HT: alexepstein
Paul Ehrlich – the gift that keeps giving
05 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in environmentalism Tags: activists, do gooders, doomsday alarmists, environmental alarmists, environmental cranks, Greens, Paul Ehrlich, Quacks
HT: alexepstein
Evidence of mass kidnappings of Occupy protesters
03 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: activists, do gooders, expressive voting, Left-wing hypocrisy, occupy movement, superstar effect
Because the most-popular songs now stay on the charts for months, the relative value of a hit has exploded.
The top 1 percent of bands and solo artists now earn 77 percent of all revenue from recorded music, media researchers report. And even though the amount of digital music sold has surged, the 10 best-selling tracks command 82 percent more of the market than they did a decade ago.
The advent of do-it-yourself artists in the digital age may have grown music’s long tail, but its fat head keeps getting fatter.
The only explanation for the failure of the Twitter Left to protest against this concentration or of wealth and massive rise in ticket prices to the downtrodden young public that go to concerts is a mass kidnapping of the protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Why Can’t Public Transit Be Free? – The Atlantic
01 Feb 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, transport economics Tags: activists, do gooders, free public transport, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
The earliest urban experiment in free public transit took place in Rome in the early 1970s. The city, plagued by unbearable traffic congestion, tried making its public buses free.
At first, many passengers were confused: “There must be a trick,” a 62-year-old Roman carpenter told The New York Times as he boarded one bus. Then riders grew irritable. One “woman commuter” predicted that “swarms of kids and mixed-up people will ride around all day just because it doesn’t cost anything.”
Romans couldn’t be bothered to ditch their cars—the buses were only half-full during the mid-day rush hour, “when hundreds of thousands battle their way home for a plate of spaghetti.” Six months after the failed, costly experiment, a cash-strapped Rome reinstated its fare system.
Three similar experiments in the U.S.—in Denver, Colorado, and Trenton, New Jersey, in the late 70s, and in Austin, Texas, around 1990—also proved unfruitful and shaped the way American policy makers viewed the question of free public transit.
All three were attempts to coax commuters out of their cars and onto subway platforms and buses. While they succeeded in increasing ridership, the new riders they brought in were people who were already walking or biking to work. For that reason, they were seen as failures.
A 2002 report released by the National Center for Transportation Research indicated that the lack of fares attracted hordes of young people, who brought with them a culture of vandalism, graffiti, and bad behavior—which all necessitated costly maintenance. The lure of “free,” the report implied, attracted the “wrong” crowd—the “right” crowd, of course, being wealthier people with cars, who aren’t very sensitive to price changes.
HT: http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/01/why-cant-public-transit-be-free/384929/
A great hard left critique of the Greens continued
31 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in environmentalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: activists, British politics, do gooders, environmental movement, expressive voting, Greens, Leftover Left
A great hard left critique of the Greens
30 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in environmentalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand Tags: activists, do gooders, expressive voting, Leftover Left, The Greens, UK politics
The iron law of volunteering: the nicer the cause, the nastier the people
28 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, liberalism, occupational choice Tags: activists, do gooders, expressive voting, Greens
Saving Civilization: 2009 vs 2015
27 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: activists, climate ala, climate alarmism, do gooders, expressive voting, green rent seeking, rational ignorance, rational irrationality
An absolutely excellent collection of climate alarmist statements by hacks whose jobs depended on fermenting confusion and moral panic
Five years ago, we were told that the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit was the last chance to save civilization. As the 2015 Paris summit approaches, the same sort of fear mongering is ramping up.
Earlier this week, a climate declaration published as a full-page ad in the international edition of New York Times tried to frighten us. It told us that:
the UN Climate Summit in Paris in December 2015 may be the last chance to agree a treaty capable of saving civilization; [bold added]
The declaration insisted that global warming may “cause the very fabric of civilization to crash.” It said charitable foundations should therefore divert resources away from other projects – presumably building hospitals and schools, preventing blindness and malaria, ensuring basic sanitation – in order to “save civilization” from the climate scourge.
Problem is, we’ve heard this before. Not so very long ago, the British Prime…
View original post 86 more words
Definition of an Activist | Coyote Blog
27 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in occupational choice, Public Choice Tags: activists, do gooders, fascism of good intentions
Activist: A person who believes so strongly that a problem needs to be remedied that she dedicates substantial time to … getting other people to fix the problem. It used to be that activists sought voluntary help for their pet problem, and thus retained some semblance of honor.
However, our self-styled elite became frustrated at some point in the past that despite their Ivy League masters degrees in sociology, other people did not seem to respect their ideas nor were they particularly interested in the activist’s pet issues.
So activists sought out the double shortcut of spending their time not solving the problem themselves, and not convincing other people to help, but convincing the government it should compel others to fix the supposed problem.
This fascism of good intentions usually consists of government taking money from the populace to throw at the activist’s issue, but can also take the form of government-compelled labor and/or government limitations on choice.
Bryan Caplan on expressive voting and environmentalism
10 Jan 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of media and culture, environmental economics, Public Choice Tags: Bryan Caplan, do gooders, environmentalism, expressive voting
“Caring about the environment” is probably one of the biggest expressive issues of our time but most environmental issues are expressive voting issues:
1. Recycling
2. Preserving wild lands
3. Endangered species
4. Conservation
5. Logging
Even for the more instrumental-looking problems, green voters are bizarrely hostile to efficient solutions:
1. Emissions trading, domestic and international
2. Planting trees as carbon sinks
3. Liming lakes to counter acid rain
4. Privatizing common resources
via Prof.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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