The Case for Energy Optimism
Rob Bradley has a really good essay at EconLib this month. He leads off with this amusing quote:
“I’m sorry for you—coming to Texas [in 1915] to look for oil. Don’t you know there is no oil in Texas?!” —Wallace Pratt, Consultant.
Then he drops some facts on us:
Petroleum…is an example of an expanding “depletable” resource. The first estimate of proved crude oil reserves worldwide, made in 1944, was 51 billion barrels. Today, that number is 1.4 trillion barrels, and cumulative production in the last 66 years has been twenty times the original estimate. Natural gas and coal proved reserves have also increased several-fold despite decades of production. Reserves of tin, copper, iron ore, lead, and zinc were also higher in 2000 than in 1950, despite the fact that production in the half century in between substantially exceeded reserves in 1950.6 The story would be similar for other minerals, from bauxite to uranium.
If you want to see an eloquent explanation of the theoretical framework for the above, counterintuitive results, read Rob’s essay. (NOTE: Rob wrote his dissertation under Murray Rothbard, though Rob wasn’t at UNLV.)
In related news, the Institute for Energy Research (IER), which was founded by Rob Bradley, has recently come out with “Hard Facts.” It includes information (largely relying on the U.S. government’s own reports, for better or worse) such as (bullet points taken from Rob’s post at his own blog):
• In 2011, the United States produced 23.0 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the world’s largest natural gas producer.
• In 2011, the United States produced 5.67 million barrels of oil, making it the world’s third largest oil producer.
• Proved conventional oil reserves worldwide more than doubled from 642 billion barrels in 1980 to more than 1.3 trillion barrels in 2009.
• The United States is home to the richest oil shale deposits in the world—estimates are there are about 1 trillion barrels of recoverable oil in U.S. oil shale deposits, nearly four times that of Saudi Arabia’s proved oil reserves.
• The United States has 261 billion tons of coal in its proved coal reserves. These are the world’s largest coal reserves and over 27 percent of the world’s proved coal reserves.
• The United States has 486 billion tons of coal in its demonstrated reserve base, enough domestic coal to use for the next 485 years at current rates of consumption. These estimates do not include Alaska’s coal resources, which according to government estimates, are larger than those in the lower 48 states.
• The federal government leases less than 3 percent of federal lands for oil and natural gas production—2.2 percent of federal offshore areas and less than 5.4 percent of federal onshore lands.
Murphy vs. The Man
My Facebook “friends” already know about this, but for those who haven’t heard: Over the weekend I had to attend an 8-hour defensive driving course. Since moving to Nashville, I have accumulated too many “points” on my driving record, and this was my punishment (in addition to paying the tickets, which actually weren’t as expensive as I’d worried). I’d like to say my brush with law enforcement was due to my rebellious nature, but actually I got the tickets for things like:
* Going 42 in a 30, and not seeing a cop in somebody’s driveway.
* Sitting at a red light at 12:30am with no other cars in sight, and going through it because I really had to go potty, not noticing the cop with his lights off hanging out in a parking lot on the corner.
and
* Failing to move over to the left lane when driving at 38mph by a cop who was giving a ticket to someone else.
Anyway, I’m in a bad mood going to this thing, which started at 8am. (What a way to kill a perfectly good Saturday.) But I warmed up to the instructor who had a nice Tennessee drawl and said things like this in his opening remarks. Note, he wasn’t saying the following with any type of judgment; he was just letting us know that this is how it was, and we’d better understand it if we didn’t want to keep running afoul of the law:
“You have no right to privacy anymore [since 9/11].”
“Due process kinda went out the window.”
“If you see a car on the side of the road [in Nashville], trunk open and being stripped down, you know somebody tipped them off that somebody’s coming from Chattanooga that the police want. And if your car looks like that guy’s car, it’s your bad luck.”
“Take out your license. You see the DD number? That’s your Department of Defense number. It’s your national ID card. If you get stopped anywhere in the world, they can run that and in a few minutes know everything about you.”
“If there’s a lot of wrecks on this curve [referring to a dangerous stretch of road], rather than spending the money to fix it they’ll put up a $100 sign [warning dangerous curve ahead].”
