Celebrity News Today: Think Ignorance, Part 2 (Powerlineblog.com)

Wednesday, 2 March 2011

Think Ignorance, Part 2 (Powerlineblog.com)

(John)

Last night young Lee Fang, in-house video editor at the web site Think
Progress, went on another hysterical rant against Koch Industries, one of
America's finest and most successful companies. Like yesterday's failed
effort, today's screed tells us nothing at all about Koch Industries, but a
great deal about the shortcomings of young Mr. Fang and his colleagues at
Think Progress.

Today's subject was the environment. Think Progress accuses Koch of being a
polluter, and argues that the company's support for groups that advocate
weighing costs against benefits in environmental regulation is self-
interested. Once again, young Mr. Fang has revealed that he doesn't understand
how the world works. Before getting to the specifics of his indictment, two
broader points are in order.

First, as long as environmental regulations are enforced even-handedly, how
stringent they are makes little or no difference to the industrial concerns
that are subject to them. The costs, whatever they may be, are ordinarily
passed on to consumers. If cost/benefit analyses are not done, or are done but
ignored, and as a result, excessive, wasteful regulations are imposed, the
refinery doesn't suffer. The consumer does.

In fact, over-regulation often benefits established companies. Environmental
extremism has ...

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