No matter which side of the Global Warming debate you're on (fun fact: there's actually five sides), you have to admit that this is pretty funny. The day before Obama is supposed to arrive in Copenhagen to discuss how we can "solve" the climate change problem, the city has been hit by four inches of snow.
Maybe you're saying to yourself: four inches doesn't sound like much. Copenhagen is in Denmark, which is part of Scandinavia, and it's always cold and snowy there, right?
Not so fast. Unlike Norway or Sweden, Denmark is known for rather mild winters. According to the BBC, Copenhagen's average temperature in December is between 34 and 40 (Fahrenheit). The country has not had a "white Christmas" (as defined by the Denmark Meteorological Institute) for 14 years, and has only had seven in the past century.
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BBC. Show all posts
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
A Deserving Nobel Prize Winner
With all the hoopla surrounding President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, we should not lose sight of the other award winners who have actually done something to earn their Prize. In the case of Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics this year, that means proving that normal people are actually better at solving complicated economic problems than politicians and bureaucrats.
Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, and the 24th American to win that award since 1980. But it's what she did to earn the Prize that's really cool.
The Nobel selection committee had this to say:
"Elinor Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes."
In other words, free people work things out. Ostrom has shown that people who have a direct interest in solving problems do a better job than governmental agencies that follow prevailing theories on conflict of interest. Not only do they do a better job of handling disputes, but they produce more successful outcomes.
John Stossel takes a deeper look:
"Ostrom's work concentrates on common-pool resources (CPR) like pastures and fisheries. Policymakers assume that such situations are plagued by free-rider problems, where all individuals have a strong incentive to use the resource to the fullest and no incentive to invest in order to enhance it. Analysts across the political spectrum theorize that only bureaucrats or owners of privatized units can efficiently manage such resources.
Few scholars actually venture into the field to see what people actually do when faced with free-rider problems. Ostrom did. It turns out that free people are not as helpless as the theorists believed...
...Not only is government help often not needed, Ostrom says it usually screws things up because bureaucrats operate in an ivory tower ignorant of the local customs and the specific resource.
Political theorists assume away the problems of political control, but the problems are real. There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right. Unlike bureaucrats, they bear the costs of their mistakes."
It just makes sense, doesn't it? When people need to solve a problem, they usually do. But in this era of government-rides-to-the-rescue-again, it's great to see people like Dr. Ostrom (political scientist at Indiana University) rewarded for defending freedom. The 10-million Swedish kronor prize -- about $1.4 million -- that she'll share with University of California professor Oliver Williamson must be pretty sweet too.
Ostrom is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics, and the 24th American to win that award since 1980. But it's what she did to earn the Prize that's really cool.
The Nobel selection committee had this to say:
"Elinor Ostrom has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes, and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes."
In other words, free people work things out. Ostrom has shown that people who have a direct interest in solving problems do a better job than governmental agencies that follow prevailing theories on conflict of interest. Not only do they do a better job of handling disputes, but they produce more successful outcomes.
John Stossel takes a deeper look:
"Ostrom's work concentrates on common-pool resources (CPR) like pastures and fisheries. Policymakers assume that such situations are plagued by free-rider problems, where all individuals have a strong incentive to use the resource to the fullest and no incentive to invest in order to enhance it. Analysts across the political spectrum theorize that only bureaucrats or owners of privatized units can efficiently manage such resources.
Few scholars actually venture into the field to see what people actually do when faced with free-rider problems. Ostrom did. It turns out that free people are not as helpless as the theorists believed...
...Not only is government help often not needed, Ostrom says it usually screws things up because bureaucrats operate in an ivory tower ignorant of the local customs and the specific resource.
Political theorists assume away the problems of political control, but the problems are real. There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right. Unlike bureaucrats, they bear the costs of their mistakes."
It just makes sense, doesn't it? When people need to solve a problem, they usually do. But in this era of government-rides-to-the-rescue-again, it's great to see people like Dr. Ostrom (political scientist at Indiana University) rewarded for defending freedom. The 10-million Swedish kronor prize -- about $1.4 million -- that she'll share with University of California professor Oliver Williamson must be pretty sweet too.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Security cameras work....just not very often or very well
The BBC reports that it takes 1,000 cameras to solve just a single crime. Is it worth it? England apparently thinks so, because they have spent the last few years literally saturating their cities with cameras, at the cost of more than 500 million pounds.
An MP from the shadow government (translation - a representative from the opposition party) says that it's time to re-think the way the government spends it's security money because of the "massive expenses and minimal effectiveness". I mean, if you spent that kind of money and only caught eight out of 269 robbers, you wouldn't be thrilled either.
Of course, there's always the counter argument, offered by a member of the Home Office (translation - an employee of the Department of Justice....or maybe Homeland Security....well, it's somewhere between those two), who said the cameras "help communities feel safer."
Oh. Well in that case I guess you can go ahead and do whatever you want.
Of course, I do have to say that in public places, I don't have any real problem with security cameras. Philosophically, its no different from having a cop stand on every corner. But since security cameras are the cheaper option, cities tend to use them instead. Then again, being cheaper does not mean it's a good use of money. In this case it's clearly not.
An MP from the shadow government (translation - a representative from the opposition party) says that it's time to re-think the way the government spends it's security money because of the "massive expenses and minimal effectiveness". I mean, if you spent that kind of money and only caught eight out of 269 robbers, you wouldn't be thrilled either.
Of course, there's always the counter argument, offered by a member of the Home Office (translation - an employee of the Department of Justice....or maybe Homeland Security....well, it's somewhere between those two), who said the cameras "help communities feel safer."
Oh. Well in that case I guess you can go ahead and do whatever you want.
Of course, I do have to say that in public places, I don't have any real problem with security cameras. Philosophically, its no different from having a cop stand on every corner. But since security cameras are the cheaper option, cities tend to use them instead. Then again, being cheaper does not mean it's a good use of money. In this case it's clearly not.
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