U.S. Oil Output Approaching Record Levels
In an article at IER, I discuss the once-fashionable “peak oil” theory, which treated a country or the world’s oil production as if it were just a giant well. The economics went out the window, and instead the analysis relied merely on the natural sciences.
Peak oil theory was popular for decades because it seemed to have correctly called the peak of U.S. output, in the early 1970s. But the last few years blew the theory out of the water:
The development of shale resources, and the proliferation of hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and horizontal drilling, has turned the U.S. back into an oil powerhouse.
I don’t think this story is getting nearly the attention it deserves. When I was growing up in the 1980s, I distinctly remember serious grownups telling me there was an energy crisis, and the U.S. had to wean itself from oil so as not to be dependent on those wily Arab nations. If someone had said the U.S. in 30 years would overtake Saudi Arabia to lead the world in oil production, he would have been laughed out of the room.
Part of the problem with massive State interventions in energy markets–in order to fend off some future catastrophe–is that the catastrophes keep not happening, even though the interventionists didn’t get nearly what they said was vital to avoid them.
On the California Water Restrictions
Here I went off on a “US Uncut” poster about it, and below is my video.
Bob Murphy on the Tatiana (Moroz) Show
I always blast these things out on Twitter and Facebook, but I can’t forget you guys! Starting at 9pm Eastern (Monday night)… Link here.
Potpourri
==> This John Oliver interview with Snowden is pretty good (though naughty words of course). But if you’re pressed for time, just watch starting at 12:15 to see how the U.S. media ranks priorities. Sounds like a parody.
==> All it took was a simple ballistics test to get this guy off death row. So naturally he was in prison for 28 years.
==> China lobbying US to incorporate yuan into IMF reserve assets.
==> Don’t think I linked this from here yet? Tom Woods talking about Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The part about conservatives running and crying to their mommies is hilarious. (BTW, in line with my earlier distinction, listen to this Neil Cavuto interview starting at 2:15. Obviously this lady should not be applying for a job as press secretary anytime soon, but it is totally false to be describing them as a pizza shop that wants to hang up a sign saying, “No gays.”)
==> While you’re at it, try Tom Woods interviewing Alex Tabarrok on private cities.
“Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”
Here’s one way of resolving the age-old question…
Understanding God
By His very nature, God is utterly beyond our comprehension. It is very dangerous to try to evaluate God’s actions from a human perspective. For example, recently on Facebook someone commented on my Wall (or whatever we call it nowadays) that the God of the Bible is a genocidal maniac who slaughters children.
Now I understand what would make a libertarian atheist say that to me. (For those who don’t know, I used to be what I called a “devout atheist” in college, and I planned on writing the best critique of the Bible to date, because I thought guys like Paine and Mencken hadn’t done a thorough enough job.) But it really makes no sense at all.
If the God of the Bible exists, then every moment of existence in the entire universe is a direct manifestation of His will. If He hadn’t flooded the world, for example, all of those people still would have died, either from being murdered by other humans or from accidents or from “natural causes.” No matter what, God would have killed these people, if you are going to say He killed them with the Flood.
Thus you’re reduced to saying that you hate God and think He’s a genocidal maniac, because He had the audacity to invent the idea of humans and not grant them immortality. It is literally complaining about being born.
The big problem with the atheist libertarian critique of Christianity is that it takes the actions of the God of the Israelites and imagines they are committed by a very powerful alien, or by a human with amazing technology. Yes, that guy would be a bad ruler.
But the God of the Israelites isn’t a human who has a lot of power. No, it’s more like an author who writes a novel and creates an entire universe in his mind, filling it with characters who live and die, sometimes horribly. Is the author a moral monster because he causes certain characters to do evil things to other characters? Of course not. This is true, even though if the author made a character in the novel become very powerful and start bossing other characters around, then the dominated characters would plausibly call him a tyrant.
Hmm, well how do we decide whether we think the God of the Israelites is good or evil? After all, it’s really hard to even begin to evaluate someone so beyond our nature.
