Letters To Troubled Youth - Excerpt 4: Just Stop Idiocy

One of my little ‘work in progress’ side projects is an epistolary called Letters To Troubled Youth. It’s a mix of good cop, bad cop letter writing, aimed at the younger generation, warning them about all the highly damaging nonsense they are letting in to their souls, and encouraging them of the greater rewards found in more rigorous truthseeking. I might share the occasional excerpt as a blog post on its own stranding.

Excerpt 4 – taken from Letter 20: Just Stop Idiocy

In an old blog post from about 10 years ago, about the costs of terrorism, I once calculated the less obvious but still significant associative costs in terms the millions of hours of time robbed from innocent citizens having to have extra security checks, extra queuing, etc. And this should be brought to mind with the Just Stop Oil lunatics right now. It’s not just the mere inconvenience and stupidity of holding up sports events for a few minutes – it’s that event organisers will respond by imposing much more rigorous checks on spectators/customers on entrance.

Once you calculate how many thousands of wasted hours and robbed time that will amount to every year for innocent citizens (on top of all the other costs associated with blocking roads, destroying property, wasting police resources, court time, and so forth), it becomes obvious to me that these stupid, destructive acts should incur a mandatory prison sentence for the offenders. The only way to stop it is to properly disincentivise with punishments commensurate with the costs.

Just Stop Oil members, especially the under 25s, think of themselves as rebels, engaging in freedom fighting to win a climate war against the bogeymen of capitalism. In reality, they are doing nothing new - their absurd behaviour resembles every other former cult and lunatic fringe group that has ever existed, and its members have fallen for the same old con tricks, skewed narratives and suppression of intellect that has bedevilled every cult group that preceded it.

As someone who has listened to their arguments, observed their behaviour, and even spent time with them, it's easy to recognise the same patterns as we see in just about every other crazy sect. You see the inadequate ways they present their arguments, the underlying incentives, the need for attention and to be accepted and listened to, the psychopathology that underwrites their paranoid mindset, and the credulity with which they uncritically swallow up any old nonsense. Once you've seen one of them, you've seen most of them; and once you've seen most of them, it's easy to spot the next one.

But these Just Stop Oil chumps don't just emerge from a vacuum - they are the natural result of a world in which the majority of the most powerful and influential people are so power hungry, self-interested, narcissistic, narrow-minded and short-termist that you can't actually believe they get away with it, and elicit such widespread support for their actions. On top of that, the media drives the continuation of the elite's top down influence, and social media and our education system ensures that young people are caught in the net from the earliest age possible. This is the birthing pool for insane groups like Just Sop Oil, and numerous others like them - the world has been so misdirected by the magician's sleight of hand tricks that they have missed what the hand does while focusing on the deck of cards.

Climate alarmism is another of the conjurer's classic misdirection tricks - by averting your eyes towards the distraction, they make you lose sight of what's fully happening. The tactics are the same as ever; they get you fixed on costs while ignoring benefits; they stir you up with virtue signalling and guilt-trip with bogus ethical proclamations; they grossly exaggerate the negatives and ignore the positives - while all the time many of the most powerful organisations and political establishments continually lodge supporting information in their brains to the point where the truth becomes so abstruse that few know how to find it, and where to even start looking. You'll have noticed how the biased mainstream media and social commentators get everyone focused on images of floods, wildfires, struggling animals in the wild, as though that's the whole picture. This is the magician's sleight of hand again; he wants you to be distracted by the small picture so you miss the bigger picture.

The behaviour and misjudgements of groups like Just Stop Oil are not original or unique, and the provenance of the misguided rhetoric they spew out is easy to analyse once you realise that what they do typifies the same patterns seen in countless other groups just like them, in a world that is run by people who readily implant this stuff into their minds for their own personal gain. It would be quite boring pattern recognition, were it not such a damn nuisance.

