The Poverty of Power: Energy and the Economic Crisis
O'Lessker, Karl
might have done, but the rest, again descriptive (of the passage as known from the outside only), is just plain wrong. Spender then contradicts his "organic" description by a contrary...
...Is Professor Commoner quite sure they will share his own humane and enlightened views as to the proper allocation of scarce resources among Americans and throughout the world...
...To receive your very own Official Alternative Turkey Tee Shirt--or to order one for some turkey on your Christmas list--please send the order form below (or a reasonable facsimile) with the appropriate amount of money to The Baron, BARON VON KANNON _9 P.O...
...BOOK REVIEW The Poverty of Power: Energy and the Economic Crisis by Barry Commoner / Alfred A. Knopf / ~10 Karl O'Lessker Among the many virtues of Barry Commoner's new book, the most important is this: he forces us to confront that greatest of all political questions, can our free institutions survive...
...And another strong and unsettling section is his chapter on nuclear energy...
...Here then is an almost perfect,, if ~J:, very dramatic, example of the incongruence Karl O'Lessker is professor of political science and of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University...
...With an impressive array of data to support him, he argues that "complex interactions among the three basic systems--the ecosystem, the production system, and the economic system" are now so irrational as to constitute "a fault that lies deep in the design of modern society...
...actual no...
...Spender then contradicts his "organic" description by a contrary metaphor ("mechanism") and judges that after all the whole is poetic and not worth serious attention: "this picture of the tradition as a system like a functioning mechanism can be taken seriously on the imaginative level but not literally as a scientific working model...
...If not owned by a corporation, the names and addresses of the individual owners must be given...
...Managing Editor: Adam Meyerson, 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47401...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 1,994...
...The term "energy crisis" is deceptive...
...One is to do hardly anything--to continue as we are now and improvise remedies for the various segments of the economy as they approach collapse...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 790...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 3,500...
...The problem, however, is that the basic ingredient has come to be in dangerously short supply, and the product itself is far more polluting in its manufacture and immeasurably more polluting in its use...
...Name: The Alternative Educational Foundation, Inc., 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47401...
...actual no...
...I shall return to this question a bit later...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 13,926...
...It isn't that Procter & Gamble didn't make a profit on their pre-war laundry soap (basic ingredient, palm oil, a renewable resource...
...the third, only in its infancy before the war, now spews forth from its capital-intensive, energy-intensive maw a vast array of products, many of which have replaced the labor-intensive products of an earlier day...
...There is no point wringing our hands about it...
...He seems to see the point clearly enough, and he makes a convincing case for the proposition that oil prices and oil company profits have to be much higher than they are even now in order to generate the capital that will be required for further production...
...But so sweeping an effort, he says, is not going to come about through the normal processes of capitalist democracy, for it is capitalism itself that must be swept away...
...Also please send me A Iternatlve Turkey Buttons at $1' eech (pleaeaprint) Gift for: Name: Address: Address: City: City: State: State:, Zip: Gift card to read from: NOW AVAH,ABLE IN 3 ~ / RRnUCED PIHCES 103 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 29 oil industry...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 16,000...
...v The Official Alternative Turkey Tee Shirt (Paris Green on White) comas in three sizes: medium, large, and extra large...
...But if the obiective capital needs of the industry cannot be met except by pricing oil at x dollars a barrel, then it hardly matters whether it is the Federal government or the private companies that do the pricing...
...Adam Smith can rest easy on Olympus...
...E. Total distribution: Average no...
...Editor: R. Emmett Tyrrell, J r . , 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47401...
...the danger of it is that the reader may get lazy...
...Commoner's inability to comprehend this simple truth places him squarely in the ranks of those liberal ideologues whose guiding thesis is, there really is such a thing as a free lunch and Federal bureaucrats will provide it to us...
...That really is no one's fault...
...One approaches it expecting a rehash of the familiar (though by no means necessarily incorrec0 environmentalist case against development of nuclear power...
...The present essay .is clearly no place to argue the relative merits of socialism and capitalism...
...both trends will only intensify, with economic collapse as the certain consequence...
...In every case the motivating force is higher profit...
...Here again, though the data are not wholly unambiguous nor their interpretation widely agreed upon, Commoner makes a convincing case for the proposition that the capital costs of nuclear power production (and in particular the breeder reactor) have now risen so high as to deprive the industry of even its economic rationale...
