Been thinking ‘bout it lately, been watching some TV, been looking all around me, and what has come to be, been talking to my neighbor, and he agrees with me. It’s all gone crazy …
The above lyrics are from the song, “Texas” by Chris Rea. It was released on his superb 1989 album named, appropriately, “The Road to Hell.” The album is thematic, exploring societal ills including pollution, unrealized dreams, violence, crowding, and in a darker reflection of Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry,” the pornographic character of sensational news coverage. Thankfully, there’s a few uplifting tracks as well, “Texas” being one of them.
In 1989 I was 24 years old, not married, no children. Other than Tiananmen Square and Hillsborough, the things I remember from 1989 are joyous—skiing all winter in France, romance in Gstaad, hitchhiking in Scotland, the fall of the Berlin wall, the Calgary Flames winning the Stanley Cup. Late in the year I recall weekend mornings buying a fresh donut and steaming cup of coffee on the west edge of Calgary, then driving, alone, to beautiful Lake Louise to ski for the day. As I raced west in the jagged shadows of the front range the sun peeked over the mountains and the light chased behind me, foothills and prairie glowing in my wake. Perhaps the difference between me and Chris Rea was that he was trying to protect the innocence of his six-year-old daughter, and I was just having a good time, flush with good fortune and circumstance, not yet old or wise enough to see much of concern in the world around me.
Three and a half decades have passed since 1989. I am certainly older, hopefully wiser. Our children are in their early 20s, young men, and I’m grateful they have already suffered, as everyone must, the original tragedy from Genesis—loss of innocence. They know, I think, that the world is neither for nor against them, which leaves their own agency as the most important thing. They also know, hope on hope, that there are people, us and others, who are for them, and this can always be counted on. I would gladly relive almost every minute of their childhood with them. At the same time, I’m relieved they’re not six years old today, only beginning to face the difficulties of growing up, because Chris Rea was right. It’s all gone crazy.
For instance, the notion that we can, (no, must!) fix the weather by impoverishing ourselves and perpetuating the impoverishment of others. I do not believe that poverty is a necessary condition for the health of the planet. For years we were told that “green energy” harvested from the sun and the wind would ensure economic prosperity, environmental health, and climatic stability. Only now, as the ever-widening gulf between physics and unrealistic claims gets wider, is the grim reality acknowledged. Solar and wind installations are not capable of powering a modern society. The obvious answer—build out emission free energy sources that can power modern societies, i.e. nuclear fission—is not considered. Instead, we must remake society. “Degrowth,” of economies, of population, while always a goal of deep green activism, is usually not discussed openly because, you know, the implications. You will own nothing, and like it. Recently, there are more voices saying the quiet parts out loud. Here are recent essays from The Financial Times, The New Yorker, CNN, and The New York Times. While the movement does contain important philosophical questions—do we need everything that we have? What is most important in our lives?—these are questions that should be used to help us reflect on our lives as individuals, and to help us act in accordance with our values. Unfortunately, as I have written in my essay The New Malthusians, the activists are not much interested in letting us come to our own conclusions. They know the way, and you will follow the path. We’ve got to fix the weather, right?
Or how about boys/men competing in girl’s/women’s sports? Neil deGrasse Tyson got quite stroppy with Konstantin Kisin, the Russian born author/satirist/podcaster on a recent episode of his podcast, Triggernometry. They were discussing the idea of gender as a spectrum, and men competing in women’s sports. Toward the end, when Kisin spoke of women being disadvantaged on the playing field when men are on it, Tyson shouted, “then fix the damn playing field!” Can you really? Is there some combination of hormone therapy and surgical mutilation that exactly matches the maximum athletic potential of a guy who wishes to be a girl, and a girl? I’m skeptical. Meanwhile, the potential for actual harm to female athletes is all too real. Warren Buffett’s longtime right-hand man, Charlie Munger, has a famous quote. “Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” Let’s apply that quote to a college sport like swimming or track and field.
College sports are high level athletics. The best go on to compete for their countries at World Championships and Olympic Games, or they sign contracts to earn millions of dollars playing as professionals. Some do both. The incentive for college coaches is simple. Win. Win and keep your job. Win and get a bigger, better, more lucrative job. Imagine what would happen if the barriers between men’s and women’s sports were eliminated. Given the advantages in athletic performance that male athletes have over female athletes (see here: boysvswomen), it would only be a matter of time before the incentive to win pushed a coach to recruit male athletes for female competitions. That coach would win more. Other coaches who desired to remain competitive would follow suit. Eventually, this would devolve into some sort of trans person arms race with one group of people, females, clearly losing out. And this wouldn’t be limited to swimming and track. Think about volleyball or basketball.
Just the other night in Philadelphia a mob, or mobs of young people smashed windows and stole merchandise from a multitude of stores including state liquor outlets, Foot Locker, Apple, and Lululemon. The mayhem, apparently organized through social media, was designed to overwhelm, through sheer numbers, any efforts to stop it. Police did arrest about 50 people, and at least 30 have been charged with offences including burglary, theft, and other counts. This night in Philadelphia has drawn major attention from media outlets because of the scale of it, but it is only part of an epidemic of unpunished theft and organized retail crime that has forced major retailers—Target, Whole Foods, Walmart—to close stores in iconic American cities like New York, San Francisco, and Portland. When traditional institutions like marriage, family, church, and school are absent and declared obsolete, and when crimes go unpunished, anarchy is not long behind. Has no one read “Lord of the Flies?”