 

Letters To Troubled Youth - Excerpt 3: Climate Extremism: A Waste of Energy

One of my little ‘work in progress’ side projects is an epistolary called Letters To Troubled Youth. It’s a mix of good cop, bad cop letter writing, aimed at the younger generation, warning them about all the highly damaging nonsense they are letting in to their souls, and encouraging them of the greater rewards found in more rigorous truthseeking. I might share the occasional excerpt as a blog post on its own stranding.

Excerpt 3 - taken from Letter 17: Climate Extremism: A Waste of Energy:

“My definition of a climate extremist is someone who doesn’t understand the straightforward cost-benefit analyses associated with climate change. These days there are probably more climate extremists than not. My definition of a climate alarmist is someone who does the selfish, immoral and ridiculous things we see associated with groups like Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain and Just Stop Oil. Under the above definitions, all climate alarmists are climate extremists, but not all climate extremists are climate alarmists.

The cost-benefit analyses associated with climate change are easy to comprehend from an economist’s perspective. There are costs and benefits to our industrial activity, and there are costs of both action and inaction to climate change. It’s only by assessing these costs and benefits that we should decide the right balance between action and inaction. Alas, as far as I can see, almost nobody in politics, in the media or in the general populace is doing this properly.

What makes this neglect even worse is that, a lot of the time, people calling for climate action seem to confuse costs with benefits and benefits with costs. For example, cheap energy should be seen as a benefit, not as cost; and green jobs should be seen as a cost not a benefit. Green taxes are more of a cost than a benefit, and most of our use of carbon energy up to the present day has been a benefit not a cost. Virtually all taxpayer-funded or public climate action is a cost not a benefit, and virtually all climate inaction is a benefit not a cost. In economics, calling something a cost does not mean we think it shouldn’t happen. But confusing a cost with a benefit (and vice-versa) only confuses the problems we are attempting to solve – a problem that’s exacerbated when groups involved in the discussion begin with perverse and skewed incentives.

I’ve never believed that the majority of people who are extremists on a particular matter really care about that matter deep down; the cause, I believe, is merely a proxy for other incentives around group identity, a sense of purpose and belonging, and the self-congratulation associated with virtue signalling. For example, proclaimed socialists tend to overlook the economic principles that do most for poor people; proclaimed feminists tend to remain silent on things in society (like Islam) that oppress women most strongly; and climate extremists are uninterested in almost everything that doesn’t involve the absurd train wreck of net zero.

If climate extremists really did care about reducing carbon emissions in a way that wasn’t catastrophic for the global economy, they would have much more regard for the rapidly expanding technological innovations (like AI, digital, carbon capturing, ambient air capture, ocean fertilisation, afforestation, space reflectors, etc) that are helping solve carbon problems, more regard for current alternative energy options (like nuclear and gas), and more concern about the carbon footprint of the renewable technologies they purport to advocate. Geoengineering is still in its relative infancy, and that, and numerous other technological and scientific advancements, are going to do more to solve the problems of climate change than any of us can currently foresee.

People who are willing to cause harm and misery to citizens going about their business on a daily basis, but who are wholly uninterested in the above, show you everything you need to know about their real motives, I would humbly suggest.”

 

Letters To Troubled Youth - Excerpt 2: Climate Extremism: A Waste of Energy

 

One of my little ‘work in progress’ side projects is an epistolary called Letters To Troubled Youth. It’s a mix of good cop, bad cop letter writing, aimed at the younger generation, warning them about all the highly damaging nonsense they are letting in to their souls, and encouraging them of the greater rewards found in more rigorous truthseeking. I might share the occasional excerpt as a blog post on its own stranding.

Excerpt 2 – taken from Letter 17: Climate Extremism: A Waste of Energy

“Let's go back to basics in economics. For any quantity of a good or service, there is a demand price and a supply price. The demand price is the price at which consumers want to consume, and the supply price is the price at which suppliers want to sell. There is only one quantity for which the demand price and the supply price are in equilibrium. If external forces are acting so that consumers are paying less than the demand price, competition among consumers will bid up the price; or if suppliers are receiving more than the supply price, competition among suppliers will push down the price. For that one quantity of good or service whereby the demand price and the supply price are in equilibrium, competitive forces must be acting optimally with no external interference in the price system. When the quantity is lower than equal, the demand price will be higher than the supply price; when the quantity is higher than equal, the demand price will be lower than the supply price.