...Except that this pays no heed to the problem of pollution caused by the use of all synthetics and plastics--a problem, in economic terms, of "externalities," to which Adam Smith paid only passing attention...
...The mountainous heaps of utterly nonreusable, nonbiodegradable solid waste of the Age of Plastics, for instance, or the phosphatechoked waters of our lakes and streams --who pays for the cleanup...
...There are two available alternatives to the free-market solution...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 633...
...3626...
...4. Location of known office of publication (not printers): 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, Monroe County, Indiana 47401...
...Those, to be sure, are important parts ot the problem...
...Well, free marketeers will have recognized right away that in the case of detergents as in that of popsicle-sticks, the opportunity for higher profits was occasioned by the availability of a cheaper raw material (petroleum...
...And therefore the Invisible Hand (of blessed memory) has no way to allocate them...
...In accordance with the provisions of this statute, I hereby request permission to mail the publication named in Item 1 at the phased postage rates presently authorized by 39 U.S.C...
...actual no...
...He is at his best in talking about the massive social irrationalities of agriculture, transportation, and the petrochemical industry...
...It is so patently wrongheaded a s to suggest that Commoner simply has a blind spot about the industry and is incapable of viewing it with anything resembling scientific detachment...
...What could he have been thinking of, one wonders, in closing the book with a notably vacuous quotation from John B. Oakes of the New York Times, which sounds exactly like a P.R...
...United States Code...
...actual no...
...Please make checks payable to The Baron...
...actual no...
...That is surely a legitimate and defensible motive...
...So far so good...
...C. Total Paid Circulation: Average no...
...The politics of a democratic state are such chat no elected government would stand by and let the market clean out inefficiencies at the expense of massive unemployment, deflation, and all the other inevitable ills of such a process...
...For completion by publishers mailing at the regular rates (Section 132.121, Postal Service Manual): 39 U.S.C...
...What has happened, within barely a generation, is that the largest part of our total productivity has become energyintensive in a way that would have been unimaginable prior to World War II...
...detergents were introduced not because they were more effective but because they were more profitable...
...copies printed (net press run): Average no...
...A review would not be doing justice to the book without citing the excellence of Commoner's discussion of the energy crisis in the context of the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics, a subject made far less forbidding by the clarity and grace of Commoner's writing...
...F. Copies not distributed...
...1. Title of Publication: The Alternative: An American Spectator...
...In whose interest will they rule...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 16,000...
...So there is little if any comfort to be derived from supposing that Commoner just doesn't know what he is talking about...
...3. Frequency of issue: Monthly except July and September...
...Since the end of World War II the first two of these have become sharply more capital-intensive and energy-intensive...
...A. Total no...
...2. Returns from news agents: Average no...
...He may of course be wrong...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 845...
...It sounds as if it has only to do with a dwindling supply of domestic oil coupled with sharply higher prices for imported oil...
...Or more precisely, can these institutions arrest or escape from the apparently inexorable drift toward economic collapse occasioned by, broadly speaking, the energy crisis...
...Consider the popsicle-stick...
...But suppose now that the pursuit of private good (increased profits) on the part of giant corporations, indeed whole industries, threatens nothing less than economic collapse for the entire society...
...2. Date of Filing: October 1, 1976...
...I have now said enough to persuade many readers to dismiss the book unread...
...That would be a mistake...
...The saving grace is the easygoing conversational style of writing...
...Put another way, sometime in the next decade coal-generated electricity will become cheaper than the nuclear alternative--and with none of the attendant catastrophic risks...
...The two are related, significandy so...
...More importantly, agriculture has become desperately vulnerable to the particular sort of shockwave emanating from higher energy prices It is an analysis eminently worth your attention...
...t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t 30 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976...
...The Official Alternative Turkey Tee Shirt has no equal as a chic gift for those students, part-time athletes, contemplatives, ben vivants, and other tee shirt aficionados on your Christmas list...
...actual no...
...Box 877 _9 Bieemin~on, Indium 47401 Dear Baron: Please send me my very own Alternative Turkey Tee Shirt Immediately...
...It goes without saying that many economists disagree with this analysis, making much of the fact that Commoner is by profession a biologist, not an economist...
...I myself have little doubt that the operations of a truly free market would succeed, after some years of immense dislocation and economic suffering for many, in straightening out most of the ghastly tangle which modern industrial society has managed to create for itself...
...9. For completion by nonprofit organizations authorized to mail at special rates (Section 132.122, PSM): The purpose, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for Federal income tax purposes have not changed during preceding 12 months...
