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The Nationalization of Oil: How Likely? October 8, 2005

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Uncategorized , comments closed

So, in light of the recent continuous hike in gas and oil prices, someone had the nifty idea of polling Canadians on how they would like to see their federal government “nationalize” oil companies, and the oil ressources under Canadian soil. The results, though a bit pass?, are very interesting nonetheless — CANOE Money reports:

MONTREAL (CP) – Almost half of Canadians wanted to see petroleum resources and oil companies nationalized as fuel prices hit record levels, a new poll suggests.

The Leger Marketing telephone survey of 1,500 people was conducted between Aug. 24 and Aug. 31, the bulk being done before the devastating effects of hurricane Katrina were felt.

[...]

In the Leger poll, which was provided to The Canadian Press, 49 per cent of respondents wanted petroleum resources nationalized while 43 per cent said they would like to see the same fate for oil companies.

Quebecers were the strongest supporters of resource nationalization at 67 per cent, followed by residents of the Atlantic provinces at 53 per cent, Ontarians at 45 per cent and British Columbia at 42 per cent.

Forty per cent of respondents on the Prairies and 36 per cent of Albertans were in favour …

Quebec led in support for nationalization of oil companies, with 61 per cent in favour, followed by the Atlantic provinces (46 per cent) …

[...]

Seventy-six per cent of respondents indicated they would like the government to intervene after recent gas hikes preceeding Katrina. Fifty-four per cent suggested they would like the government to fix the pump price.

Twenty-six per cent of respondents blamed the oil companies for pre-Katrina price spikes followed by 18 per cent pointing the finger at oil-producing countries.

Interesting, is it not? Half the Canadian population is effectively made of bloody-socialists! I wonder how many such Americans exist …

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Superflous Interventionism October 4, 2005

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Uncategorized , comments closed

The 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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Tolerance: The Islamist FasCion October 3, 2005

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Uncategorized , comments closed

Heed this:

NOVELTY pig calendars and toys have been banned from a council office [in Great Britain] ? in case they offend Muslim staff.

Workers in the benefits department at Dudley Council, West Midlands, were told to remove or cover up all pig-related items, including toys, porcelain figures, calendars and even a tissue box featuring Winnie the Pooh and Piglet.

Bosses acted after a Muslim complained about pig-shaped stress relievers delivered to the council in the run-up to the Islamic festival of Ramadan.

Muslims are barred from eating pork in the Koran and consider pigs unclean.

Councillor Mahbubur Rahman, a practising Muslim, backed the ban. He said: ?It?s a tolerance of people?s beliefs.?

[Hat Tip: Cox and Forkum.]

Yes, “tolerance” indeed — although that seems to mean Western self-abasement for islamist whim-satisfaction; i.e., tolerance of muslim beliefs does not mean pluralism of the “live and let live” kind; it means intolerance of Western values.

Keep it up with the dhimmitude Britons, as it seems the events of July 7th have taught you nothing. And while you’re at it, you should mandate the wearing of burqas for all British women, and proceed with the institution of Islam as the official state-religion — after all, uncovered women and “infidels,” too, are offensive to Islamists. Why not take the self-flagellation to its logical consequences?

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Cow-made Global Warming October 2, 2005

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Ecology , comments closed

Yep! It’s official now: global warming is no longer solely Man-made; it is cow-made, too!!

Agence France Press reports:

The world may not end with a bang or even a whimper — just a burp.

This is the worrying scenario sketched by a French expert, who has discovered that the world’s cattle are huge contributors to global warming because of the methane emitted by

But, according to a researcher at the Climate Mission at the Caisse des Depots, a French state-owned bank, farm animals must also shoulder some of the blame.

France’s 20 million cows account for an astonishing 6.5 percent of national greenhouse-gas emissions, according to his estimates.

Each year, their belches send 26 million tonnes of these gases into the atmosphere.

Their faeces — “dejection bovine,” to use the poetic-sounding French phrase — account for another 12 million tonnes.

Compare that with the 12 million tonnes of gas emitted by French oil refineries, demonised by greenies as climate-killers.

Nor is bovine gas just any old gas.

It comprises methane and nitrous oxide, which volume-for-volume are 21 and 310 times more effective at trapping solar heat respectively than boring CO2.

By itself, methane is to blame for a fifth of the man-made greenhouse effect of the past 200 years.

So, when do you think Greens are going to call for the total extermination of cows in order to comply with the projected goals of the Kyoto Protocol? I for one do not think that this is too-far-fetched of an idea. If cows cause just as much [or even more] “global warming” as cars by the spewing of those develish, “satanic gases,” why not call for their extermination just as the “extermination” of cars is called for?

But then we might run into problem with the animal worshipers — who are often embodied in the same person as your usual green. So I propose a compromise: lets us force cow manufacturers — from now on — to manufacture only hybrid cows. After all, we can’t have our planet — our sole and fragile planet — be sent to oblivion by cows.

P.S: When are they going to pull the estimates on how much human breathing contributes to “global warming” anyway? We do exhale CO2, you know — and that is the main stanic gas. With a global population of 7 billion — and counting — that has got be a lot of CO2. I think the salvation of the planet might require the extermination of the human species itself. But then again … we can always manufacture hybrid humans.

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New Objectivist Magazines October 2, 2005

Posted by Resident Egoist in : Philosophy , comments closed

At Noodlefood, Don Watkins just announced the inauguration of Axiomatic magazine — his new “forum for Objectivists who want to write about Objectivism for other Objectivists.”

This first issue will include

[a]n analysis of the relationship between risk and values (?The Value of Risk? by Don Watkins); a new perspective on Albert Einstein and his role in the development of quantum theory (?Einstein?s Contributions to Quantum Theory? by Travis Norsen); a look at what it means to say Ayn Rand created a scientific ethics (?The Last Gasp for The God of the Gaps? by Greg Perkins); and a fascinating interview with Andrew Bernstein, author of the recently published book, The Capitalist Manifesto.

Another Objectivist publishing platform that is soon to come to life, is The Objective Standard — which is

[a] quarterly journal of culture and politics written from the perspective that man?s life on earth is the proper standard of morality [and] provides a rational, principled alternative to the ideas of both liberalism and conservatism …

Contributing writers [will] include Craig Biddle, Yaron Brook, Alex Epstein, Elan Journo, John Lewis, Keith Lockitch, Larry Salzman, and Lisa VanDamme.

[Hat Tip to the Armchair Intellectual.]

The first issue of The Objective Standard is scheduled to come out in Spring of 2006.

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