It seems to me that when policies focused on economic growth confront policies focused on other things people care about the “other things” win all the time. We have national parks, we give seniors Medicare instead of turning them into soylent green, we have insane cotton subsidies, you need a license to become a barber, we underinvest in early childhood education, the tax code is a joke, etc.Wow, boosting growth and cutting emissions. A great idea. It would be a great critique if it wasn't actually the centerpiece of my book. I am used to blog misrepresentation. Don't these guys realize that it is they who look careless and uninformed (at best) for attributing views to me that I don't have? Isn't this tactic getting tiresome?
Indeed, there are a lot of policies that would boost growth and cut emissions (less regulatory curtailment of dense construction, congestion pricing on roads, etc.) and yet “other things” win out over those options regularly.
Useful advice for bloggers: Avoid looking the fool by reading the book before criticizing.
5 comments:
I remember growing up Catholic and there were lists of books that were a sin to read. Your book must be on such a list from a different organization.
Hi Roger. I think you're being unnecessarily harsh on both Yglesias and Avent. I don't get the impression that either were trying to review or criticize your book (which I enjoyed very much, btw). They're trying to make a very narrow statement about your formulation of the iron law. Yglesias even cited some specific examples that shows society is sometimes willing to sacrifice economic growth for other values.
Now it turns out Yglesias's examples only prove your point b/c Medicare and national parks offer concrete, immediate benefits rather than diffuse, future ones. In my humble opinion, elaborating along these lines rather than indignation would have been more fruitful.
I think you were especially unfair to Yglesias. In the last sentence of his that you highlighted, Yglesias in no way suggested that you were against policies that boost growth while cutting emissions. Rather he was attempting to show that such policies are not always implemented for broader political reasons. It was not, I believe, a critique of your work. I would even view it as complementing your thesis with the crucial insight that even the win-win policies you advocate can have difficulty getting through our political system.
At any rate...I will say again that I did enjoy the book.
-2-PrajK
Thanks!
Somehow, I don't see this as coming from Yglesias: "Now it turns out Yglesias's examples only prove your point" ... but you are right they do ;-)
Thanks for the positive words about the book!
Roger,
Have you considered the other possibilities - that they have actually read the book and either just don't understand it or are deliberately mis-representing it?
Slightly OT and apologises if this has already been discussed here and I have missed it. I am currently reading TCF (and enjoying it very much)and I was somewhat puzzled by figure 2.3 on page 41. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWDR2010/Resources/Background-report.pdf
It just seems a bit odd that for instance China score very low (28 pct) when asked if climate change is very serious but then when they are asked if climate change is harmful right now and if their country should do something about it, then they suddenly score very high...the first I would expect, the second less so..and India score surprisingly (for me at least) high when asked if climate change is very serious (particularly,and I am being naughty here :o), if only 35 pct of them are aware of climate change) but that may have something to do with the selection pool (more urban). Obviously a huge amount of work has gone into this report and I certainly found it interesting to read but how much can and should we rely on these reports?
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