I am a big fan of the concept of externalized costs - that businesses should pay for costs that society bears due to their doing business. It's amazing how much people don't seem to get this concept in general - they know that Peanut Company of America should pay for releasing Salmonella tainted Peanut Butter, but requiring coal fired power plants to compensate for the costs of dealing with the pollution from those plants is clearly a move towards gasp SOCIALISM. Rachel Maddow did an excellent job of putting the coals to the feet of Duke Energy CEO James Rogers, I decided I like it so much I blogged about it, gaining me a new fanclub!
I have a self-congratulatory and self-flagellating blog called "Holier than You". Last night I put in a quickie post on Maddow's segment on Duke Energy. I thought she did a very good job of pinning him on Duke's benefit from externalized costs without using a lot of jargon - "You've made a lot of money putting pollution in the air, shouldn't you have to pay" basically.
Now typically, the only comments on my blog are from friends. Google analytics shows the most traffic I get is for an entry I did on how I fixed my iPhone, and it's not leading to any ancillary traffic, just people finding the page through Google search for "I dented my Iphone and now the button is stuck". Apparently a brand new baby blogger "All4Profit" did a google search for 'Rachel Maddow Duke Energy" or something (I'll know tomorrow when the next report comes in) and dropped in a comment. I'm pretty sure he's not a regular reader :)
Anyway, I found the exchange amusing enough that I decided to self-promote my self-flagellation over at DailyKos. Wingnuts - argh.
It may surprise you to learn that business, like dry cleaners, tool and die makers, airlines and power companies operate in order to make a profit. Yes. I was as floored as you probably are right now when I found out that people who own companies are actually making money from producing products that people want.
My 12 year old boy asked me if he was lucky to live in a country where he has the right to pursue the dream of, perhaps, someday owning a big company, like a power company or an airline. I told him that not only was it his right, but that with hard work and dedication and a commitment to personal excellence, that dream would someday be a reality. I explained that the chances for his success increase everyday.
With every day that passes, his peers are being subjected to the philosophy that aspiring to such greatness is a greedy, evil undertaking. Everyday, children his age, the very children that he will someday compete against in the real-world job market are being indoctrinated to think that the glutenous act of running a profitable business, pales next to the sort of prosperity, security and comfort that can only be provided by the federal government.
Those children will be whining about how greedy the rich are, even though their heroes will be just like today's rich, greedy hippocrates with heavy "carbon footprints" (Oprah, Alec Baldwin, George Soros, Katie Couic, Matt Lauer etc..). So, while my son is staking his claim in tomorrows job market, yours will be curled up in the fetal position and hoping for more change.
God Bless America... and the founding principles that made her great.
which was mostly verbatim from his new blog with one entry "To Rachel Maddow". I guess he's MAD AS HELL AND HE'S NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
My response.
All4Profit - I assume that your response is mostly cut and paste from the Rush Limbaugh Form Letter Factory - posted on your blog and then crossposted to anyone discussing Maddow. Given you've picked this particular topic you are probably some Power company Sock puppet who knows all this stuff and doesn't care - but I'll respond anyway.
I find it very amusing that the dittoheads have latched onto Rush's party line that "Democrat" is code for "Socialist/Communist". Far from the truth. Wall Street may be the den of capitalism, but Silicon Valley is definitely the Summer Home of Capitalism, and that is where I ply my trade as a semiconductor engineer - which is a pretty lucrative gig that affords me a lot of nice things. A battered economy is very bad for me - because we make a pretty high end product that sells great in good times, not so much in bad times. And while I could fall back on Organic Gardening, I'm not very good at it because I make enough money making computer chips that I can just buy those high falutin veggies from Whole Paycheck. Fritz shares my vocation, but he also uses some ten cent words like "externalized", let me make it more clear.
Now my company produces Graphics Microprocessors - the byproduct of which is some of the nastiest, most toxic, unpronouncable goop known to man. We spend a LOT of money making sure that this ooze does not make it out of the factory in raw form. We'd make a heck of a lot more profit if we just dumped it in your backyard, but you'd be dead of cancer before your son's graduation from Junior High (of course he'd be dead too). Cleaning up our crap is a cost of doing business - if we can't make a profit without doing so, we don't have a valid business model.
Maybe Semiconductors are too esoteric. So let's imagine I own a Peanut Butter Factory. Now one thing about Peanuts, you have to fertilizer those things and sometimes little creepy bugs get into the peanut butter, things that can KILL you. But if I find a batch of Peanut Butter with Salmonella, I have to throw it out or people will die. But that impacts my profit margin, so I just ship it anyway. Not only do people die, but the FDA spends millions of dollars trying to track down the source. Hundreds of companies are adversely affected by the recall - affecting their profits and costing thousands of jobs, but what do I care - I just declare Chapter 7 (costing my employees their jobs) and run off to the Bahamas.
You make a mess, you clean it up, you pay. My Dad - who voted Republican - taught me that lesson and I believe it. If Duke can't make a profit on electricity despite paying carbon caps, they should go out of business. Darwinism - the Social kind that maybe you believe in.
Dad also taught me to tell the truth and be honest. The Duke Energy CEO is being a coward. Maddow pinned him down and he said "This will cause us to raise prices and hurt our customers" when the truth is "This will cause us to raise prices, people will use less electricity and we'll make less money". I might have some modicum of respect for the guy if he had the balls to just say "This hurts our bottom line so we're against it" instead of throwing out a bunch of spin.