Altes Elliott-Wellen-Forum - Machttheorie at it`s best: effiziente Preise vs. central economic planing

Machttheorie at it`s best: effiziente Preise vs. central economic planing

verfasst von Ricardo, 16.12.2003, 22:35

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diesen Artikel könnte man auch als Fallstudie heranziehen.

Die überwiegende Mehrzahl hier im Forum (unterstelle ich mal) hat noch nicht begriffen, dass es bei dottores Machttheorie grundsätzlich um diesen Sachverhalt geht.

Grüsse
Ricardo

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> Energy Bills and Central Planning
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>
>
> by William L. Anderson

> [December 16, 2003]

> <img alt src="http://www.mises.org/images3/energy.gif" align="right" border="0" width="241" height="167">In
> the aftermath of the U.S. Senate's failure to pass an"energy bill"
> for the coming year, the usual punditry has befallen us. From the demands that
> the bill goes in the"wrong direction" because it does not emphasize
>"alternative" energy sources, as well as increase the subsidies for
> mass transit to the Washington
> Post's demands that Congress impose a tax in order to pay the"true
> costs" of fossil fuels, the"experts" insist that the
> government must direct the production and use of energy.

> While the United States does not
> have a central planning agency like the former U.S.S.R.'s Gosplan, in effect,
> we still have central planning all the same, at least when it comes to the
> energy industry?not to mention most other areas of business as well. Whether
> or not it comes in the form of a central agency, like in the U.S.S.R., or a
> combination of the three branches of the U.S. Government, centralized economic
> planning always creates chaos, inefficiency, and, ultimately, economic
> hardship. One would like to think that the policymakers of this country
> learned something from the energy debacles of the 1970s, but from the latest
> monstrosity of an energy bill, it is obvious that Washington's political
> classes have learned nothing except how to manipulate the economy in order to
> wield power over others. (And that is something they have learned very
> well.)

> The Post labeled the recent
>"energy" bill"as a piece of legislation stuffed with more
> goodies than a Thanksgiving turkey." The assessment, while true, does not
> address the real issue of why there should be any"energy"
> legislation at all. (The Post editorialists justify energy legislation
> because of U.S."dependence" upon"foreign oil," a subject
> with which I dealt in an earlier article on
> this page. Furthermore, they call for a series of laws to deal with energy
> issues, not just one"comprehensive" bill.) Nevertheless, one needs
> to deal with the particulars of legislation, not to hope for an"improved"
> version in the future, but rather to point out why such legislation always is
> going to be an exercise in absurdity.

> In its earlier and heady days,
> socialism was supposed to substitute"rational policies" for the
> supposed chaos of the market. Instead of having individuals competing with
> each other to produce and sell goods in the market, socialism instead would
> create a process by which planners could rationally determine the needs of
> individuals in society, then direct production and distribution toward those
> ends. Moreover, because planning was to be placed in the hands of economic
>"experts," there would be no need to deal with the interference from
> politicians and the special interests that they represent.

> On the other hand, the modern
> legislative process when applied to energy matters means that members of
> Congress (or any legislative body, for that matter) are going to favor their
> most important constituents, which supposedly is the polar opposite of
>"rational" socialist planning. To think otherwise would be naïve.
> This means that one should not be shocked, for example, when a member of
> Congress from Iowa or Kansas demands subsidies for corn-based ethanol, or when
> a Congressman from Texas wants new tax breaks for oil companies. (Former Sen.
> Bob Dole of Kansas often referred to himself proudly as"Senator
> Ethanol.")

> Such obvious pandering to"special
> interests" is easy to condemn, yet such attempts to benefit the business
> constituents of certain members of Congress is no less outrageous than what
> the"public interest" groups are demanding. For the most part, what
> we hear from such groups as Public Citizen (Ralph Nader) and the various
> environmental organizations is that the government must force automakers to
> build fleets of vehicles that meet higher mileage standards.

> Despite the rhetoric that the
> pundits repeat ad nauseum, economically speaking there is no
> difference between Nader's demands for increasing mileage standards versus
> Sen. Tom Harkin's call for subsidies for corn growers in his state of Iowa.
> While Nader's words are treated as high-minded and far-sighted on the
> editorial pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times
> (and Harkin's demands are regarded as political pandering), in truth both are
> nothing more than a call for central economic planning, and both ultimately
> create more problems than they supposedly"solve."

> As noted earlier, socialist
> central planning supposedly involves rational individuals who do not have
> vested interests in their decisions determining what is best for an economy.
> Special interest based legislation, on the other hand, panders to moneyed
> interests or those groups that can"get out the vote." Moreover, it
> is easy to see that the latter is going to create many problems, something
> that numerous writers have handled in these pages over the past few years.

> Yet, both socialist planning and
>"special interest" legislation are simply two sides of the same coin,
> as they are attempts to turn the economy in a different direction than what
> would be the case if individuals were freely permitted to make economic
> choices unencumbered by governmental authorities. Let us look first at the
> effects of ethanol legislation.

> The government has required that
> in some localities, ethanol, a corn-based alcohol, must be mixed with gasoline.
> The official rationale behind this policy is that alcohol burns more cleanly
> than pure gasoline, which supposedly means less air pollution. The follow-up
> rationale is that the use of homegrown ethanol requires the purchase of less
> oil from overseas?and supports the economy at home. Both are dubious at
> best.

