“The standard reflex on the left when confronted with an economic question is to change the topic. Consider, for example, the economic argument against paper recycling. People say that recycling is a way of "saving trees," yet, in practice, it has exactly the opposite effect. Why are there so many cows in the world? Because people eat cows. Not only that, but the number of cows in the world is a precise function of the number that are eaten. If people decided to eat less beef, there would be fewer cows.
Yet the same is true of trees. "Old growth" timber is not used for pulp and paper—the trees that go into making our paper are a cash crop, just like wheat and corn. So one way to increase the number of trees being planted is for us to consume more paper. Furthermore, if we dumped used paper down an old mineshaft, rather than recycling it, we would in effect be engaged in carbon sequestration: taking carbon out of the atmosphere and burying it in the ground. This is exactly what we need to be doing in order to combat global warming. So recycling paper would appear to be bad for the planet, on numerous levels. Aluminum recycling makes sense (as suggested by the fact that it is profitable). But why paper recycling?
It's possible that there is a coherent response to this argument, but I've never seen one. Most environmentalists focus on how recycling reduces deforestation in the short term but ignore the long-term consequences of diminishing the incentive to reforest. More often people just change the topic, decrying how tree farming promotes monoculture, criticizing logging practices, or complaining about the wastefulness of consumer society. What is conspicuously lacking is a simple, cogent line of reasoning that defends the practice against the "economic" objection. Again, this isn't to say there is no argument, just that I've never heard it.
What I have heard is a whole host of increasingly ingenious ways of changing the subject.”
Joseph Heath, Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism (HarperCollins, Toronto, 2009), p. 6.
http://www.harpercollins.ca/books/9781554683956/Filthy_Lucre/index.aspx
Comment by Larry Willmore:
Philosopher Joseph Heath (1967-) is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. He freely admits "I'm not an economist", having "essentially no formal training in the subject. I did take the usual Economics 101 course as an undergraduate, but I only went to class a couple of times. The professor got on my nerves. …. Since then, I've just been reading on my own. I also have no mathematics beyond high school. I did learn calculus, but I can't remember how to do it. I mention this not to undermine anyone's confidence in the arguments that follow, but merely to show that the barriers to economic literacy re not as great as they sometimes made out to be."
I don't know whether it is because—or in spite of—Heath's lack of formal training, but this is one of the best economics books I have read in years. I recommend it to everyone, but especially to those the left who might benefit from learning more about the capitalist system they profess to despise. Heath's book is a joy to read and covers many topics. I have quibbles with parts of the text, but these are minor compared to those I have with the average economics book written by an untrained journalist. Heath has clearly made an effort to understand what economists are trying to say. I especially liked his devastating criticism of libertarian ideology, on pages 24-43. [DOW: As one sympathetic to libertarianism, but not a libertarian, I shall have to check this out. I doubt it will change my appreciation of this important school of thought.]
Thanks to Larry for the Tdj.
No comments:
Post a Comment