Jim Lakely over at Infinite Monkeys brings our attention to an absurd proposed regulation of the California Air Resources Board that would ban the sale of black cars in California after 2012. The reason? Seems the geniuses over there are making the case that black cars absorb too much heat and make it necessary for people to run their air-conditioners too much and, thereby, consume too much fuel and emit too much carbon. They want to try and force auto companies to produce a kind of black paint that will not absorb so much heat. This ought to be good. Keep watching.
And here’s another one near and dear to my heart . . . a proposed ban from the LA city council on a whole variety of new and modern billboards. Because it’s always a good idea, in a down economy, to make it really, really difficult for people to advertise and sell things. (Full disclosure: Dad makes and sells billboards . . . good ones too!)
By the same logic folks in Alaska will soon be banning white cars...White cars reflect too much heat making causing folks to run the heater more often and longer consuming too much fuel and emiting too much carbon.
Of course folks in Alaska don't have the same methodological ideology, they also have fewer cars, and the car is less of a cultural icon and status symbol on account of having fewer paved roads, island costal cities linked by boat/ferry system, Ice roads that require chains in the winter and jet ski's in the summer and confusing bridges to nowhere.
The car is therefore dearer to the essence of California, than Alaska.
Flashy cars and loud/sexy/catching incredible billboards...give LA its bling and flair...My immage of it is a more striated less and more glamourous Las Vegas with bloods in Compton and mexican gangs, plus Palo Alto and google and Hollywood...beaches, surfing, universities where you can study how to grow weed...but in many mundane respects also a city with all the classical problems discussed in an Urban Economics class...so I expect previous to reading the articles posted that...in a down economy rush hour traffic/congestion in LA decreases...as traffic decreases average speed picks up...as average speed picks up average stopping distance increases...therefore what was once a habit of being able to look at flashy signs in gridlock traffic becomes a problem...some folks pissed off at accidents or near accidents twitter friends about it(nearly causing an accident that is also blammed on billboards) and along with those mad about night pollution(having alaska as an ideal?) petition the city council to do something about billboards. Also I immagine that crime is picking up in Compton...
I also immagine that due to the numbers we are seeing in dropped freight from Japan China and worldwide smuggling drugs into ports in California is getting more difficult(same number of inspectors, less to inspect) driving up domestic drug price, and causing the unemployed to turn to growing more in the emerald triangle(also in California)...also at the same time making smuggling via the mexican border stronger...and strenghening anti-immigration sentiment.
I digress...california may well be loosing it...but if the economy was better california would not be loosing it...the market in other words moves up and down not on the basis of politics per se but on a measurement and assumption about cause and effect on a Macroeconomic picture...to include supposed differences between the culture that exists in LA vs. Juno Alaska...and measurements and inferences derived on the basis of data that adjusts to the ideas folks on Wall Street have about america as a functioning and fluid whole.
Is California going to pot? Well Google is doing alright albeit it had to lay off some workers, on account of growing too fast...but yes California is going to pot, I expect the growth of drug cultivation to increase in the emerald triangle...more activity from the mexican/russian mafia, I expect that Compton will degenerate and more graffiti will show X painted into 0's signifying warfare...yet perhaps the dynamics of having a black president will have inspired hope, and redirect these folks towards aspirations to go to Harvard and become like Obama(a good thing in my world).
So yes Julie I agree that it isn't a good thing for the market to impose new regulations on vehicles...as a car enthusiast I wish americans could buy the full range of cars available world wide without safety or other considerations placed by the politicians...yet this is not the way of California...I don't live there but in rough macroeconomic outline the policies of the governator seem to outline the limits of movement to the right and left.
In some sense I agree that the market decided that Obama could no longer move to the left, but this is largely because the market forms a sort of macroeconomic picture that also in many ways contrains movement to the right. The market predicts and prices in the future of all expected events...it is the Macroeconomic picture par excellence...and the key to beating the market is figureing out what part of the picture is deficient, forecasting what unexpected events will transpire. It isn't enough to say California will go to pot, at what level is it oversold?
