Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Economic Inefficiency as Damning Evidence....

By Fester:

The United States massively and expensively subsidizes local sugar production which means consumers pay higher prices and my soft drinks don't taste quite as good as they could.  We do this because of domestic political constraints and interest group politics that lock in preferential treatment to small, vocal and wealthy groups who are able to scream far louder for concentrated benefits than the mere murmurs from the vast majority of people who are minimally harmed by this policy. 

It is a stupid policy, but there is a rational explanation for the policy that is rooted in internal domestic politics.  There are plenty of policies that are less than economically efficient but make ideological or political sense. 

Dave Schuler is arguing that economic inefficiency is an indictment on Iranian nuclear ambitions:

Finally, while Iran has a right to pursue the peaceful application of nuclear energy doing so to maintain energy independence makes little sense
and it�s a waste of Iran�s resources to do so. They can get more
results for less money simply by modernizing their oil production
facilities.


National prestige projects, of which nuclear energy is one, rarely have to pass cost benefit analysis.  It would be far more efficient for Iran to open up its entire energy sector to foreign investment and control, but there are strong ideological constraints that prevents this from happening.  It would be more efficient for the US Navy to buy foreign designed and built corvettes but ideological and political constraints prevent this as well.

Dave assembles a bit more evidence to argue against peaceful Iranian nuclear intentions, and that evidence is more convincing, but the economic efficiency angle is damn weak. 



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3 comments:

  1. Peter G.June 2, 2009 at 11:32 AM

    I'm surprised you didn't mention the chief reason for those ridiculous sugar subsidies. They were designed mainly to screw Cuba.

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  2. Peter G.June 2, 2009 at 12:46 PM

    I confess that at one time Schuler's argument carried a certain amount of weight with me. I considered Iran's massive hydrocarbon reserves and their limited low grade uranium reserves as arguing against the reality of their program being for energy production. After a certain amount of to-ing and fro-ing with Steve and a certain amount of link following I came to believe that this program is exactly what it seems: a nuclear power program. The Iranians are known for taking a long view of things and, in retrospective, investing in such a power development program makes sense when you actually have the resources to finance it and not when you start to run low on conventional resources. It doesn't hurt me to admit that I very much believe in nuclear power as a non-greenhouse gas producing energy alternative. I see no reason the Iranians shouldn't think so too.

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  3. Steve HyndJune 2, 2009 at 3:38 PM

    Back in the Shah's time, Rummie backed nuclear power for Iran on purely economic grounds - it was argued that all that oil generated more economic growth as foreign currency than as fuel for power stations. Rummie gave Iran it's first reactor.
    On this one, I'd say Rumsfield was right, and that the argument still makes sense.
    Regards, Steve

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