> As Ronald
> Bailey recently wrote, the alleged
> environmental benefits from ethanol are about nil, and when one factors in a
> number of other factors, it is clear that the subsidy for this product is not
> about saving the earth (or even saving Americans from the supposedly-rapacious
> OPEC cartel). When it comes to easing pressure to purchase oil from abroad,
> Bailey notes that the energy used to distill a gallon of ethanol is greater
> than the energy ethanol creates. That mean Americans must run an energy deficit
> in order to make ethanol, and that fuel must come from somewhere, including
> OPEC nations. (Again, let me emphasize that I am not agreeing with the
> argument that there needs to be less oil imported in this country. I am just
> saying that ethanol clearly does not help us to achieve that particular policy
> directive.)

> No doubt, the farmers who are paid
> higher-than-market prices for their corn believe that the ethanol program is
> worthwhile. Furthermore, executives at Archer-Daniels-Midland, which is a
> major producer of ethanol (and a major advertiser on the Sunday morning news
> shows), are always willing to justify this program to critics.

> Yet, the real economic issue here
> is not what the ethanol policy does or does not achieve, but rather what would
> be the state of affairs in the ethanol program's absence. If midwestern
> farmers did not have subsidized producers of ethanol purchasing their corn (which
> is also subsidized), they would have to find other markets. As Bailey notes in
> his article, one of the outcomes of the ethanol program is that cattle
> ranchers must pay more for corn, which ultimately has an effect upon beef
> prices that consumers pay.

> Keep in mind that no one is
> prohibited from producing free market ethanol. However, without the
> directives of the Environmental Protection Agency forcing fuel producers to
> mix ethanol with gasoline to achieve alleged clean air effects, no oil company
> would want to deal with the stuff. (Because ethanol easily separates from
> gasoline, the mixture cannot be transported by pipeline, which means that it
> must be blended with gasoline as close to the final use as possible. Thus, the
> blending process is expensive and troublesome.)

> When clean air laws demanded major
> changes in gasoline reformulation in the spring of 2000, there was chaos in
> many cities, as disruption in the distribution of gasoline caused prices to
> spike above $2 a gallon. While consumers and politicians (naturally) blamed
> oil companies, the real story was much more insidious. Taxpayers (and
> consumers) paid taxes (and higher prices) to subsidize the corn which, in
> turn, was made into ethanol (also subsidized). The process of adding
> tax-funded ethanol in huge quantities disrupted the smooth flow of fuel, which
> meant price spikes?and most likely did not clear the air one whit. In other
> words, Congress forced American taxpayers and consumers to pay large sums of
> money for a product that in a free market they would not purchase.

> Whenever the government has tried
> to control the oil markets, whether in the 1970s or in recent years, the
> result has always been chaos. From the gas lines almost 30 years ago to the
> wild price spikes in the spring of 2000 and 2001, the government has turned
> the orderly setting of the free market to the free-for-all that characterized
> the gasoline markets during those crisis periods.

> The early supporters of outright
> central planning believed that economic planners would replace what they saw
> as the disorderly free market with a"rational" plan that would
> coordinate producers, sellers and consumers. And as anyone familiar with the
> results of central planning knows, what emerged was not the picture of order,
> but rather the poster child of disorder. From individuals standing in long
> lines just to purchase basic items to the horrendous quality of goods, the
> economies of the communist countries were the best empirical refutation of
> socialism.

> While price and allocation
> controls in the United States turned oil markets here into Soviet-style
> disorder that imposed huge costs upon motorists, one should remember that the
> other government policies on energy also are very costly and ultimately lower
> our standard of living. The ethanol subsidy and the gasoline mileage standards
> by themselves do not force people to wait in long lines, but they do limit
> consumer choices. They force producers of goods?in this case, automobile
> manufacturers?to make cars that people really do not want to purchase, and
> they make individuals purchase lower-performance fuel that they would reject
> otherwise.

> (Keep in mind that if car buyers
> in this country wanted the highest-mileage vehicles, there would be no demand
> for sport utility vehicles and other low-gas-mileage automobiles. Thus, the
> demands by some for Congress to order an increase in automobile gas mileage
> standards is nothing more than an attempt to circumvent the desires of
> consumers. The irony here is that Ralph Nader, one of the loudest voices for
> high-mileage standards, is called a"consumer advocate" by the U.S.
> media.)

> No, there are no economic agencies
> in this country like Gosplan, but the U.S. Government, as well as many state
> and local governments, engage in central economic planning all the same. While
> this article deals only with some energy issues, there are many other examples
> of planners at work, from those who write and enforce government rules on
> medical care to the advocates of"smart growth." In the end, it is
> still central economic planning and, not surprisingly, it does not work any
> better here than it did in the U.S.S.R.

> _____________________________

> William Anderson, an adjunct
> scholar of the Mises Institute, teaches economics at Frostburg State
> University. Send him MAIL.
> See his Mises.org Articles
> Archive.

>

Thread gesperrt

gesamter Thread:

Energy Bills and Central Planning / Artikel mises.org - - Elli -, 16.12.2003, 20:29
- Machttheorie at it`s best: effiziente Preise vs. central economic planing - Ricardo, 16.12.2003, 22:35
  - Information, Prices, Socialism`s Flaws - Ricardo, 16.12.2003, 23:41