Historic "Records"
Dean
Outside the Beltway notes that today's "record" oil prices are hardly all-time highs. Once you adjust for inflation, oil today is nowhere near its historic highs. Megan McCardle notes that such spurious "records" are common in the news media.
Yup. It's also a favorite political game of both the Republicans and the Democrats, of both the left and the right--and they're often not even aware that they're doing it.
Failing to adjust for inflation is one of the easiest ways of making life look worse when it's actually getting better. Another is to fail to adjust for the increased real incomes and standards of living of most people. A common one there is those who rail about our "record" Federal deficits and our "record" national debt, but if you adjust for inflation and also adjust for population size, median income, and the size of the gross domestic product, it turns out our "record" deficits and our "record" national debt are in fact nowhere near their historic highs (they were at their highest when Harry Truman was President, if I recall correctly).
This points to another reason why the panic over "record" oil prices (pah!) are silly by the way: even if oil prices did reach truly record levels when adjusted for inflation, the fact is that the median family income today is significantly higher than it was 26 years ago. Which means we could support higher oil prices without our lifestyles being crimped near as much as they were in 1979 when oil prices were at their *true* record highs.
An interesting note, by the way: in 1979, when oil prices were at their highest, we also had Federal price controls on oil. With the stroke of a pen, President Reagan--in one of his very first actions as President--simply eliminated all such price controls on oil. The "energy crisis" promptly evaporated, although it took a couple of years before most people noticed.
Of course this also meant we gave up the idea of giving up dependence on foreign oil. Price controls, had they been kept in place, would have created further stimulus for alternative fuel sources. (Then again, maybe not: an industry dependent on price controls may in fact just grow more lazy.)
However, an argument can be made that if we set the price of gasoline artificially high--either through price controls or through taxes--we could provide incentive for development of alternative fuel sources. The problem is that most Americans don't want to face that full on: they'll overwhelmingly agree that they want the nation less dependent on foreign oil, but they'll yowl like mad if gas prices go up 25 or 50 cents a gallon. Indeed, they even talk about how they'll "boycott" gas stations if prices go up too much. Yet if they were willing to pay more at the pump, we could have all sorts of alternative fuels in the mix right now. Those alternatives are all just pricier than gasoline.
So what they really mean, even if they aren't saying it out loud, is that they want to see us develop CHEAP alternative fuels. And until the alternative fuels are cheap enough, they don't want to see any changes.
More of them ought to just admit they feel entitled to cheap energy. It would make a lot of discussions simpler and more straightforward.
To this extent, by the way, those who say we are engaged in a "war for oil" in places like Iraq are not mistaken. They're wrong if they believe that people in the White House are intentionally attempting to enrich themselves and their oil buddies--that's a crock--but they're right inasmuch as the US would have no strategic interest in the Middle East if it weren't for our market demand for cheap energy, brought on in part by our love affairs with our cars. If more of us were living in cities and taking mass transit, a lot of what we see now in world affairs would be radically different.
It is true that the people of the Middle East have been exploited. But it is their own political and religious leaders who are the exploiters.
There is no moral dilemma that attaches itself to wanting the cheapest possible source of energy. It is the free market working as it should that allows us to purchase relatively cheap energy.
In a modern society, the free flow of energy is as much a vital infrastructure as the highway system, or the plumbing system. These vital resources should be kept as cheap as humanly possible in order to allow the rest of the economy to function properly.
If and when the costs of oil (whether monitary or environmental) become high enough for alternative sources of energy to be feasible, then, and only then, will the market make room for those alternatives. In fact, the market will demand them.
Is there a justifiable reason for our government to subsidize research into alternative sources of energy? Sure. But does anyone really believe that artificially raising the price of fuel, like European countries already do through excessive taxation, is a desirable course of action? Only those who believe in the EUtopian vision.
I'll pass, thank you very much.
The Middle East was inhabited by a nomadic culture which in modern terms, was backward and mostly uncivlized. When oil was discovered there, we had to build the infrastructure to deliver it, and in the process enriched some nomadic sheiks who would otherwise have continued in their existing lifestyle. For many years, the essential culture of the Middle East was unaffected by these changes.
Insofar as contact with the Western world opened the eyes of Middle Easterners to the possibilities of modern technology, it affected their society. But they are only "victims" in the sense that we showed them the failure of their society by way of contrast to ours. They were free to continue in their "noble savage" existence.
In fact, it is this very comparison that so enrages so many Arabs today. Osama Bin Ladens first demand was that all contact be cut off between the Western World and the Middle East so that our culture and values would not taint the purity of their culture.
If exploiting the natural resources of the world for the advancement of society and overall mankind in spite of the ignorance of the indigenous peoples who occupy the land that contains the natural resources is victimization - then I suppose you are correct.
"You might surmise from the above comment that I am generally hostile to the myth of the "noble savage." You would be correct."
The style of that. Excellent. I, too, prefer to preach the nobility of our Western civilization. A propos the title of this post, we have set many records in science, medicine, exploration, literature, architecture, music.... The Ego in the Infinite....
The Bush administration certainly understood that world demand for oil was rising rapidly and that world production needed to be increased to meet that demand. Iraq has the second largest reserves in the world. The increased production that will come from the recently passed energy bill or drilling in the Alaskan wildlife refuge will be small compared to what could be achieved in Iraq. The problem was increased oil production in Iraq would require lifting the sanctions, and the Bush administration was strongly opposed to that. The Bush people knew, that when world demand for oil approached world production capacity, there would be intense pressure to lift the sanctions and the whole Iraq containment strategy would collapse. Therefore some people in the Bush administration were focused on overthrowing Saddam before that happened.
