Of course inexpensive energy didn't fix all of society. But it did a lot of social good, and I'm glad you somewhat acknowledge that now.

You seem to have a lot in common with the article I linked. Note the story about the millionaire who protested the fact that the UK government subsidizes his fuel bill.

More than 250,000 UK citizens have been killed by cold temperatures, despite how inexpensive energy is. To the extent people advocate against inexpensive energy, the death rate will increase, and the victims' [frozen] blood will on he hands of the advocates.

Is that a rational fear; is an Iranian nuke more likely to be detonated in Riyadh than Tel Aviv? (Or, given that Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terror, transferred to a terrorist cell that floats it on a small boat into New York Harbor?)

Whenever I buy a car, I build a spreadsheet to compare Total Cost of Ownership for several different models. One of the inputs, of course, is the price of fuel.

If that variable goes up, I am steered toward a more fuel-efficient vehicle, and according to Anthony Perl, I "have the willpower to stick with the program." But apparently I should banish that factor from my spreadsheet if the price of fuel goes down, lest I be steered toward a less fuel-efficient vehicle, and become guilty of a huge characater flaw.

You're being sarcastic, but Dubya took real action toward that end.

Thanks

In fact, legislators have already dealt with this. The law limits the standard workweek to 40 hours (even shorter in France), working overtime is something that's pretty heavily regulated, and child labor laws prohibit all work for kids under 14.

When adults work and earn income, there is less of a need for kids to work and earn income, but the opposite dynamic exists for controlled substances: when adults gain easier access to them, minors also gain easier access to them. (For most of the people who voted for Amendment 64 here in Colorado, that was an unintended consequence; but for some it was very intended -- "power to the babystoners!") Thanks for making points that support my position.

I thought I had made clear that permanent loss of an average of 8 IQ points is too high a price to pay for the freedom to get stoned (a freedom that people who have their sobriety don't even miss). Now I ask again, where do you draw the line?

LOL, I'm in Colorado where voters decided to legalize pot in 2013 -- nominally only for adults -- and as a result use among minors has increased dramatically. That's one of the reasons Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) called the decision "reckless."

Outlawing pot doesn't reduce pot use? LOL, I'm in Colorado where voters decided to legalize pot in 2013, and as a result pot use has increased dramatically. Now if you had said outlawing pot does not eliminate pot use, I would of course agree with you. But if the goal is merely to "reduce," the law certainly can and has accomplished that.

I thought that's what I was advocating. People walking around with an average of 8 IQ points missing makes the community worse off, especially because it makes them more likely to need public assistance. Whether I "approve" of having one's brain in that condition is irrelevant.

Look. Sea level has risen about 400 feet since the end of the last ice age. So if rising sea level causes net loss of beaches, that 400-ft increase would have had a far more devastating effect than the puny rise we've experienced in the last 50 years (about 7 cm). When are people going to stop falling for this AGW fear mongering?

By the way, every species that's alive today, including polar bears, survived that 400-ft sea level increase.

And every species that's alive today has survived dozens of glacial/interglacial alternations (i.e, the coming and going of dozens of ice ages).

Brilliant! We could have less bank-robbery crime by decriminalizing bank robbery. We could have less illegal wiretapping by decriminalizing illegal wiretapping. Those pesky KKK lynchings? Decriminalize them.

Maybe you meant to say, "I wish things that I personally don't have a problem with would be decriminalized."

Pot erased an average of 8 IQ points. And IQ points are becoming a more valuable commodity, as technology eliminates more and more jobs that used to employ unskilled labor.

So the question is, where do you draw the line -- how many IQ points must a substance erase before you're in favor of banning its use -- 30? 80?

The "U3" unemployment rate is downright deceitful; it excludes people who are no longer applying for jobs because they've become discouraged by endless rejections (regardless of whether they became discouraged 2 weeks ago, or 5 years ago). Naturally, U3 is the measure most commonly reported in the mainstream media. As the U3 rate regularly ticks downward because more and more workers become discouraged, it has become rote for the media to release celebratory articles. But more people seem to be waking up to the fact that movements of this number are meaningless outside of the context that explains why it moved.

A true measure of economic health -- which genuinely reflects whether the demand for labor is vigorous or soft -- is the Labor Force Participation Rate (LFPR). It has just fallen to a the lowest value in 36 years. You specifically asked about current prosperity as compared to 10 years ago. You can go here to see a chart showing it's taken a nose dive since 10 years ago: http://static3.businessinsider...

Note that the current LFPR is even worse than it was when the so-called "Misery Index" was at its all-time high (June 1980). And the LFPR is nothing like it was during the boom years of the Clinton Administration.

Our current "booming stock market" is solely a function of the Fed artificially holding interest rates near zero. I.e., the places where "sensible" people traditionally invested money, such as a bank certificate of deposit, are currently not an option unless you're willing to settle for a return that's near zero. (Actually, those near-zero returns are negative, when adjusted for inflation.) That certainly explains why people are pouring a large portion of their savings into the stock market, does it not?

And since you're interested in genuine numbers, I trust you will stop saying that "tens of thousands" died in recent wars. The genuine numbers of combat deaths are: Afghanistan, 1,742; Iraq, 3,527. You have to go back to Vietnam to find a figure in the tens of thousands (47,424).

Has this helped?

In that respect, it's not at all different from Medicaid, food stamps, etc.

That's not at all unusual this century. In this century, Social Security is redistributing income from workers to non-workers at a faster rate than in the previous century. In addition, Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs are now redistributing income to the poor at a faster rate than they did in the 20th century.

Right now, humans make the decisions about what treatments will be denied. That is true in government-run healthcare programs as well as in private health insurance companies. As long as resources continue to be finite, it's a truism that some treatments must be denied. (That is, it will forever be a truism that some treatments must be denied.)

(Ideological tangent: if multiple private insurers compete with each other on the basis of how few treatments they deny, and you can switch to insurer B if you feel insurer A is being too stingy, you're in a good system. If you're covered by a single government-run monopoly and there's nowhere else to turn when their inefficient bureaucracy consumes many of the dollars that should be going toward your treatment, you're in a bad system.)

But in either system, an algorithm could potentially make fairer, more objective decisions than human decisionmakers can.

There's so much wrong with your comment, I hardly know where to begin.

In our current economy, energy is vastly more plentiful and inexpensive than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago. And that's one of the main reasons the economy is much bigger than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago, and the standard of living of the average human is much higher than it was 50, 100, or 300 years ago.