“Who owns the most alcohol in the country? The U.S. Treasury.”–referring to some quirk in the production process of alcohol where it’s not the property of the distiller until the tax is paid.
He also said that the #1 cause of truancy in Tennessee is fast food restaurants, because they’ll call up teenage workers and say, “Hey, Jim called in sick, we need you to work the morning shift. Just call in sick to school.”
Thoughts on Hell: Regrets, I’ve Had a Few…
The two biggest objections I have been getting on my Sunday blog posts are along these lines:
(1) “Why would a good God let bad things happen?” and
(2) “Only a sadistic being would punish us for eternity just for not worshipping/believing in him.”
Today I want to concentrate on (2), although I imagine the full explanation of (2) would also solve (1) as well…
First, let me inform people that although there are plenty of places in the Bible where hell is depicted as a place of punishment and torment, there are also plenty of places where heaven is depicted as communion/fellowship with God, and thus hell is what happens to people who reject the invitation to enter heaven. For example, two weeks ago my pastor discussed Luke 14: 15-24, where Jesus is at a meal with the religious leaders:
The Parable of the Great Supper
15 Now when one of those who sat at the table with Him heard these things, he said to Him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
16 Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, 17 and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ 18 But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ 19 And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ 20 Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ 21 So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ 22 And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ 23 Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. 24 For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’”
Whether or not you agree with his reference, the pastor then pointed us back to Isaiah 25: 6-8 where the prophet writes:
6 And in this mountain
The Lord of hosts will make for all people
A feast of choice pieces,
A feast of wines on the lees,
Of fat things full of marrow,
Of well-refined wines on the lees.
7 And He will destroy on this mountain
The surface of the covering cast over all people,
And the veil that is spread over all nations.
8 He will swallow up death forever,
And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces;
The rebuke of His people
He will take away from all the earth;
For the Lord has spoken. [Bold added.]
Now when I say I have “faith in God,” I don’t mean, “I abandon my reason and embrace something illogical.” No, what I mean is that I admit I don’t understand His statements and His plan right now, but I trust in His goodness and I am certain that in the next life, when I have access to more information, then everything will make perfect sense and it will be crystal clear that He created the best of all possible worlds. It will be crystal clear why so many people died in World War II, and why little Suzie died of leukemia, even though she was the sweetest little kid you’ve ever met, etc. Also–the subject of this post–I think it will suddenly become crystal clear why Jesus told people that only through accepting Him could they be saved.
Let me give a stab at what that last “aha!” realization might be like. So to be clear, these are my own musings; this isn’t coming from the Bible. But what I’m trying to do here, is imagine what someone might experience who passes over to the afterlife, and then considers the statements of the Bible from that new perspective.
Suppose for the sake of argument then when you die, there is indeed an afterlife. You are still conscious. However, you suddenly have access to all of history; you can contemplate, in one fell swoop, every event in the universe, from the moment of its creation to its destruction.
Now, from that newfound perspective–which is so far beyond our current abilities that we can barely even talk about it, let alone really imagine what it would feel like–you become acutely aware of the ramifications of people’s free choices. There are obvious things, of course, like seeing the effect of Karl Marx putting his views down on paper, when history might have unfolded very differently if he had written commercial jingles instead.
But there’s more. You realize, to your absolute horror and astonishment, how much extra misery YOU brought into the world. Even if you thought you were a “good person,” the effects of your relative slips were that much more severe. You see that when you were in a bad mood one morning, and honked on your horn unnecessarily when a lady cut you off in traffic, that set in motion a chain of events that ultimately led to a bicyclist getting paralyzed 8 minutes later.
(Specifically: The lady who cut you off had been rushing to get her kid to school because they were late since she had forgotten to wash the kid’s uniform the night before. So she felt bad about that, and then you honking at her made her feel even more guilty. Then when the kid complained about something a few minutes later, she snapped at him. Now the lady felt really awful, and didn’t even look in her rear view mirror because she was so disgusted with the whole situation, and was waiting to calm down before saying something else to her kid. That’s why she didn’t notice another car–driven by a 23-year-old who was rushing to a job interview–in her blind spot. When she went to change lanes, the inexperienced driver swerved, and hit the bicyclist. None of this would have happened had you not honked your horn in anger at the lady.)