Furthermore, it is a fact, not an opinion, that for generations we ignored and sometimes even helped suppress calls for democratic reform in the region. We were of course not the only force doing so, nor the worst offenders, yet nevertheless it is so. This was mostly due the Cold War, for during that era we prized "stability" over human rights or democratic reform. We paid a price for that--one we may have had no real choice but to pay, but there it is.
The notion that non-Christians cannot handle freedom is simply Christian bigotry parading around as wisdom. Factually it's simply false--utterly false, irrefutably false, as numerous examples of free nations which are non-Christian attest. If you wish I will provide you with a list of several dozen such nations.
The fact is that there were and have been people in that region calling for democratic reform for for generations. Usually we ignored them, sometimes we outright opposed them. To now pretend that the whole problem is merely the Islamic religion or that their culture is innately backward is extraordinary hubris.
Then, look at the ethnic and religious breakdown of countries as described in the CIA World Factbook.
Assuming we can throw out the Catholic nations just on general principles, and also Israel (since some Christians in their hubris claim that THEIR values are consistent with Judaism but Islam isn't),
we'll just look at nations which are majority non-Christan. For example: Benin, India, Japan, Mongolia, Mali, Suriname, South Korea, and Taiwan, all ranked as among the most objectively free nations on Earth, and none of them ever even close to majority Christian, many of them considered backward barbarians less than a century ago (and some of them only decades ago). That's not even counting the many "partially free" nations which today are much freer than they were not long ago and are continuing to institute democratic reforms, such as Turkey, Niger, and Nigeria.
"Assuming we can throw out the Catholic nations just on general principles,"
Catholic nations are Christian nations which venerate Christ's Virgin Mother Mary as the Queen of Heaven.
"and also Israel (since some Christians in their hubris claim that THEIR values are consistent with Judaism but Islam isn't)"
It is unfortunate that, back in 1492, Christian nations persecuted the Jews while Muslims tolerated them. Today, it is Muslims who persecute the Jews while the United States of America (mostly Protestant but also largely Catholic) welcomes them.
Whittaker Chambers seems to have fallen into this camp. Mind you, I find much to admire in Chambers, but he seems to have been guilty of the same flawed thinking that has trapped all the dispensationalists of history: namely, their prediction of the twilight of civilization and the coming apocolypse never comes to pass. Chambers died certain in the knowledge that soon America would fall to the evil Communist influence, which he saw as Satan's hand... and was utterly wrong. We beat them, and without firing a shot. Without doubt, faith helped sustain Americans, but it was ultimately the oppressed people of the Soviet Union who said, "we just don't want this anymore." Not through mass conversion to Christ, but through mass conversion toward "I hate living this oppressed life."
There is a view among a certain group of latter-day American Christians that also trends toward saying that Catholics are not Christians, or even that Catholicism is incompatible with freedom and that only Protestantism leads to freedom. They ignore the many majority-Catholic nations which are free, but I suppose the thinking there must be that somehow the Protestantism "rubbed off" on all those free Catholic nations. But of course the freedom can't rub off on muslims, hindus, etc. because those are all inherently opressive religions--since they don't have Christ, they're all doomed to dwell forever in darkness, as are the poor unfortunate Jews but at least they'll have a chance to convert at the last minute before God throws the rest of us into the lake of fire.
Whatever.
What is strange to me about this thinking is the notion that in 2000 years of the history of the church, only American Protestants of certain denominations came to understand the concept of freedom, and only began applying it seriously in the late 18th century or so, and that wherever we find human freedom it's only because of those latter day special dispensationalist Christians.
What's weird about it is that this seems predicated on the notion that somehow this flavor of Christianity has led to all the good things we have in life now... and yet the same people at the same time will tell you our world is falling to pieces. Which is predicated on the notion that we are all eternally fallen until the second coming. So the world is a better place due to 18th century Protestantism, and as falls that Protestantism, so falls the free world.
Whatever. I don't buy a word of it. Freedom is a natural condition that all humans seek by instinct, regardless of their faith. Perfection isn't to be found on this Earth, but believing somehow that one quite recent and thoroughly American flavor of Christianity is the light of the world and all else is darkness is, well... sorry, I don't buy it. Maybe it's necessary to the theological worldview of some people, but it's not to mine.
W.R.T. to oil prices and deficits, I believe only the current account deficit is at an unprecedented level by historical standards. As for how the economy is doing, many scholars are puzzled and disagreeing. The share of labor in the upside of the recovery seems much smaller than that of capital - i.e. corporate profits are up much more than wages. There are opinion surveys that are similarly puzzling. People report that they themselves are doing well but they know people who aren't, and they are generally concerned.
I read Brad De Long's site, and Asymmetric Information and they are sometimes illuminating.
As to Whittaker Chambers, I have to say that I don't agree at all with what he said about Ayn Rand, but I do completely agree with what he said about Alger Hiss and with his fundamental dualism as he stated in his Witness: "God or Man, Soul or Mind, Freedom or Communism?" He predicted that the 20th century would be known either as "the century of the great social wars" [if the Communists won] or "the century of the great wars of faith" [if the West won]. He did say pessimistically "I know that I am going from the winning side to the losing side", but it was precisely because of men and women like him that that "losing side" eventually became "the winning side" under President Reagan. But we are still fighting "the great wars of faith".