Lots of external factors contribute to or act upon the price system to offset the logic outlined above - taxes, price controls, subsidies, queues, shortages, over-consumption, social costs, product waste, and so forth -  and it is only a relatively free trade and competitive forces that ensure that suppliers receive the desired supply price and demanders pay the desired demand price (remember, this optimal measurement is measured at the margin). The important corollary here is that when the above conditions are met, the quantity is the only unique quantity at which the demand and supply prices are optimally set at the equilibrium.

If you understand the logic behind why optimal prices are contingent upon supply and demand, you also understand that prices act as vital information signals, and that they are all inextricably connected to each other. The price of chocolate biscuits for supplier A is driven by what suppliers B, C and D sell them for, but also by the price of jam doughnuts, cream cakes, fruit and cereal. The price of your cinema ticket, your railway ticket, your blue suit, your Asus laptop, and so forth, is driven by the millions of substitutes (of the same kind and different alternatives) available in the marketplace. And if you understand all those things, you can apply the same logic to other areas of human incentives and behaviour.

If all the above is making sense, we can turn this on to the subject of climate change. For the past 150 years, humans have seen a progression-explosion in terms of material wealth and increased living standards, and that has been primarily driven by capitalism and science. The engine that has fuelled this great enrichment has been the harnessing of cheap, affordable energy. Globally, the predominant cheap, affordable energy has been fossil fuels, and it still will be for the foreseeable future. Pretty much everything that drives the economy and helps prices stay close to equilibrium involves fossil fuels (either directly or indirectly). It will be good when we have found alternatives to fossil fuels (or offsetting techniques) that meet all the criteria for optimality I laid out earlier, and we are doing that, and will do it at an even more expansive rate in the future - but right now, we are not advanced enough to dispense with all fossil fuels or reach the point of so-called 'net zero'.

Given that climate change agendas never involve the kind of language, logic or arguments I've outlined above, it should be evident for any who still need convincing that the climate 'net zero' project is miles short of the requisite level of sound reasoning or understanding of the full complexity of the reality - it is a socio-political project driven by narrow self-interest, fear and tribalism. If we can't yet do without fossil fuels, and if a significant proportion of the world's population still requires them to a) continue to build up their industry and advance further on their journey of progression to higher living standards, b) purchase them most optimally in accordance with the price system's information signals, and c) not have the price of their most demanded natural resources bid up artificially by self-serving, narrow-minded politicians, then what the climate extremists are imposing is absurd, unrealistic, selfish, harmful and immoral. Anyone can oversimplify the world and make ridiculous demands on politicians that sadly seem all-too keen to accede to the madness - but it has very little basis in reality, and pays almost no proper regard for how the world actually works and the complex considerations attached to these propositions.”

Letters To Troubled Youth - Excerpt 1: Low Calibre Leaders & Low Calibre Environmentalism

One of my little ‘work in progress’ side projects is an epistolary called Letters To Troubled Youth. It’s a mix of good cop, bad cop letter writing, aimed at the younger generation, warning them about all the highly damaging nonsense they are letting in to their souls, and encouraging them towards the greater rewards found in more rigorous truthseeking. I might share the occasional excerpt as a blog post on its own stranding.

Excerpt 1 – taken from Letter 18: Low Calibre Leaders & Low Calibre Environmentalism:

“I think the only genuinely realistic hope of awakening the modern folk from their sleep is for them to fall in love with the truth that good ideas and interconnectedness are the most vital of combinations for progressive problem-solving. Because the reality is, ideas come together in an exchange, and they evolve and mutate far faster than any physical limitation that can retard them. The combinatorial search space of ideas is far vaster, broader and deeper than any other combinatorial system in the physical world (certainly in the Newtonian world). 