...This overlooks the coordinate fact that his economic data were produced by perfectly reputable economists--those employed by Chase Manhattan Bank, the Brookings Institution, Business Week, etc...
...And as oil prices now rise to the point where they will surpass those for wood and palm oil, manufacturers will be forced to go back to using the latter...
...2. Mail subscriptions: Average no...
...Costs are most certainly entailed in the manufacture and use of these products--but they are not figured in the price...
...An externality is a cost of production, all right, but it is one that is not borne by either the producer or consumer but by society as a whole or by some unwilling segment of it...
...It hardly seems sensible to continue slapping band-aids on broken limbs and bulging tumors--or perhaps the better image is, pouring whiskey down an alcoholic's throat...
...But this key part of his argument is by no means obviously mistaken...
...The shift from soap to detergent has exacted heavy social costs for the increased profits it has made possible...
...Enclosed is $ _ _ ($4.95 for one shirt, $9.00 for two shirts, and $4.00 for each additional shirt...
...Both the strengths and weaknesses of his argument show up most clearly in his discussion of the incongruence between private profit and public good in certain major industries...
...You can't eat this turkey, but you can wear It...
...There is enough of unique value in it to compensate many times over for its mistakes...
...It has never been doubted that sometimes a private good may be socially dysfunctional...
...But these he only touches on, giving far more attention to the economics of the industry...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 12,032...
...The first lies in his discussion of the U.S...
...The other is to begin at once to construct a fully planned economy some pieces of which may probably be left in private hands...
...3626 provides in pertinent part: "No person who would have been entitled to mail matter under former section 4359 of this title shall mail such matter at the rates provided under this subsection unless he files annually with the Postal Service a written request for permission to mail matter at such rates...
...Ronald E. Burr, Business Manager 12...
...copies each issue duriqg preceding 12 months, 2,308...
...Who are these paragons who will make decisions for us in the socialist millennium...
...Title 39...
...Here again, Commoner may be mistaken in his analysis, but if so his errors are far from obvious...
...Cornmonet's prescription becomes very hazy at this point, but evidently he envisions something like an idealized version of British or Swedish socialism as an appropriate system for dealing with the problem...
...Along with everyone else who has ever looked at the data, Commoner recognizes that the marginal costs of oil exploration and production have been increasing sharply...
...If, as Commoner clearly prefers, the industry is nationalized and the government does it, it will either have to raise the present price or else finance the capital shortfall out of general revenues--which in turn means either diverting resources from other programs or (what amounts to the same thing) paying for it with inflated currency...
...Let me only observe that if Commoner needs to recall his own "Fourth Law of Ecology: There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch" (from that fine book of his, The Closing Circle), even more does he need to remember and reflect deeply on Madison's teaching about men not being angels...
...This brings me to the second large fault in the book, the squishy-soft appeal of the final chapter for some sort of salvation through socialism...
...I can only conclude by observing that if Commoner is close to right in his diagnosis of our economic ills, and if we are to have any hope of devising an effective and palatable remedy, we shall have to put aside our distaste for Commoner's socialism and pay close attention to his analysis...
...of issues published annually: Ten...
...6. Names and complete addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor: Publisher: John A. Von Kannon, 102 West Sixth Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47401...
...Ronald E. Burr, Business Manager cially in his treatment of the oil companies' pricing policies, profits, and capital needs, there is a kind of cloud-cuckooland quality to the analysis...
...But of course we have nothing like a free market and no prospect whatever of achieving one...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 16,322...
...Failing such a demonstration, we should have at least to concede that the American economy is heading for serious trouble...
...The heart of Commoner's deeply pessimistic thesis is that large segments of industry have become increasingly capitaland energy-intensive at a time when both capital and energy are coming to be in shorter and shorter supply...
...8. Known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None...
...And given the fact that we have about six hundred years worth of coal left in America's own reserve, with solar energy coming on line before even the next century has passed, there can be little justification for continuing the enormous investment of taxpayers' money in an economically unviable, environmentally dangerous private industry...
...It has nothing to do with capitalist greed or bloated salaries for executives on expense accounts...
...And one other fact needs to be considered: for all normal cleaning chores, soap is every bit as good as detergent...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 12,822...
...As I said before, we deserve to be given better than this by someone of Spender's stature...
...Large and important as it is, the question of externalities is only one aspect of the larger, far more difficult issue Commoner lays before us...
...Annual subscription price: $10.00...