The UAW strike is now two weeks old. President Biden recently visited striking workers in what John Cassidy, writing for the New Yorker, described as a powerful political gesture. Have you noticed the incongruity between the President’s support for striking workers and the damage he is doing to their companies, and their jobs, by ramming electric vehicles down their throats? I’ve written about electric vehicles here. For millions of people, they are clearly a viable alternative to vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. But I don’t think anyone should be forced to make them or buy them. Robert Bryce, who writes extensively on energy issues here at Substack, recently reported that Ford Motor Company lost $72,762 for every electric vehicle it sold in Q2, 2023. They can’t continue to do this and pay their striking workers 40% more for a four day work week. Part of the rationale for the big salary increase for workers is the amount of money the executives are making. How about fixing some of that disparity by cutting salaries in the C-suite. The brainiacs should be doing a better job identifying the risks of rent-seeking arrangements with the feds and hedging their bets accordingly.
Here’s another thing to make you go hmmm. The Biden administration has recently expressed interest in restarting oil imports from Venezuela. They’re doing this because U.S. refineries were largely built at a time (the 1970s, or earlier) when the crude oil being produced in the U.S. was heavier than the light oil that comes out of modern horizontal wells in places like the Permian and Delaware basins. Today, permitting and building a new petrochemical refinery is at least as difficult as building a nuclear power plant. So U.S. refiners are forced to make do with what already exists. Bringing in heavy crude from Venezuela would allow U.S. refiners the option to custom blend feedstock that is better suited to their facilities. It might also free up more of the U.S. light crude for export, thus contributing to refinery efficiency on a global scale. There is opposition to this plan because Venezuela is run by an autocratic regime closely aligned with Russia. Where oh where might you find another source of heavy crude? Well, Canada’s current government is only slightly preferable to an autocratic regime aligned with Russia, but it does have a bunch of heavy crude. Unfortunately, it can’t readily get to the U.S. refineries that need it because this President killed the Keystone pipeline project. Instead, he prefers to load the stuff on ships powered by sulfur-rich heavy fuel oil and ship it across the Caribbean. H/t to Doomberg for some of the details in this paragraph.
London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, is the chair of C40, a group of 96 worldwide mayors who are dedicated to fixing the weather through the implementation of “climate action plans.” In 2019 C40 commissioned a study to determine how cities could radically slash their emissions by 2030. The study focused largely on citizen’s consumption habits, and proposed ideas like the abolition of private vehicles, banning meat and dairy consumption, the rationing of new items of clothing to three per year per person, and restrictions on short-haul flights to one every three years. The mayor’s office is quick to point out that these ideas are NOT recommendations, and that people should continue to make their own decisions on what to eat and what to wear. Thank you for that, but what happens in a few years when the efforts to insulate homes, expand the ULEZ (ultra-low emission zone), and electrify cars and buses have not fixed the weather or materially changed the global emissions profile? Call me paranoid, but when it comes to politicians with a purpose, the road to serfdom (h/t to Hayek) has three steps. Initially, you are incentivized to support a cause. Buy an electric vehicle and we’ll give you a tax credit. When it turns out that some people, maybe most, prefer the vehicles they already know or have, the incentive turns to punishment. Drive an older vehicle in London’s ULEZ and you will be charged 12.5 pounds per day. The last step arrives when people still, through ingenuity and sacrifice, find ways to make their own choices. Punishment turns to command, backed by the police power of the state. As of this day, private vehicles are banned. I’m sure Mr. Khan and others like him would disavow any interest in going that far, but I tend to think that’s a limitation imposed by voters. These people must ALWAYS fear for their jobs.
Billy Joel’s number one song from 1989, “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” was inspired by a conversation with a 21 year old friend of Sean Lennon’s. If you know the melody, think of it, then give these lyrics a try.
AI, open borders, Putin, Wuhan, lockdowns, global boiling, war in Ukraine. Tony Fauci, Donald Trump, inflation takes a huge jump, opioids, fentanyl, Bruce Jenner is a girl. We didn’t start the fire …
Just like Chris Rea in that same year, the young fellow was lamenting how crazy was the state of the world. He must have been more sensitive than me. The conversation inspired Joel to write down the year of his birth, 1949, and then begin to chronicle significant people and events across his 40 year lifespan. The point being, at least partly, to demonstrate that things are always crazy, and we endure. But past performance is no guarantee of future results, right? Nevertheless, my hope is that 40 years from now, when someone pens a new version of Billy Joel’s hit, it’s from a perspective similar to that of 1989—a chronicle of momentous events, some of them unsettling or frightening, but with the present and the future mostly secure. I wish we could get past “mostly” on the security spectrum, but given the unpredictability of man, nature, and events, it seems the best we can hope for. But remember Genesis, and take heart. “God made man in his own image.” We too, are creators.
I swear you can read my mind but express it 10 times better. You have a great talent for writing. Keep sharing and I’ll keep reading.