The global population is like one big problem-solving collective - it does not go about its business as though the world is going to stay the same; it works on the basis that problems, like climate ones, usually (though not always) work on steady arithmetical ratios, whereas the human ability to solve these problems usually works on geometrical ratios. That is why progression tends to work at an exponential rate - it's the exchange of ideas at an increasing pace, and the more people there are to exchange those ideas, the more readily we can combine to create this explosion of problem-solving relative to problems themselves. But that involves a kind of freedom that so many are keen to retard.

The reason that politicians are of such low intellectual calibre is because they are selected to represent an electorate of low intellectual calibre. For example, extreme left wing voters tend to be of a lower intellectual calibre than more central left wing voters, which is why extreme left wing politicians are more likely to be of an extraordinarily low intellectual calibre (think Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Cabinet as prime examples). But why is the electorate of such low intellectual calibre when it comes to understanding politics well enough to vote in better politicians? Oh, that’s easy too – it’s because being highly competent and well-informed comes at a cost – you have to put in a lot of time and effort to understand any subject well. With politics, the cost incurred for being politically astute confers only a tiny benefit in terms of election outcomes, because only a fraction of the benefit of good political policies goes to you. Just as you wouldn’t spend £500 of costs to gain £2 of benefit, similarly, you won’t see much personal benefit in becoming a well-informed member of the electorate. That’s not a reason not to become well-informed – there are many other benefits to it – but it’s a reason why the vast majority of people do not become politically well informed; the costs are just not worth it to them.

The above also extends into other more specific socio-political areas. For example, this has particularly detrimental societal effects when it comes to things like climate change. There has been a systematic attempt by politicians, the establishment and the media to have the population believe that we are in a climate crisis. They do this in three primary ways: by appealing to our desire for drama, by appealing to our desire to congratulate ourselves, and by appealing to our desire to belong in mutually affiliated tribal groups. The proposition that we will use our collective ingenuity to solve climate problems is not as dramatic or as interesting as the spectre of climate catastrophe. It is the latter that generates sales, subscriptions and clicks. So-called climate justice makes the adherents feel good about themselves, because they get to indulge in moral posturing and sententious mutual back-slapping. And climate alarmism brings people together for a common cause that satisfies their social need to be accepted and validated within a tribal group.

The upshot is, irrespective of whether these views are based on truth and facts or not - what people claim to believe, how they conduct themselves, and the actions they take are largely driven by narratives that give meaning and purpose to their life, motivations that help them feel good about themselves, and causes that make them feel part of a tribal group and give them a sense of belonging. Climate alarmism has replaced Christianity as the national religion, which is why, apart from a few exceptional cases, most climate alarmists are not Christians.

The other thing about extreme environmentalism – or climate lunacy in some cases - is that it is what large parts of economic socialism has morphed into; especially now that only the economically uninformed have any belief in socialism as a viable form of politics, and history has repeatedly shown its failings and its culpability in the cause of human suffering. Deep down I think virtually all socialists always knew how foolish socialism is – they advocated it like those in the Asch conformity tests, being swayed by the wrong answer even though they suspected it wasn’t right. Most extreme environmentalists are still socialists, of course - but extreme environmentalism enables red socialists to turn green, and espouse a cause that is still relatively contemporary in human history, and not as widely and historically discredited as socialism has been.

What extreme environmentalism lacks in terms of a balanced, intelligent set of considerations, it gains in the form of a sense of group identity and belonging, a perceived ethical cause, self-congratulation and a Gaia-type idol to act as a religious substitute. Without those four things, it is hard to fathom how anyone could adopt such foolish beliefs and behave in such a selfish, narrow-minded and intellectually bankrupt way – but those four substitutes for reason and critical thinking have always proved powerfully seductive for leftists, and that will likely remain the case whether the colour is red or green.”