...It is a fact of political life that we must take as a given and go from there...
...G. Total: Average no...
...Nor must I neglect to commend the force of his argument that American agriculture has become an "economic colony" of the petrochemical industry, with the result that the farmer's net income has actually dropped in the past generation despite a huge increase in gross income...
...But then he turns right around and treats the industry's call for "incentives" (i.e., higher profits) with the sort of angry contempt that a Southern Baptist might direct against a plea for pornography in the public schools...
...B. Paid Circulation: 1. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales: Average no...
...real literary folk will detect the facade immediately...
...Number wanted: Medium ~ Large ~ Extra Large (this size recommended for most people as the Turkey Toe's are 100% cotton and will shrink...
...9 oooo Christmas Turkeys: $4.95 ooooo 00000000000 O0 00000000000 Now for the gimmick...
...actual no...
...And even that is not all of it...
...handout from one of Nelson Rockefeller's task forces...
...This is evidently Commoner's preference, though he offers us _9 nothing more th~n incantation and moral uplift in his final pages...
...actual no...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 60...
...The burden, it seems to me, is on his critics to demonstrate that we really will be able to pay increasingly high prices for energy withol:t precipitating a ruinous inflation, and that the productivity of capital is not on an ominous decline...
...Why, the taxpayers do, of course...
...Well before the Arab oil embargo and its attendant disruptions, very deep-seated changes had been occurring in the basic chemistry of American capitalism: both profits and the productivity of capital had begun a longterm decline of which there is no reversal in sight...
...A plunge into the deep, cold waters of reality is inevitable...
...It is tempting by contrast to contemplate the free market alternative...
...Only a fundamental redesign of these systemic relations can avert the impending collapse...
...But there are at least two grave faults in the book, one not really fatal but certainly symptomatic, the other serious to the extent that one looks to Commoner for a solution to the problems he has so skillfully described...
...7. Owner (If owned by a corporation, its name and address must be stated and also immediately thereunder the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1 percent or more of total amount of stock...
...It is both serious and witty, in the manner of metaphors of the metaphysical poets...
...The familiar wooden implement, made out of a plentiful and immemorially renewable resource, has now virtually disappeared--replaced in most markets at the very beginning of the Energy Crisis, by plastic...
...Extent and nature of circulation...
...Commoner's answer, then, to his own great question is that they cannot...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 80...
...What's a society to do...
...The effective but chilling image Commoner devises is that of a society "fleeing as fast as we can out across thin ice in the hope of outrunning the spreading cracks that are created as we run...
...What indeed is a society to do...
...EspeStatement of Ownership, Management and Circulation (Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685...
...1. Office use, left over, unaccounted, spoiled after printing: Average no...
...t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t t PRINTS BY ELLIOTT BANFIELD The Alternative's cover artist and art advisor, may be seen at the Associated American Artists gallery at 663 Fifth Avenue (between 52nd and 53rd Streets), New York City, Monday-Saturday, 10-6...
...D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or other means--samples, complimentary, and other free copies: Average no...
...I certify that the statements made by me above are correct and complete...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 18,690...
...If owned by a partnership or other unincorporated firm, its name and address, as well as that of each individual must be given...
...But it is far deeper, more pervasive, more intractable than that...
...copies each issue during preceding 12 months, 18,690...
...The rest of the book is of a piece with this: condescending to the subject, descriptive...
...Sensible people have always been willing to accept that as the price for maintaining a generally satisfactory system...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 13,293...
...And as the supply of energy falls and the price escalates, it is not at all clear how we can avoid the kind of inflation that brings whole societies to ruin...
...As a result the price of energy is on the rise and the productivity of capital is on the decline...
...28 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 between private profit and public good...
...And there is no reversal in prospect...
...A serious poet has no business handing us predigested packaged sentiments: in fact it's hard to believe that Spender wrote this...
...But the socialist alternative will seem to most of us so repellent as to be worse than the disease...
...It's the Official Alternative Turkey Tee Shirt, dasigned exclusively for The Alternative ~ through the coordinated efforts of some of the world's tonlast fashion salons in Paris, London, and Little Rock...
...actual no...
...copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 12,448...
...Can we afford to be quite so philosophical about the case...
...it's that they could make a higher profit on laundry detergent (basic ingredient, petroleum...
...Not very many of us are likely to be enthusiastic about paying higher gasoline and heating oil prices...
...Here indeed is a Hobson's choice for America...
Vol. 10 • December 1976 • No. 3
