a beauty.

Exiting the Paris accord is probably not beautiful. Along with his removal of waste and pollution controls on corporations, it is going to harm the American people and the world. It also indicates to anyone that Trump cannot be relied upon to keep promises and treaties entered into by the USA, thus lowering US presence in the world, and boosting that of China.

Trump may be seduced by corporate profit as a good thing. But he also seems to be seduced by a narrative which states that coal is a source of power, progress and stability. But Coal is no longer any of these things, as explained above and elsewhere. New coal power is also extremely expensive to build, which is why pro-coal and pro-free market governments are talking about subsidies and compulsions to buy coal power. Nobody wants to build it without such subsidies. Left to itself and the market, coal is dead. But it won’t be left to itself.

Tags:Disinformation, economics, Energy, narrative
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Neoliberalism is capitalism II

March 27, 2019

If you are a pro-neoliberal capitalist political party, then clearly it is a good thing to accept money from wealthy corporations and people, as wealth marks virtue. You are doing good by accepting money from good people, and working to implement their good ideas. Everyone will benefit.

It is logical to assume that organisations which largely represent non-wealthy people (like unions) are evil. They should be attacked because they are inherently evil to begin with and are probably envious of your virtue (like Satan). Any activity which opposes the virtue of wealth should be opposed and stopped. Any media which suggests that wealthy people are not virtuous is clearly immoral and ignorant. It should be shut down, or someone worthy like Mr. Murdoch should be encouraged to take it over. Free Speech means agreeing with neoliberalism or its culture war positions, everything else is blasphemy.

Wealthy people drive the economy and create jobs, this is good. The fact that most people cannot be self-supporting without a job is the fault of those people themselves. If they were virtuous they would not need jobs. Jobs are a gift from their superiors.

If people object to this position, neoliberals can proudly say “The profits of industries are owned by the people as shareholders and as members of pension funds. Everybody benefits from the set up.”

Neoliberals can ignore the obvious problem that most people do not own many shares as such people can’t afford to risk it, and ordinary people have little to no control at all over what their pension fund does with their money, how it is distributed, and what it supports. But these ordinary people are ignorant of what is good to begin with. That most of the benefit of share-holding goes to relatively wealthy people is good. It is crazy to even suggest that wealth creation is driven by everyone who participates in the society including workers in unions and people who work without pay.

Some companies can create wealth by destroying wealth and amenities for others, or through dumping pollution of production upon people, and this is right because if the people being dumped on were virtuous they would have the money to oppose the dumping in court. Developers, miners, roadbuilders are reasonable examples of such destructive companies. It is particularly good for such companies to be associated with a party which might attain government. The government can then support those company’s dispossession of others or general destruction. That the government can be seen to lose its position of neutrality and of governing for us all is irrelevant as the government is governing for the best people, and as most people can be distracted through culture wars and be persuaded to vote for racist or local issue groups which will support neoliberalism and established power in the long run.

That the tax laws enable wealthy people to avoid tax is good design, and that corporations take the money they earn inside a country, from exploiting its minerals or soil, outside that country is also good as neoliberals don’t want to support the lazy and bad ordinary people.

This is what neoliberals mean by free market. Regulation of markets and life to benefit those who are already wealthy and good, and prevent others from protesting or prevent the subsidizing of those who are poor and evil.

The whole system is backed by God, and one of the problems in modern society is the decline of that belief. Morality is in crisis and we need to attack someone to prove our virtue and make our way to the promised land.

Tags:Disinformation, economics, free markets
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Neoliberalism is capitalism I

March 27, 2019

Neoliberal assumptions and policies are pretty simple.

1) Wealth is good. If you were any good you would be wealthy.

2) Ordinary people are clearly bad, bludgers or ‘leaners’ on the wealthy, and should be punished or subject to market discipline. This might get them to work hard and be useful. The aim is for them to have as little leisure or support as possible. This has the added bonus that they are less likely to have time or energy to protest.

3) Established wealthy corporations and executives are wonderful and should be protected from the market and given help to become even more wealthy, because all good comes from them. Without them we are nothing.

4) Because wealth is good, corporate power and domination must be increased, so that these good people get every opportunity for further success.

5) Ordinary people would not probably like these policies if they knew of them (after all ordinary people are bad), so we should find a preferably powerless enemy such as refugees, religious minorities, sexual minorities, university professors, ‘cultural marxists’ etc. and attack them to distract people from our real policies. Culture wars rule!