so most environmentalists say emission standards should be set. and most economists say 'pay to pollute' is more efficient. they never try and understand what the other implies. pay to pollute would actually (given rational polluters) reduce pollution in a cost effective manner, accepting humbly that no pollution is impossible. and the proponents of this see standards as allowing 'free' pollution upto the standards and that is preposterous to their calculating minds. they conclude that the environmentalists are nuts.

now the environmentalists cannot understand economic math and so they don't see the efficiency being talked about. their argument is simple. how can you let anyone pay to commit a serious offence against the environment. its like saying, once you've paid, the offence doesn't remain one. its morally wrong. it doesn't send out the right signal to the world which should be 'do not pollute'. ok, so no pollution is impossible, but humankind should aim to reach as close to that impossible as possible. so set tight standards.

three borrowed thoughts

its so obvious and yet so deep. never seemed to realize it. cost-benefit analyses assume that the marginal utility from a unit of money is constant and the same for everyone involved in the study. which is kind of restrictive.

you would think a rich guy wouldn't care to earn a dollar and someone else may consider that very important.

and yet counter to this is Edgeworth's argument that a rich guy can enjoy an extra dollar more than a poor guy can. meaning a rich person because he has already satisfied his basic wants, can get more pleasure out of extra money where as someone who really needed that money will maybe not break even with it. so in that case, sensitivity of the rich to additional money is higher than that of the poor.

so, welfare considerations get confused. obviously

tell me i haven't changed you, and i would consider it my greatest success

"he was at once both too great and too small for love"

while in his stories he tries to decipher the mysteries of the nature of the characters he narrates to have known, i wonder about him. at some point i'm convinced that he detested women in a way, that he was contemptuous of them but then he surprises me toward the end of the tale by springing on me, this woman who is a contradiction to the most ubiquitous of womanly faults. and is yet, so whole a woman. was it that he never found the ideal that he was searching in woman? and therefore he was gay...?

the moon came and went unnoticed
and so will the sun again tomorrow
the clouds heavy in their heart
just hung there
and failed to share their sorrow

and now my blog becomes as accessible as chat. i'm sure that'll make the posts even increasingly tweet-like. and so update for the day - i'm hoping tonight-tom's snow will be the last of this winter. its been a thick-skinned winter not to take the hint and end its stay

they'd rather leave it as an imagined claim of right, than make what meat they can out of reality. what they sure do, is deserve each other