Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

No-hope candidates

Elections bring up the interesting question of the psychology of no-hope parties and candidates. When they choose to run in areas where there is a real contest between two other candidates with differing views, they generally risk harming whichever candidate has views most similar to their own.

Perhaps the most dramatic example ongoing is Ralph Nader’s campaign in Pennsylvania. It is difficult to understand why he would choose to run there, and perhaps even more difficult to understand why people would choose to vote for him. Doing so can only increase the probability of an outcome these people would probably find less preferable (it is difficult to imagine someone who prefers Nader to Obama finding McCain more attractive than Obama). It definitely challenges the notion that the aim of voting is to rationally advance whatever program of government you would most like to see implemented.

I suppose saying “don’t run serious candidates until you are popular enough to win” is a strategy that would forever prevent the emergence of new parties. In a sense, it is a bit like the strategy of not negotiating with kidnappers: it may contribute to a bad outcome in a specific instance, but establishes a more desirable long-term pattern.

May being excluded from leaders’ debates

I think it’s a shame that Green Party leader Elizabeth May is being excluded from the leaders’ debates for this election. The longstanding isolation of the Green Party is largely the product of Canada’s first-past-the-post system and, given that they are so severely hampered by the technicalities of Canada’s electoral system, it seems fair that meeting the technicality of having a sitting Member of Parliament is sufficient procedural justification for their inclusion.

More substantively, there is major focus on the environment in this campaign. As such, having a candidate present whose party is focused explicitly on environmental issues would probably add to the caliber and intelligence of the discussions that result.

Two American cap-and-trade plans

While both John McCain and Barack Obama have endorsed a national cap-and-trade system as the centerpiece of their climate policies, the two proposals differ on several highly important grounds. The most important by far is the mechanism of permit allocation. Under the McCain system, permits to emit carbon would be granted for free to those with existing records of emissions; under the Obama system, all those wishing to emit will be required to buy permits at auction. The practical differences between the approaches are massive. Under the auction system, those who wish to pollute are made to pay. Under the free allocation system, those who have polluted in the past are granted valuable credits that they can either use to pollute or sell for cash.

As described before, consumers experience price rises in either scenario. What differs is where the windfall accrues. Under an auctioning system, it ends up in the hands of government, which can use it to fund low-carbon investments or refund it to the population as a hole (as in a cap-and-dividend system). Under a free allocation system, it simply goes into the coffers of the biggest polluters.

Even with a Democratically-controlled Congress and Senate, getting a plan based on 100% auctioning approved would be very challenging. Democrats from areas where extractive industries and automobile manufacture are economically important and politically powerful will resist policies that will be costly to dirty industries. That being said, it is arguably wiser to start with a policy position that is stronger than can probably be enacted and then compromise, rather than starting with a position that is weaker than necessary to get the job done.

India and the Nuclear Suppliers Group

Today, the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group decided to approve a nuclear deal between the United States and India (which is not part of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and which tested bombs between 1974 and 1998). The decision is one about which I feel ambivalent. One the one hand, it might promote the relatively responsible use of nuclear technologies in India. Despite how we could probably do better by spending our money in other ways, more nuclear power is a likely consequence of concerns about both energy security and climate change. On the other hand, the deal demonstrates that it is possible states can test bombs, remain outside the NPT, and still get access to internationally-provided nuclear fuels and technologies. The lesson to other states may be that the best long-term course of action is to ignore international efforts aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons.

Thinking about how many states are likely to have reactors and bombs by the end of the next century is pretty worrisome.

More comprehensive reporting on the decision:

True North American free trade

Amazon.com is superior to Amazon.ca in several ways. Firstly, it has a much broader selection. Secondly, it has some special features, like the Amazon Prime subscription that gives you unlimited shipping for $79 a year. The process of ordering things from Amazon.com, having them sent to places in the US, and then having them relayed to me has left me wondering what the effect of a true North American Free Trade Agreement would be.

In the simplest form, it would work like this:

  • Anyone in Canada, the United States, and Mexico can purchase anything sold by any company in any of the three countries.
  • The item can be shipped directly to them, and they will not be charged any customs fees, duties, or other border-related charges.
  • Some simple system is sorted out for sales taxes. It could be (a) you pay the tax of your local jurisdiction, which may send part of the revenue to the sending jurisdiction (b) you pay the tax of the sending jurisdiction or (c) you don’t pay sales tax.

Such an arrangement would obviously be beneficial for consumers. They would be able to buy from whatever physical or web-based store offered them the best arrangement. It’s less clear what the effect on businesses would be. Those that benefit from having consumers who are more likely to buy from a firm in their own country would get hurt, at least temporarily. Those that would be more attractive to outside consumers in the absence of duty fees would likewise benefit in the near-term. In the near term, this alternative approach should produce net economic benefits. While some actors would lose the benefits of a captive market (like drink sellers at concerts), the larger market would be more efficient overall.

