Superflous Interventionism October 4, 2005
Posted by Resident Egoist in : Uncategorized , comments closedThe Washington Post has an interesting set of articles today. The first one goes:
The Bush administration yesterday launched a campaign to urge Americans to conserve energy in homes and businesses as a way to combat high costs this winter.
Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said at a news conference that consumers could take basic steps to reduce energy consumption and lower costs, including driving 55 miles per hour instead of 65, insulating their houses and keeping their thermostats set at a lower temperature when they are away this winter.
And now observe the second article:
Sales of Detroit trucks stalled in September as spiking gas prices sped up a consumer shift toward more fuel-efficient vehicles.
In the first look at sales since Hurricane Katrina drove gasoline pump prices to $3 a gallon and beyond, sales of passenger cars grew last month while large, fuel-thirsty sport-utility vehicles languished. Overall, industry sales in September slid 7.6 percent from a year ago.
General Motors Corp. reported a sales drop of 24 percent compared with the same month a year ago. Ford Motor Co.’s sales declined 20 percent. DaimlerChrysler Corp., the Detroit-based division of DaimlerChrysler AG, bucked the trend with a 4 percent gain in sales. The big Japanese automakers reported even stronger U.S. sales in September, with most posting increases of 10 to 12 percent, as consumers snapped up Japanese passenger cars and smaller trucks.
[...]
At Honda, sales of the Civic, one of the industry’s most popular small cars, grew 37 percent from a year ago. Honda reported a 25 percent sales increase in the gasoline-electric hybrid version of the Civic. Sales of the hybrid Toyota Prius nearly doubled, to 8,193 for the month.
Chrysler’s performance was helped by a 69 percent increase in sales of the Dodge Neon, a car that the automaker is phasing out and barely marketing. At GM, sales of the Chevrolet Malibu rose 25 percent while sales of the Korean-built Aveo subcompact car were up 25 percent.
At Ford, trucks and SUVs — the backbone of the company’s sales and profits — struggled through September. Sales of F-Series pickup trucks plunged 30 percent. Sales of Ford’s large SUVs, including the Ford Explorer and Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator, sank by more than 55 percent each. At GM, overall sales of trucks, minivans and SUVs dropped 30 percent. Truck, SUV and minivan sales also fell at Toyota and Honda, as well as at Chrysler.
Sacrilege! In light of rising fuel costs, people are buying more fuel efficient vehicles, i.e., “conserving” more energy … without even having been ordered to do so by the government!!! Zeus bless the price system.
I wonder what it is that statists confess the most when they meddle into economic affairs: their utter mistrust of the individual human being’s ability to know and choose what is in his best interest, or their own hopeless ignorance of the most basic laws of economic science?
If it is the former, then one has got to wonder further: how can this same populace that is considered by legislators to be incapable of acting in its own interest be trusted to choose the right legislator in the first place — a faith which politicians necessarily, and unquestionably grant during elections? Let that be a thought for another day.
Now, if you thought that our dear politicians and their beloved friends are going to take into account this fact that people are indeed capable of making their own economic decisions — to suit their own individual, particular lives — and opt to leave that freedom alone instead of imposing a new set of regulations, you are about to be brought back to reality:
Last month, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) offered a proposal to raise federal fuel-economy standards in cars and trucks by 3 percent a year in exchange for the federal government picking up the costs of retiree health care. Detroit automakers say the costs are a crippling burden in competition with foreign rivals.
Ford chairman and chief executive William Clay Ford Jr. sent a letter last month asking the Bush administration to convene a summit of automakers, suppliers and oil companies to find a solution to the nation’s energy woes. Mike Jackson, chairman and chief executive of AutoNation Inc., the nation’s largest publicly traded dealer group, is calling for a yearly increase of 10 cents per gallon in the gasoline tax over the next decade. Americans already pay an average of about 44 cents per gallon in combined local, state and federal taxes.
Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Science Committee, said the atmosphere on Capitol Hill for increasing vehicle fuel-efficiency standards is as good as it has been in years. He said he would try to tack a fuel-efficiency amendment onto energy legislation currently moving through Congress, possibly as early as this week. Even though similar efforts have failed in the past, he said Hurricane Katrina has changed the dynamic. Congressmen are hearing from the people back home, Boehlert said.
“Faxes are on overdrive,” he said. “Phones are ringing off the hook, and the mail is coming in by the ton on Capitol Hill: Do something about the high price of gasoline.”
Well, I did say it was hopeless — nearly everyone’s ignorance of legitimate economics, that is. For after a century of socialism and regulation, people still have not understood that the very fact that a certain action requires the initiation of physical force, necessarily makes that action economically unsound. Compulsory recycling is one such action.
One absolutely need not be forced to act in accordance with what one perceives to be in one’s own interest — as the above news article demonstrate. Of course, our modern Hegelian statists would have you believe exactly the contrary, i.e., that compulsion is the remedy of every ill. Alas, their job is made easier as now we have, not only the consumers, but [shortsighted] businessmen themselves calling for more regulation, protectionism and higher taxes — the very causes of the present problem.
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