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The Great Ethanol Scam
theodp writes "Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it's time to look at ethanol's effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age."
And that half happens to be the 51% that are being paid for by the 49%.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The problem with that argument is that what we have is not a free market. It's series of cartels. That's why we spend more than twice as much on health care as other industrialized countries and get treatment closer to the bottom of the scale. Because there are so many entrenched cartels in the health care industry.
This is, quite frankly, socialist bullshit. Government regulation and intervention has been the primary factor in the inflation of health care costs.
New industries might start out competitive but once they get to a certain size, they start bending the rules in their own favor. Using unfair practices to freeze out competition, getting sweetheart legislation pushed through Congress, buying influence.
And this never happens when the industries are run by the governments. Nah, you'd never have government cronyism replace private market cronyism, because we'd only employ the best, most honest people as our bureaucrats.
You free market preachers are just naive. The only free markets are also fair markets. And if you think what we have today is a fair market, you need to pass the bong. Government is the only entity that has the ability to groom a competitive marketplace. What we have today is what happens when government stops doing that job for 10 years. The rich get richer and there's no accountability for cheating. Economic collapse follows right after.
Rich getting richer? Hardly. Not anymore. What you have is a rogue government led not by the elected politicians, but by the bureaucrats people like you would empower even more. This government enforces laws not to provide justice, but to selectively punish those who provoke the ire of the petty bureaucrat. Obama coming into power hasn't changed anything (and if anything, his people are more corrupt than Bush's were).
When government has failed as badly as ours is in the process of doing, I don't think the solution is more government.
So don't blame governments as such for the failings of the American government. Canadian governments, for all their astonishing failures, still manage to deliver health care more cheaply and effectively than the American government does (and yes, I mean the government: the US government pays more public dollars per capita than all levels of government in Canada do, and we get better outcomes as measured by longevity, infant mortality and morbidity than you do.)
Unfortunately, once you control for race, most of those Canadian advantages disappear into thin air. The US has a more diverse population which negatively impacts the statistics the Oh Canada chest thumpers like to trumpet (read: more Latinos and Blacks, who have worse expected health outcomes vis-a-vis life expectancy and infant mortality).
The US also has 10x the population of Canada, and what works well for some provincial backwater some 33 million people will not work for a country with a much larger, much more diverse population.
"It was because of government that Microsoft got it's monopoly."
Can I have some of what you are smoking?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The truth hurts.
Other names for the region:
moox. for a new generation.
Hey, I have an idea:
How about, Americans drive on the fat of their own bodies?
I mean it's more useful than making soap out of it. ^^
Liposuction, directly into the tank, and go.
I'm sure you will never be out of fuel anymore. Ever. ^^
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.