Fortunately, He became a man and walked among us. If you want to dismiss the gospel accounts as fairy tales, fair enough. But to the extent that we analyze them at face value, there’s no doubt that Jesus was the greatest vessel of goodness humanity has ever produced.
Jesus wasn’t a “nice guy,” He was a good man. He showed compassion and gentleness to the powerless, but He had such stinging rebukes of the powerful that they ultimately had Him killed. And let’s not forget that He actually started flipping tables when He saw people turning the temple into a den of thieves.
So if you want to understand God’s character in a way to which we can relate as humans, look to Jesus. There should be no doubt that He is good and can be trusted.
The Distinction Between “Catering a Gay Wedding” and “Serving Gay People”
I really thought I wasn’t going to talk about this divisive issue anymore, because I realize at this point there is little to be gained. People on both sides have made up their minds.
And yet… I haven’t seen many people make this distinction. It is crucial to understanding what is going on here. Obviously if you are an agnostic then this may seem like a trivial detail, but it is crucial to understanding why the framing of this controversy is so lopsided.
There is a full-court press to frame the issue as, “Some Christian business owners want the legal right to not serve gay people.” I can understand when people at Salon take that tack, but I really lost all hope when even self-described libertarians like Penn Jillette don’t even take the time to understand the issue.
This CNN piece is classic.
Be careful to watch the actual questions posed to the people on camera, as opposed to the “summary” that the CNN guy gives after the fact. The florists in Georgia are never asked, “Would you refuse to sell flowers to someone you knew was gay?” No, the actual exchanges we see on tape always involve a hypothetical business opportunity to provide the flowers for a gay commitment ceremony (they don’t have gay marriage in Georgia). (UPDATE: In two of the interviews, we clearly hear that the question concerns a gay ceremony, while in the third we don’t hear the opening question.)
Admittedly, the woman who falls into the CNN guy’s trap was partly asking for it when she said “it’s a different kind of sin,” but strictly speaking his analogy was awful. In case you don’t click the link, he asked her if she would sell flowers to an adulterer, and she admitted she would.
But let’s think about that for a minute. Do customers actually walk into the florist–especially when the employees are smiley women with Southern drawls as in this CNN piece–and say, “Hey, I’m sleeping with my secretary, and I want to get her something nice. Let’s hope the old lady doesn’t find out, amirite?!”
Of course not. Likewise, suppose there were a national movement to change the divorce laws, so that infidelity could no longer be used in alimony or custody battles, because it reflected an outdated cultural prejudice in favor of monogamy. And then someone came into a Georgia florist shop and said, “My friends and I are having a party celebrating adultery. Can you provide the flowers for that ceremony?”
That would be closer to the hypothetical concerning gay marriage, for someone who is a Bible-believing Christian, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them didn’t want to work for such a client, in that political context.
In closing: I TOTALLY AGREE that many Christians who think homosexual behavior is a sin, for some reason artificially elevate it to a higher category. Indeed that’s what got that Georgia florist busted on the gotcha question by the CNN guy. (As I said on Facebook recently: If you’re a standard Christian, you think gay people are sinners who deserve hell. You also think straight people are sinners who deserve hell.) But this willful refusal to actually understand what is motivating these Christian business owners is annoying. If you want to accuse or mock them, fair enough, but at least accurately state their position.
Potpourri
==> I’ll be responding, but if you want to get a head start, Jerry Taylor at the Niskanen Center responded to my critique of his pro-carbon tax study.
==> Stephan Kinsella (in the comments here at Free Advice) posted a link to his article on self-ownership. I’m not sure how much of it I endorse, but it’s very interesting reading in any event. He takes the logic of “Does a mother own her child?” further than I’ve seen before.
==> A symposium on Bohm-Bawerk! What more could I ask for on Easter.
==> And now for something completely different: Avens O’Brien offers lonely libertarian men some tough love.
==> Paul Krugman often makes counterintuitive claims that are totally wrong. When it comes to air conditioning and the South, he made an intuitive claim that was totally wrong.
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