Ken “My readers are really dumb” Silverstein writes in Forbes:
Now that his days of running for political office are officially over, President Obama is refocusing his efforts on building a next-generation economy that emphasizes the development of newer technologies and cleaner energy production. As such, the American public can expect him to deny the Keystone XL Pipeline…
Good point. I hadn’t thought of that!
See USSR and People’s Republic of China, 20thC.
Side note: the louder a nation proclaims itself “democratic”, “republic” or “people’s”, the less it is of each. The ultimate being the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Possibly the world’s most commanded economy, with a tiny number who live well and tens of millions in squalor and under mind control.
Since the leprechauns have to come from Ireland, perhaps that’s the reason for immigration reform…
Well said.
An ‘economy’ is by definition the collective transactional activity of a statistically significant number of people. No single person or group of people, or even a Supercomputer with SOTA AI programming, could possibly account for all such transactions in a deterministic way, let alone anticipate the actions of individuals who engage in creative activities exempt from the laws of statistics.
All efforts to ‘manage’ an economy are doomed to failure in the sense that the planned objectives will be unachievable. At the very least (and at the very most) these efforts will create disruption, which will cause discomfort or misery for some and provide exploitation opportunities for economic predation.
President Obama is focusing his efforts on fairy tales and constant campaigning. He will endorse anything–leprechauns running treadmills for energy–if he thinks enough stupid people will believe. He stands for nothing–he’s a film-flam artist who is living high off the Americans stupid enough to re-elect him. He can build nothing, fix nothing, accomplish nothing outside of his own edification.
“President Obama is refocusing his efforts on building a next-generation economy that emphasizes the development of newer technologies and cleaner energy production.”
Silverstein believes that economies can be built by a president. Even incompetent ones.
“As such, the American public can expect him to deny the Keystone XL Pipeline…”
He already did. January 2012.
Obama understands history, economics and geopolitics equally well. That’s why I voted for other people.
A “next-generation” economy is always evolving. When new energy sources are less costly to develop and use, they have a smaller environmental affect and people adopt them by choice. Motor transport has less environmental impact and more economic value than horse-drawn transport. That’s the real win-win.
There’s a place for government regulation in environmental issues. I doubt we’d have removed lead from gasoline or put on soot limits entirely voluntarily. Government regulation needs to be considered rationally, cost and benefit. When applied “for the children” or “for Mother Earth” or “for your own good”, it’s always tyranny and usually foolish.