Winning the Disgrace Race

by Will Wilkinson on September 30, 2009

More excellence in blogging from Kevin (Angus) Grier:

[Thomas Friedman's] argument is that “Red China has decided to become Green China” and since (according to him) going green is a zero sum game, they are going to bury stupid dumb corrupt America under a green on red avalanche:

Unfortunately, we’re still not racing. It’s like Sputnik went up and we think it’s just a shooting star. Instead of a strategic response, too many of our politicians are still trapped in their own dumb-as-we-wanna-be bubble, where we’re always No. 1…

There are, as you might imagine, a few problems with his argument. First off, he has no evidence that China has actually decided to go green. He mentions exactly two things. (1) An American “solar equipment maker” has opened a research center in China, and (2) A Chinese solar panel manufacturer told him that the party secretary of the town where the company is located told the Chinese business man that he wanted the party to support the business.

Oh my!

Even dumber than the notion that China, the world’s biggest polluter, has gone green is the notion that going green is a zero sum competition. Friedman doesn’t even try to argue for this point, he simply assumes it as self evident.

Friedman does find another idiot to quote here:

“If they invest in 21st-century technologies and we invest in 20th-century technologies, they’ll win,” says David Sandalow, the assistant secretary of energy for policy.

Oh my!

He then concludes, in classic stupidest man fashion, by completely undercutting his argument:

Of course, China will continue to grow with cheap, dirty coal, to arrest over-eager environmentalists and to strip African forests for wood and minerals. Have no doubt about that. But have no doubt either that, without declaring it, China is embarking on a new, parallel path of clean power deployment and innovation. It is the Sputnik of our day. We ignore it at our peril.

My conclusion: Thomas Friedman is a prime challenger for the position of stupidest man alive. We ignore him at our comedic peril.

It seems like he really thinks there’s a race!

Let’s add this paragraph from a previous Friedman plea for state subsidies to his friends’ alt-energy boondoggles:

If you read some of the anti-green commentary today, you’ll often see sneering references to “green jobs.” The phrase is usually in quotation marks as if it is some kind of liberal fantasy or closet welfare program (and as if coal, oil and nuclear don’t get all kinds of subsidies). Nonsense. In 2008, more silicon was consumed globally making solar panels than microchips…

Hee!!!

  • I still have no idea why anyone lets Thomas Friedman get away with publishing... most of his commentary is completely inane.
  • Trust me, there is a race for the Stupidest Man Alive title. He, like Friedman, worked for ... anyone? anyone? the NYT and his name is ... anyone? anyone? Ben Stein.
  • BorlaugRules
    This is the second anti-Friedman post I've read since I started reading this blog.

    I guess I get the antipathy toward Friedman himself -- the guy's style doesn't particularly annoy me, but I see how it could be annoying to someone else.

    I definitely don't, however, understand the antipathy toward his hobby-horse, that America should invest in R&D in new energy investment. Why is this a bad idea? Or, more specifically, what is liberaltarian about opposing it?
  • Sigivald
    Well, there's nothing wrong with people choosing to research whatever they think will be useful or profitable.

    If "America" is the US Government, it's a bad idea for "America" to invest in it because the State is bad at doing so efficiently, and the private sector has roughly equal incentives and much more flexibility and plenty of money.

    If "America" means the private sector, nobody's opposing that... but neither is Friedman suggesting it.

    Put like that, I imagine the libertarian case against it is fairly obvious, since "energy" is not one of the core responsibilities of government, uniquely appropriate to government action (like military spending).

    (What "liberaltarian" means beyond "I want libertarians to be modern liberals even if that doesn't make any intellectual sense", I don't know.

    I presume you don't mean classical liberalism blended with libertarianism, because I don't see how that would be relevant or how it makes libertarianism any different.)
  • Sigivald
    In 2008, more silicon was consumed globally making solar panels than microchips…

    Is that supposed to impress us for some reason other than that solar panel production has been ridiculously and stupidly incentivized?

    I'm not aware of a planet inhabited by human beings where solar is actually competitive for anything but installations in the middle of nowhere, off the power grid; thus it is a "closet welfare program" in a way that coal, oil, and nuclear power most definitely are not.

    (The idea that nuclear power is "subsidized" in the United States is... I don't even have words for what that is, that are fit to publish. Nuclear power is being kept down in the US by government action, not encouraged!)
  • Maybe you can help me out here. Friedman et al. are asserting that vast numbers of "green jobs" can be created, most of them in the green energy sector. Presumably, these jobs come at the expense of job losses in the carbon energy sector. But we're still being told that the job expansion will be enough to jump-start the whole economy. Meanwhile, we'll have four or five times the labor force providing about the same amount of energy, right?

    So, doesn't this mean that prices have to at least double or treble per unit energy to cover the extra labor costs? And doesn't that mean that the rest of the economy goes in the tank, erasing several times over the benefits of any green job growth?

    Or is the whole green jobs thing just a bunch of nonsense?
  • paulopinion
    Just remember that Mr. Friedman instructed us on how the "reasonably enlightened" one-party utopia known as China is leading the way on all things green a few weeks ago. I have to admit that Tom has much more education and a far broader vocabulary than I possess. I just get the feeling that he's like an accountant on steroids - great with an adding machine, could probably do a bang-up job on your tax returns, but a poor judge of carbon units (and federal government).
  • CraigMcGillivary
    Yeah Tom Friedman isn't exactly making intelligent arguments. That said there are huge negative external costs associated with CO2. It would be nice if libertarians would recognize that government is not the only threat to liberty. Without government you get roving bands of murdering thugs. Likewise if government does nothing about global warming people will produce massive amounts of CO2 and totally destroy our planets ecosystem.
  • kevin
    It would be nice if left-wingers would not demand that libertarians affirm that they don't think every government action is an unmitigated evil every time they post a criticism of the stupid arguments of morons like T. Friedman. Especially since Will has been so clear that he approves of many government actions.

    Imagine if every time you criticized some libertarian's flawed arguments, a thousand people screamed "ADMIT THAT MARKETS AREN"T ALWAYS A THREAT TO LIBERTY!"
  • y81
    Does Mr. Wilkinson consider himself a "liberaltarian"? To me, he seems a real, thoroughgoing libertarian. That is, he isn't merely a sex-and-drugs libertarian in the Reason/Megan McArdle mode, or merely a "hate George Bush but like markets a little better than most liberals" type like Jim Henley, but someone who actually believes in far-ranging human freedom from state coercion. (Which doesn't mean that I agree with Mr. Wilkinson, since I'm not a libertarian, merely that I recognize his consistency and coherency.)
  • uknowbetter
    Who is this Thomas Friedman person? Everything he says or writes should be completely and totally ignored until he lives in China for 5 years.

    He wants to run his mouth about how great China is yet he won't back it up and move there. Until he does, he doesn't exist in my eyes.
  • Barry
    TheFieryScribe :

    "Trust me, there is a race for the Stupidest Man Alive title. He, like Friedman, worked for ... anyone? anyone? the NYT and his name is ... anyone? anyone? Ben Stein."

    Add to that Donald Luskin, James Glassman, Kevin Hassett, and of course, Casey 'Nothing to Worry About' Mulligan (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/10/opinion/10mul...).

    But still, I vote for Mustache Man, on the grounds of his strong record of hammering out multiple stupid columns every single week, year after year, decade after decade.
  • Eric Auld
    Will, I noticed Real Clear Politics linked to your article in the Week! I consider that a big deal. Congratulations!
blog comments powered by Disqus

View My Stats