Environmentalists have been attempting to use the state’s coercion to keep others from purchasing SUVs. They believe in restricting resource usage to minimize ‘harm’ to the environment. To this end they have been trying to find ways to get people to stop using them and to choose more ‘environmentally friendly’ vehicles. Up to this point they have been largely unsuccessful.

Free markets just recently got into the business of reducing SUV usage:

Jorge Fernandez strolls across the used-car parking lot littered with dozens upon dozens of sport utility vehicles the size of small tugboats. SUVs like these are having a tough time selling with gas prices at all-time highs. With gas at $4 a gallon, many have sat there since last summer. “The cars are literally just sitting, and it doesn’t matter how much you sell them for,” Fernandez says of the SUVs and trucks nobody wants anymore.

The difference between environmental regulation and free markets? Free markets cast the automotive decision as a choice while the environmental angle casts the decision as a mandate. People prefer to choose then rather be told what to do. This is what is meant by the hubris of man. To control for the noise of SUV with the state requires forcing people to go against their biological tendencies to do what they want. State regulation forces abnormal biological functioning. Consequently, its impact is minimal while free markets, which are in tune with our biological system, can have a large impact in a short amount of time.

A recent story looks at current trends in pirating music and movies. I found this bit interesting:

Yet it has been difficult to quantify the damage supposedly wreaked by downloading. In mid-2007, economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee, from Harvard, and Koleman Strumpf, from the University of Kansas, published the results of their study analyzing the effect of file sharing on retail music sales in the U.S. They found no correlation between the two. “While downloads occur on a vast scale,” they wrote, “most users are likely individuals who in the absence of file sharing would not have bought the music they downloaded.”

Illya Somin makes some good observations about libertarianism:

Frank’s first fallacy is the assumption that libertarianism is about the “celebration” of the “profit motive.” In reality, libertarianism advocates the superiority of the private sector over government. Parts of that private sector are mainly driven by the profit motive, others are not (e.g. - families, many civil society organizations). There is nothing in libertarianism that is inconsistent with working in a “subsidized” organization so long as the subsidies don’t come from the state. On the other hand, many government programs are themselves driven by the profit motive: for example, government subsidies for large agribusinesses; protectionism for powerful domestic economic interests, and so on. Libertarians have no problem denouncing these programs despite the fact that they arise from the profit-seeking of their beneficiaries.

The second fallacy is the assumption that libertarians defend the interests of “business.” On some issues, that is indeed true. But it is not a general rule. There are many, many, businesses that lobby for and depend on government handouts of various sorts. Libertarians and libertarian organizations - including the “beltway libertarian” groups that Frank attacks in his piece - regularly criticize these businesses and the government programs that benefit them. Indeed, as I discussed in this post, libertarian groups have often had to distance themselves from business interests in order to be effective - precisely because the latter often have an interest in promoting big government.

Does evolution select for mortality of an organism? Is there adaptive value in organism dying off. What got me thinking about this is immortality. If mankind finds a way to become immortal does that open us up to some kind of weakness that mortality confers to organisms. One possible value in death is that it frees up resources for an upcoming generation as the older generation dies off. Effectively it provides resources to a superior organism.

Admittedly this opinion piece is bias but I think it does a fine job of showing just how miserable news coverage of this war has been.

To be fair to the quit-Iraq-and-save-the-terrorists media, they have covered a few recent stories from Iraq:

* When a rogue US soldier used a Koran for target practice, journalists pulled out all the stops to turn it into “Abu Ghraib, The Sequel.”

Unforgivably, the Army handled the situation well. The “atrocity” didn’t get the traction the whorespondents hoped for.

* When a battered, bleeding al Qaeda managed to set off a few bombs targeting Sunni Arabs who’d turned against terror, that, too, received delighted media play.

* As long as Baghdad-based journalists could hope that the joint US-Iraqi move into Sadr City would end disastrously, we were treated to a brief flurry of headlines.

* A few weeks back, we heard about another Iraqi company - 100 or so men - who declined to fight. The story was just delicious, as far as the media were concerned.

Then tragedy struck: As in Basra the month before, absent-without-leave (and hiding in Iran) Muqtada al Sadr quit under pressure from Iraqi and US troops. The missile and mortar attacks on the Green Zone stopped. There’s peace in the streets.

He goes on to say:

The surge worked. Incontestably. Iraqis grew disenchanted with extremism. Our military performed magnificently. More and more Iraqis have stepped up to fight for their own country. The Iraqi economy’s taking off. And, for all its faults, the Iraqi legislature has accomplished far more than our own lobbyist-run Congress over the last 18 months.

When Iraq seemed destined to become a huge American embarrassment, our media couldn’t get enough of it. Now that Iraq looks like a success in the making, there’s a virtual news blackout.

Of course, the front pages need copy. So you can read all you want about the heroic efforts of the Chinese People’s Army in the wake of the earthquake.

Tells you all you really need to know about our media: American soldiers bad, Red Chinese troops good.

Emphasis is mine.

Last night I was watching my favorite show Hell’s Kitchen on Hulu when an advertisement by the state played. It was a commercial telling me to put my seat belt on because its the law.

Let me get this straight. The state forcibly takes my money and then uses it to create moral segments, which it plays during my favorite show. Effectively, I’m paying to be moralized to. Its like giving money to the church expect for the giving part. Because when it comes to the state you are compelled to pay.

Hey I have an idea. Let me keep my money and since I’m a big boy, I will decide whether I should wear my belt or not. I honestly can’t believe some people think a massive federal government is the solution to people not wearing their belts. News Flash: Its not.

Some kindred spirits for Darwin.

You are welcome.

A picture of a hydrant I took here in Durham. You love it and you know it.

In The Know: Are Politicians Failing Our Lobbyists?

Mike McNally over at Pajamas Media delineates a position on global warming that I agree with. If you want to get a better understanding of my position I suggest you read it.

The past few months have not been good to the still-infant discipline of climate change alarmism — that strange amalgam of pseudo-science, crystal ball gazing, and mass hysteria that was formerly known as global warming alarmism until it became apparent a few years back that the globe had in fact stopped warming, and the alarmists decided that the term “climate change” was a more effective way of describing what the rest of us call “weather.”

For around a decade now — since around the time, coincidentally, that the warming stopped — the alarmists have had things pretty much their own way, dominating the debate with ever more dramatic predictions of impending doom as man-made CO2 emissions heat up the planet, and managing for the best part to keep a lid on dissent, thanks to an unlikely, and decidedly unholy, alliance of organizations and individuals with a vested interest in upping the fear factor.