Friday's interesting reads - 6/13/08

Sorry no posts yesterday. Busy.

"Drilling in ANWR: What's Not to Like?" by Mark Perry on Seeking Alpha:

"From ANWR.org:

'The U.S. economy benefits from domestic production when new construction, service, manufacturing, and engineering jobs are created. These jobs occur in all 50 states. A national impact study by Wharton Econometrics estimates total employment at full production in ANWR to be 735,000 jobs. Federal revenues would be enhanced by billions of dollars from bonus bids, lease rentals, royalties and taxes.'

And these jobs would be created across the country, not just in Alaska. To see the number of jobs created by state, go here. And that's just for ANWR, and doesn't count the new jobs from oil production in the OCS.

Aside from possible environmental concerns about developing America's 140 billion barrels of domestic oil reserves, what's not to like? We'd get lower oil and gas prices, more jobs and increased tax revenues. Seems like those outcomes should be welcomed by politicians of any party. And they'd even likely get the support of union members."

After reading some of the comments, I posted this comment:

"a few points...

why do we keep talking about our "addiction to oil"? as far as i can tell, using the same logic, i'm addicted to all kinds of things: air, milk and bread, concrete and steel (looking out my office window at several buildings 30 stories +), etc. rather, I choose to use oil b/c its cheap.

as far as the effect of drilling on the environment? first of all, we shown that with recent technology, the impact is minimal. second, we effect the environment every time we turn around. so what? so do animals. so does falling water. as far as science tells us, dinosaurs died by some crazy natural phenomenon. beavers build dams - cute; humans build dams - disgusting. why are humans less natural than anything else?

so what if we run out of oil? as we run out, the price of oil will skyrocket. that, and that alone, is all the incentive we need to go to other options. the more expensive oil is, the better other option will be. so why, in the meantime, should we limit the use of our resources? we can see what hoarding of food has done for other countries. we don't need artificially higher priced energy.

as for who benefits when we drill for oil in anwr? how about tax payers? the oil companies don't own the land right now. the land will be leased. and maybe we charge by the barrel for extraction. any money the treasury receives from selling the rights to extract is less money taxpayers will have to pay. (that of course assumes you think government will lower taxes; i personally think they'll simply spend more.)

why so we need some kind of "race to the moon" type government-funded program? why are we as a society better off because we went to the moon? no one lives there. no one's close to living there. we don't vacation there. the government decided we needed to go there, so we spent a lot of money doing it. i'm sure there was some rocket or satellite technologies that were discovered in the process, but was it worth the cost? i'm skeptical that it was. i can't think of many (any?) technological directions the government has chosen for us that have been better at the process than the market.

and to make a short list of our future energy sources and say "that's it" is ludicrous and shortsighted. how in the world can any of us predict the direction of energy? we can't predict what the market will do next week. energy innovation in 20 yrs? forget about it. didn't you see "back to the future"? using banana peels and beer cans was imaginary, but you can count on innovation. which speaks to one persons comments about t. boone pickens thoughts about the efficiency of wind. my belief is that you can't base the efficiency of an energy source right now on someone's investment. he's betting, just like al gore and others, that we will either 1) be mandated by government to use at energy (you don't think they aren't funding the green lobby, do you?) or 2) seriously run out of other energy sources at which time the relative efficiency of these energy sources will increase dramatically."

"Fly the unfettered skies" on Free Exchange:

"And so ex-American Airlines official Bob Crandall argues that:

'Collectively, airlines have lost over $13 billion since deregulation, and that's after you throw all the profitable years into the mix. Carriers are cutting routes fast, but with low-fare competitors still growing, so far they haven't been able to raise fares enough to cover costs. We've seen 24 airlines go under or go bankrupt in the past six months alone...Re-regulation would suck. But the alternative could be just as bad.'

Felix Salmon asks, bad for whom?

'If lots of airlines go bankrupt, fine. It's not going to stop them flying, most of the time. And if they do stop flying, that's fine too. If you want to look at the effect of deregulation, don't look at profits, look at passengers. Passenger miles on airplanes in the US have been steadily increasing since deregulation, and continue to increase despite all those industry losses...
If the legacy carriers become a thing of the past, that might well be bad for Bob Crandall's net worth. But the rest of us won't mind too much: we'll just go the way of the Europeans, and fly other airlines instead.'"

"Political Brouhaha" by Brandon Arnold with Cato:

"InBev, a giant Belgian beer conglomerate, has made a bid to purchase Anheuser-Busch...

Anheuser-Busch is of course, headquartered in St. Louis. So it should come as no surprise that Missouri politicians have sprung into action to block the deal.

Senator Claire McCaskill is “nervous” and “upset” and plans on contacting the board of director’s at Anheuser-Busch to urge them to stop the deal. Governor Matt Blunt finds the deal “deeply troubling” and is frantically searching for a state law that would allow him to intervene.

This is yet another case of government officials trying to meddle in the free market to protect parochial interests. Thankfully, early indications suggest that despite the pleadings of Missouri’s elected officials, the federal government will not intervene in the possible deal."

This is really no different from the talk down here in Georgia from our senators about how they would oppose any deal between Delta and Northwest that didn't remain headquartered in Atlanta and keep the Delta name.