Truck and Barter

Closer to Drilling in ANWR

Well, that was close: 51-49.

"This is more than a battle over the wildlife refuge," Mr. Kerry said in a statement. "It's a battle over two very different visions of our energy future. The president has a plan to sell off our public lands to the special interests that his own scientists and economists admit will not make us less dependent on foreign oil and will not lower prices at the pump."

Mr. Kerry is right. Oil is a special interest. So are the environmental groups. So? ANWR drilling will not make America more or less dependent on foreign oil, and will not raise or lower gasoline prices. But it will give a quite a load of money to Alaskans.

Of course, all these informative points are really, really besides the useful (political power) point, which is that it seems the oil interests have bought off enough politicos to actually make this happen.

I'd like to know how much of this rent seeking is social cost versus pure transfer to politicians...

AAFRP

Many nonprofit organizations have special chapters for children. But as far as I can tell, AARP doesn't. As flush with cash as they are, they could have websites, literature, and meetings for children grandchildren to teach them all about the benefits of pro-elderly activism.

But the parents of these children are likely to be younger and working; they are definitely not of one mind regarding the policies AARP would like to see enacted or maintained. In fact, the median view of this younger group is likely opposite to many policies AARP lobbies heavily for.

Of course, the AARP openly discriminates against the young--i.e. those who are younger than 50. They can be members, but only "associate members" who get no benefits, and only if they "support the association's goals and objectives", which in the libertarian view are evil..

How can one effectively oppose this goliath?

What if the 87.5% of the U.S. population not in AARP formed an association to further their own interests. This organization would discriminate against those older than 50--call it the American Association of Future Retired Persons, or AAFRP. It would profit and lobby like the AARP; it would solve shirking and collective action problems in the same way that AARP does, by jointly producing activism and selling personal services.

I'm not certain that another tremendously powerful lobbying organization--even one that opposes AARP--is something that would work out well in the long run. In particular, time would put an AAFRP at a clear disadvantage to AARP, since every member of AAFRP would eventually be eligible for AARP... Given the relative rise in the retiree/worker ratio, maybe a feeder organization is not such a good idea.

More Mankiw?

Scott Beaulier, guest blooging at Common Knowledge, writes that the administration should let Gregory Mankiw have a more prominent voice:

Mankiw's argument for outsourcing and his jobs projection became the leading news story on major television networks and the source of many attacks... when economic issues were in play during the election year, finding Mankiw was like trying to find Waldo.

Even though Mankiw's disappearance might have made political sense, he could end up being right on both points...

He's the best economist in the administration and the most ardent defender of globalization in the bunch. By being close to the mark on his jobs projections, perhaps he'll be allowed to talk about outsourcing again in the future.

In any event, now that the election is out of the way and Bush is seeking to use up some of his political capital, let's hope that he brings one of the more reasonable voices in the administration back into the mix on issues of economic policy and trade.

Brad DeLong seems to like the new non-arithmetically challenged Greg Mankiw too.

Still, it seems to me Mankiw can discuss outsourcing all he wants after the President asks him to resign. The rumor is that Mankiw is leaving next year because he wants to return to Harvard. However, M. is keeping mum...

Scott Peterson Gets Death

I do not like the death penalty, even when applied to men like this, because I believe in minimizing the power of government.

I do not want the government to have the right (legitimate power) to kill a citizen for even heinous crimes, because of the potential for its killing the wrong person accidentally, or the intentional use against political enemies. Given my ethical predisposition, I am sympathetic to arguments that the death penalty costs more than incarceration for life.

And as it currently imposed in various states, I think the death penalty does cost more than it saves--in purely financial terms. However, the economic arguments that "the death penalty" costs more than "life in prison" usually rest on several very specious assumptions--the most important being that if the total cost of the death penalty is greater than its total benefit, then the costs of any and every execution are greater than its benefits.

But this is not necessarily so. It is most certainly not true that the cost and benefit of each and every particular execution are the same; because of protracted legal battles, some executions are more costly than the average. And because some defendants are younger and healthier than others, executing them will have greater benefits in reduced lifetime prison costs.

Hence, there may be some subset of executions with low costs and high benefits--which could be termed economically advantageous executions.

However, the policy debate is usually considered a yes-no question--you're either for execution as a rule or you're against it. But the universe of policy choices--overarching rules--is much wider than that. In addition to "yes" and "no", one could support "extremely selective execution"--a raising of the legal and economic bar exteremely high so that only the most depraved and absolutely guilty qualify for execution.

I've written about this before (but I can't remember where or when), after I had read most of the major studies linked to by anti-death penalty advocates demonstrating that total costs > total benefits. However, Google has no record of these comments, and they seem to have disappeared forever into the electronic void...

Gramm

Robert Novak is reporting in his Sunday column that Phil Gramm may replace Snow at the Treasury should he depart. This can only be good news for free markets and limited government. Gramm is one of the few politicians that I don't dislike and think he would be a great addition to a White House that sometimes has strayed off the reservation. Of course, the cries of the most right-wing government in history will come up, but Gramm is a tough political fighter who may be able to best navigate through the "ownership society" agenda.

Update: Opinion Journal has more.