Because I am a buyer of California at certain levels(I bought Google, but sold it and it has since climbed higher again!(the first time I wanted to buy it long before it hit the $700 level when it was at $150 but it didn't and it went higher, and I kept thinking...when it falls... that is why you don't time markets but buy and hold...but I am up on the year...I got it at 250 and sold it at 315)...just as you are an even more serious buyer of California by virtue of having skin in the game and voteing with your feet to live there.
Some folks on Wall Street are gearing up to move to New Zealand...so goes the joke/rumor...and if Bush was president for life par the suggestion of Alexander Hamilton, Californians(liberals) would have migrated to Canada(not to bother with antecedent historical events)...and cap and trade won't work if China and India keep poluting...
How or what does Wall Street really think of Obama's plan? It is a question with ramifications for the macroeconomic picture to be sure...but what this macroeconomic picture really looks like...that is the mind of God, not accessible to everyone or anyone in complete form...bits and pieces of puzzles adjusted daily.
I am thinking that I should buy and hold Google, so per the stock market bench mark California can't be all that bad. Still I almost think this rally will fizzle out...at an 8500 level...in other words maybe the market isn't yet pricing in the political picture...it has climbed nicely, maybe too quickly...the market really obeys the dominant mind of the day...but if I am trying to figure out the dominant mind, I know others are trying to figure out what I am thinking is the dominant mind, and I am trying to think that also...eventually I give up and look at reaction to numbers. Or I hypothesize and then confirm...californians dislike billboards because they are driving distractions...they are driving distractions now as opposed to previously because less employment and higher gas prices(albeit no longer) lead to less gridlock...higher speeds...increased stopping distance...more accidents...look for numbers to confirm...or less cargo entering ports=less drugs entering ports=increased prices=greater domestic production(with lag time) or mexico border problems, probably both...if I can predict newsweek or the MSM before they write the story...then I can get ahead of the bounce in sentiment about the macroeconomic picture...but really everyone else is also trying to do this...
If you think like I do then the markets are the best way to go insane...but I was right about the thursday surge and will probably be right on about the mild friday 8k end of week.
John Lewis needs his own blog. As to the original post, for every crazy government regulation, there is an even crazier capitalist wacko so oblivious so as to have prompted the regulations in the first place. Thus we had capitalist wackos thinking they could place electronic billboards by roadsides which a) contributed to the visual pollution of everyday life, and b) distracted drivers with mouthwatering images of half-naked people. Implied in Mrs. Ponzi's original post was the assumption that we ought to make it really really easy for intrusive advertising. The right wing will fight for your freedom, but not your freedom from capitalist intrusions into every sphere of life. Just as I suggested we 'drill baby drill' for oil in right-wing sacred places, like Arlington, so too we should have electronic billboards in the Lincoln Memorial, right on Abe's lap, advertising male-enhancement products. Anything in a down economy.
Ren, you're a...well, I won't say it. Can you point to any successful instance of command economics? Sure capitalists do stupid things (they are human), but competition slowly weeds them out (unless leftist crazies like you prop them up with government subsidies). Government stupidities, on the other hand, are enforced by the monopoly on violence, the courts, the prisons. I do wish people like you would develop some wisdom.
Thank you, Bin.
Bin asks for a 'single instance' of successful command economics. I'll presume he means regulated economics. I guess it depends on what you mean by success, and I certainly do not rely solely on capitalist economists to define that for me. The child porn industry is a billion dollar a year industry. Having strong laws with the goal of totally eradicating the practice is a successful instance of regulated economics. Nor would we ever wait for competition to weed it out. That points precisely to the moral blindspot of the market-capitalist, waiting always and only for abstract markets to make his moral decisions for him. When you said that government stupidities are enforced by the monopoly on violence, the courts, the prisons, like many on the right, you radically over-generalize in your hatred of government. I for one welcome the courts, the prisons, and the police-enforcement of child porn laws.