Geoffrey Allan Plauche Archive

Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul Mentioned on NRO's The Corner

June 20, 2007 9:11 AM by Geoffrey Allan Plauche

Rothbard got a favorable mention on a National Review Online blog called The Corner. Ron Paul got a mention in the same post as well, in connection with Rothbard.

About Rothbard, John Derbyshire wrote: "Dunno about you, but the more I contemplate our federal government and its works, the better Murray Rothbard is starting to look." He then quoted from the Wikipedia article on Rothbard: "It was in 1949 that Rothbard first concluded that the free market could provide all services, including police, courts, and defense services better than could the State." And he concluded: "I wouldn't be a bit surprised."

If Derbyshire had stopped there, I'm sure all of us would have been surprised and delighted. Of course, he didn't: "Probably there are limits." After repeating parenthetically a smear disguised as a joke about Rothbard's view of how private lighthouses would be run, we find out that one of those limits might be on immigration.

Click here to read a little more. Hat tip to Liberator Online for bringing this to my attention.

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The T3 Tax: Laying Down the Gauntlet

June 12, 2007 1:49 PM by Geoffrey Allan Plauche

Economist Ross McKitrick, who along with Steve McIntyre played a major role in discrediting Michael Mann's "hockey stick" graph, has an interesting proposal for a carbon emissions tax tied to actual levels of warming. The tax would be linked to tropical troposphere temperatures, which I gather are generally agreed to be "the fingerprint of the CO2 contribution to warming." As McIntyre points out: "If models are wrong and solar or something else is causing climate change, then it would have negligible impact. If models are right, then the tax would go up a lot." On the other hand, if the tropical troposphere temperatures continue to decline as they have since 2002, then the tax would go negative and turn into a subsidy on carbon emissions. Of course, the alarmists are convinced this won't happen so it shouldn't be an obstacle to them endorsing the tax.

For more information read McKitrick's article.

McKitrick has effectively laid down the gauntlet for both skeptics and alarmists by offering them a public policy proposal they both should be able to endorse, since both are convinced it will go their way. Only those of us who have independent moral and practical reasons for opposing any form of tax or subsidy whatsoever should have a good reason for not accepting the challenge.

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