Categories:
Energy, Environment, Resources
The cartoon is here. Thanks to Lynne Kiesling for the pointer.
The cartoon is here. Thanks to Lynne Kiesling for the pointer.
Feb 21 2006
was pretty uninspired. In the middle of a four-minute segment on the public's fears about jobs, I get about 15 seconds to talk about "make-work bias," which is the term my co-blogger uses for the public's fear about processes that improve productivity, such as international trade. Alan Blinder's comments, about how t...
Feb 21 2006
Yesterday GMU had a mini-debate between Dan Klein and Pete Boettke on "Is It Time to Retire the Label 'Austrian Economics?'" Dan said Yes; Pete said No. Dan's proposal, roughly, was to (a) expand the set of heroes to include not just Menger, Mises, Hayek, etc., but virtually all libertarian-leaning economists minu...
Feb 21 2006
READER COMMENTS
Randy
Feb 21 2006 at 9:46am
Great cartoon. I thought about oil econ 101 when I saw it.
Ivan Kirigin
Feb 21 2006 at 10:22am
But if there were cheaper alternatives to personal transportation that didn’t use oil, then that would spread to developing countries too. We would still buy oil from the cheapest sources, but the world would buy less oil.
This is why calls to research make sense.
The cartoon only explains why it is bad to subsidize the purchases of more expensive half-solutions.
rakehell
Feb 21 2006 at 4:58pm
Conservation and substitution in the developed world would reduce demand and result in a lower price of oil overall. That would reduce the amount of money going to countries who citizens and bureaucrats might illicitly funnel money to terrorists.
Brad Hutchings
Feb 21 2006 at 5:55pm
Check out Scott Adams’ somewhat related blog posting.
Nimish
Feb 22 2006 at 9:47pm
As long as the supply of oil is upward sloping, conservation will reduce the amount of oil consumed. Conservation shifts the demand curve for oil leftward, reducing the equilibrium quantity – not as much as the the amount “conserved”, but some nevertheless.
Comments are closed.