I imagine cynics will read something like the above and scoff. “Oh come on, if we start thinking like that, then everybody would be guilty of all sorts of terrible crimes…” Right, which is what Christian doctrine teaches. That’s precisely the point I’m making here.
Now in our world, people feel guilty about things they’ve done all the time. However, most of the time they can deal with it by focusing on other things, trying to make amends, or just drowning out the pain in drinking or other activities.
But what happens in the afterlife? What if there, there is nothing to do except exist and be intimately aware of how much suffering your own admittedly improper actions foisted on the world? Every time you did something that was wrong, even by your own moral code (which might differ from the code Billy Graham would have prescribed), it rippled out and was amplified by the similar transgressions of everybody else. You can’t help but obsess over how unimaginably beautiful and happy human society could have been, if you and everybody else hadn’t screwed it up so royally. You also see how much more joy and wisdom that virtuous acts brought into the mix, and you wish you had done more on that front, as well. The gap between how much of a “good person” you thought you were, versus what you did in practice, was bigger than you could possibly have imagined when you were alive. You are simply astounded at the depths of your ignorance when you were alive, and you can’t believe you walked around, feeling pretty content and justified in your actions.
I daresay that such a state affairs would be, quite literally, a living hell. And what specifically would be so awful about it? After all, it would be pretty neat to have such a keen knowledge of good and evil, wouldn’t it?
No, in that context, the knowledge of good and evil would be a death sentence. Your eternal existence would be one of inconceivable suffering and torment. You would want to forgive yourself, but you would lack the power to do. You literally would be unable to forgive yourself, and so you would persist in eternal suffering and damnation.
Unless… There would be one group of people who could escape from this torment. This particular group of people had lived just as evil lives as everybody else. The significant differences, though, are that this particular group had even while alive admitted they were miserable sinners. So that right there eased the agony in the afterlife, because at least they were now just filled in with the details about how they had hurt so many people through their failures. Yet more important, these people went further and had admitted that there was someone more powerful than they were, someone who did have the power to forgive them. And since they had subordinated their own will and desire to His, when He told them He forgave them, and that they were welcome to spend eternity in bliss with Him, they believed Him.
Unfortunately, for the others, they had decided that they would not subordinate their own will and control of their destinies to this man. They did not believe him. So even if he told them in the afterlife that all was forgiven, that they had the freedom to come join the banquet with everyone else, they wouldn’t feel right in doing so. They would prefer to remain in isolation, pondering their miserable predicament and cursing the universe for being unfair.
In closing, let me reiterate that the above are my own musings; this isn’t something that I got directly from the Bible. But suppose there is an afterlife, and to be in it feels something like the above. Would the doctrines of the Bible seem so silly or monstrous in that light? Wouldn’t Jesus’ sermons be a lot more intelligible, if He knew the above was coming, but had to convey it to a bunch of simpletons?
Rory Sutherland’s Ted Talk
If I told most Free Advice readers, “Hey, here’s a video of a British guy talking about psychology,” they’d be bored. But if I say, “Hey, here’s a guy who has an interesting accent and builds up to praising Ludwig von Mises,” then all of sudden they have to watch the whole thing. (Thanks to John J. for bringing this to my attention.)
P.S. Watch out, he drops an F-bomb early on.
Clarification on the Krugman Kampaign
Wow just when I’m sulking because Bob Wenzel is getting all the attention for his NY Fed talk, along comes a resurgence in interest in the Krugman Debate Challenge.
Daniel Kuehn really impressed me with this post. I think he must have felt bad that Krugman fans were zinging me at the Reddit blog. Here’s Daniel:
Way back when I said it wouldn’t be a very worthwhile debate. There was a lot of really bad Austrian commentary on Keynesianism at the time, I wasn’t familiar with Bob, and I hadn’t had the chance of stumbling on any discussion of Bob’s that made me think it would be an interesting debate.
My view on that has changed over the almost two years since I wrote that post. Bob is a sharp guy and a fair guy, and this would be a debate worth seeing. To press the issue, up-vote this comment on reddit, and share the link.