In the longer term, there would be effects on firm consolidation, tax revenues, currency values, and macroeconomic conditions. Both from the perspective of what would benefit readers personally and from the perspective of what would be best for society overall, would readers prefer (a) for the current system to continue (b) having the current system replaced with one akin to the one above or (c) getting rid of North American free trade entirely?

Polls and the electoral college in US elections

When it comes to the US election, national polls can be very misleading. This is because of how the contest is Balkanized into states and electoral college votes. It doesn’t matter if you barely manage to win a state, or if you win by a huge majority. As explained on this post on The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, the winner will be whoever gets more than 270 electoral college votes:

Barack Obama already has 260 votes either “strong” or “leaning”. John McCain has just 112 strong and 64 leaning. He must not lose a single “lean” state to keep himself 86 votes behind.

Now those swing states… Mr McCain has tiny leads in Nevada and North Dakota, and slightly bigger ones in North Carolina and Florida. Mr Obama has clear leads in Colorado, Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Alaska (you can probably write that one off now, though) and Montana.

This may be a partial explanation for the surprise selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate. While national polls show McCain and Obama neck-in-neck, the electoral college projections look much worse for the Republicans. That may have encouraged them to employ a riskier strategy, in hopes of changing the dynamics of the race.

Buying, but not using, carbon credits

One attractive element of a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is that it would permit entities other than firms to buy credits, which they could then choose not to actually use. For example, a cap-and-trade system might mandate that emissions in 2020 return to 1990 levels and require that all credits be auctioned, rather than issued for free to past polluters. In Canada, that would mean selling 596 million tonnes worth of emission permits.

Firms wishing to emit greenhouse gasses would then need to buy permits for whatever quantity they choose to emit. Given the cap on the total number of permits to be sold, the price of permits will rise to the point where a sufficient number of emissions are cut. Because of the economic incentive produced to cut out whichever emissions within the economy would be cheapest to eliminate, the overall cost of compliance is minimized.

If, however, groups exist that feel that cuts deeper than 1990 levels by 2020 are required, they could buy permits on the same market. In so doing, they would reduce the supply available and increase the price of those remaining. This would induce firms to eliminate emissions where the cost per tonne is between what the price of permits would be without this independent action and what the price has become along with it.

Conservatism and science

One of the most regrettable things about contemporary conservatism – aside from forgetting Edmund Burke’s notion of humanity as stewards of the natural world – is the unwillingness to acknowledge basic scientific realities. Sometimes, this is because of ideological conflicts; acknowledging the immense danger posed by climate change basically means admitting that government regulation is required. Sometimes, it is because of religious beliefs at odds with the basic knowledge we now have about the universe. It is simply embarrassing that there are still people in developed countries who do not understand evolution, or who believe the Earth to be a few thousand years old.

Also regrettably, it seems that the recent surprise Republican vice presidential choice Sarah Palin is among those who profess doubt about the existence of biological evolution. She is of the ‘teach the controversy’ school of thought, in which schoolchildren should supposedly be presented with multiple theories and charged with choosing for themselves. Thankfully, this approach provides rich opportunities for satire. One site sells ‘Teach the Controversy’ shirts showing Atlantis, the devil burying dinosaur bones, aliens building the Egyptian pyramids, and so forth. Most famously, the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster phenomenon began as a mocking response to this approach:

I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

Being tolerant of people with religious beliefs does not mean treating those beliefs with special deference, or refraining from mocking the more absurd ones among them. Indeed, it is only through the vigorous consideration of the relative merits and explanatory capabilities of different viewpoints that we can further refine our understanding of the world. The sad thing is that there are some people who never get a fair shot at it because those in power choose to give them a deeply inadequate initiation into the teaching of science.

Frontline episodes

The entire archive of the PBS investigative journalism program Frontline seems to be available online for free. Some of the more interesting topics covered include:

There is certainly a consistent – and fairly critical – focus on the controversial actions of the second Bush administration. That being said, the quality of the programs seems to be quite high.

European Emission Trading Scheme primer

This document – produced by the World Wildlife Fund – provides a good concise overview of the Emissions Trading Scheme being used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union.

In addition to outlining the basic design of the system, the document describes some of the errors of implementation that have occurred. The biggest of those were probably the over-allocation of permits and their free distribution, as opposed to auctioning. Together, these sharply reduced the effectiveness of the system during its first phase of operations. Hopefully, lessons learned during this period will help to make future emission trading schemes work more efficiently and equitably.