Markets work but Republicans are cowards because to make them work means breaking lots of rice bowls. How to get to markets is a difficult political issue but is unambiguously the only way to increase medical output and lower costs.

The government can't be trusted with anything, that is why the Founders limited it to only that which it must do, and even with national security and trade they were deeply skeptical. Such concerns are now dismissed as the ideology of old white guys, but they weren't old and it wasn't built on an ideology. It came from being students of human history. Such folks are few now, most don't even seem to remember the twentieth century where centralization got to play out in all its forms.

Yes but only individuals have moral concerns. Laws may be designed around communities' standards, mores and values, but laws don't create morality, nor does the absence of law mean a particular behavior is not immoral. Collectives always behave differently from individuals and just following the pertinent law does not mean the collective or the individuals within it are behaving morally. Only individuals can make moral or immoral decisions. Liberals understand this so they want laws against anything they don't like, and they want the very notion of morality and truth to be stamped out as these things hinder the amoral pursuit by the collective of its collective interests.

The carbon scheme was doomed because CO2 isn't a pollutant and is produced or consumed by everything alive, it was impossible to design a market mechanism which wasn't the goal in the first place. If they had a case, and they don't, then we should just impose the Fair tax so that we consume relatively less and save relatively more. But that isn't their goal. It's all fraud, but this doesn't negate the improvement we made when we switched from bureaucratic controls to market conforming controls for sulfur and particulates.

We set water and air standards and have since the 60's. The standards were imposed by the bureaucracy based on their views of what technology worked best. This was costly and corrupting. If we set standards and we must ,the question is how to put them into effect. Markets do this. When resources are free there is no market. Auctioning rights was a way to put standards into effect, then companies could buy or sell depending on how well they met those standards. What Obama and others want is obscure non transparent regulations that let them pick winners and losers. There is a lot of economic research on this, all pushed by libertarians and market economists. Clear standards and fixed known rights the remove Schumers et al.

Not really. Only a very small collective with very select people can behave in a manner consistent with the values of the individuals, but morality is a personal concern. Morality cannot be a collective. Collectives always pursue the collectives interests while individuals can attempt to balance self interest with moral constraints, or not.

Folks, see WSJ op-ed today on new university speech codes. The IRS is just a bump in road for these people. They are relentless. They will never stop, One step back two steps forward.

Presidents set the tone, the goals, the priorities. They actually become directly involved only in a few issues at a time. The only issues Obama gets involved in are ones that seek to weaken the opposition and win elections or reinforce his priorities. Clearly the IRS fits right in and to say he is not directly involved is nonsense. He didn't have to give the order, he knew about it and he didn't stop it. Guilty as charged.

Nixon was a liberal Republican. The only reason the left hated him and the only reason he was considered conservative is that he had pursued real live communists as a Senator.

Actually marketable rights make economic sense. It gives companies time to adjust to higher standards, creates incentives to meet those standards. The problem here is that CO2 isn't a pollutant. Consider the alternative which the US used for years; "best available technology" the latter changes all the time, creates incentives to corrupt decision makers, and maximizes pollution control costs. The purpose of marketable rights was to minimize costs given a standard. Standards are created because water and air were free and thus became overused. Getting a price mechanism functioning was a sensible goal. The system first used to reduce sulfur was proposed by economists and opposed by liberals for years.

Good Article. Ransom is getting better all the time. The collective is amoral but its span of control is limited so size leads to failure and entropy which requires attempts to impose more control more discipline less tolerance of individualism, less feedback, more failure in the original objectives and transformation into mere survival, control and power. At some point it becomes positively evil as there is no concern for the consequences of actions and those actions crush the only thing that does matter, human flourishing.