In a lot of ways Bob will have a big advantage – I think he’s probably more familiar with Krugman’s position than vice versa (something I am not willing to concede for a lot of major Austrians or Austrian-fellow-travelers that have made a big splash in various social media).
I think Krugman is right on almost all points, obviously. And the guy is not some pundit or partisan as many suggest. He’s a brilliant economist with a real talent for communicating what he knows.
So I’ll be rooting for Krugman – but this will be a good debate to see nonetheless.
Now here’s what I said in the comments:
Daniel, thanks a lot for this post. I am impressed that you said this, knowing that a lot of “your allies” are not my biggest fans at the moment. I am being serious, this was a brave post, as far as bravery and the blogosphere go. When the libertarians take over, and are going to string you up, I will plea for leniency.
Hey everybody: Just to clarify the genesis of the food bank campaign: A girl had emailed me and told me that she went to a Krugman book signing in a Barnes & Noble or some such place. In the Q&A, she raised her hand and said, “Dr. Krugman, why don’t you debate an Austrian economist?” (Maybe she was more specific about business cycle theory; I don’t remember.) She said that his public response was something like, “Well, I realize I will sound like an elitist for saying this, but the profession doesn’t take Austrian economic seriously. It was useful in its day, but that was before the Depression. There would be no point in me debating something that only non-professionals believe in.”
So he *publicly declared* that he wouldn’t debate an Austrian. Hence, I needed to come up with some angle. Thus the Food Bank campaign was borne…
Up till now, Krugman could have played the high-principle card, saying, “I’m not going to waste my time debating this punk Murphy, because to do so would lend legitimacy to his gold-bug views.” But oops, now he can’t say that, since he just admitted he debated Ron Paul to sell books.
Really, doesn’t this cause even the slightest bit of cognitive dissonance among Krugman’s fans? If Krugman wanted to have fun with it, and to make sure he wasn’t open to every Tom Dick and Harry, he could come out and say, “I’ll do it if Murphy’s fans donate $150,000 to the food bank, and another $150,000 to the Center for American Progress.” That would turn things around and he could say he wasn’t opposed to the debate in principle, but that his time was valuable blah blah blah.
Yet thus far he has just ignored it, when there is $72,000 already on the line. And that number would probably quadruple very quickly, if people actually thought it was going to happen. (I.e. a lot of people aren’t pledging their full reservation amounts, because they don’t think he would ever actually debate me.)
So again I ask: Doesn’t this cause just the slightest bit of weirdness among Krugman’s supporters? He should be able to destroy me, right? So why not do that, and pluck hundreds of thousands of dollars out of the hands of right-wing gold bug nutjobs? Krugman has a popular blog, and goes on TV to debate George Will and Ron Paul. It’s not like he’s “above” debating people he thinks are morons, right?
Note to Self: Bring Up These Posts When Krugman’s Fans (or the Man Himself) Explain the Refusal to Debate
If you are bored, go read Krugman’s fans’ complaints about the unethical libertarians, who had the audacity to tell their friends to vote for a question they wanted him to answer. I mean, it’s kind of like those dirty Ron Paul fans, who will vote in online polls and honestly report who their favorite candidate is. The nerve.
Anyway, this is mostly a note to myself for future reference: I imagine at some point I will find it very useful that Paul Krugman in two separate posts (here and here) admitted that he agreed to debate Ron Paul in order to sell books. He has totally painted himself into a corner.
(I imagine some readers are thinking, “Yeah sure Bob, like Krugman will ever ‘rue the day’ on this one. Get over yourself.” Good. I’m glad you think that. It will make it that much easier for me to take the world by storm.)
Turning on the Bat Signal! Alert! Krugmaniacs Report to Battle Stations!
OK kids, Dr. Paul Krugman is doing a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” live chat, right now (4:45 Eastern time). If you are so inclined, please up-vote this question where I ask him about my debate challenge. The more people who up-vote it, the higher it gets bumped in the queue, and he has to stare at it while fielding questions.
(Thanks to Matt Gilliland for helping with this stunt.)
Murphy with Mises Institute Canada’s Founder
Here’s Redmond Weissenberger, founder of the Mises Institute of Canada, interviewing me on his show:
We talk mostly about energy issues.
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