May 05, 2023

The Auto Industry In Jonestown

May 05, 2023/ Francis Menton

The notorious events in Jonestown took place so long ago that most readers probably don’t have personal memory of them.
In November 1978, in the jungles of Guyana, under the powerful spell of a religious cult with a charismatic leader, and of an all-embracing groupthink, some 900 people somehow agreed to participate in a mass suicide. It was a shocking instance of the kind of collective insanity to which humans can be susceptible.

You might think that the Jonestown massacre was a uniquely extreme example of such a mass psychosis, perhaps attributable largely to unusually susceptible subjects or to the isolated location. Surely our best and brightest leaders of government and business would never fall prey to such collective craziness.
If you think that, then perhaps you should look at what is currently going on in the automotive sector of the economy.

May 03, 2023

Twitter And Free Speech In The Musk Era: The Manhattan Contrarian Experience

May 03, 2023/ Francis Menton

Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Prior to Musk’s taking control, there had been many complaints, particularly from the right, of Tweets getting suppressed, down-graded, “shadow-banned,” or the like, but without anyone having detailed information of exactly what Twitter was up to.
Then in December 2022 a group of journalists recruited by Musk — e.g., Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson — started releasing lengthy Twitter threads documenting exactly how pre-Musk Twitter had “moderated” politically sensitive content to manipulate the public discussion.
In early 2022, back when his bid for Twitter was pending, Musk had famously called himself a “free speech absolutist.”
So to what degree is Musk living up to his promise to bring free speech to Twitter, including in particular allowing criticism of himself? Readers might be interested in the experience of Manhattan Contrarian on that subject.

April 30, 2023

April 30, 2023/ Francis Menton

Readers here frequently express some combination of amazement or sympathy to me about my living in Manhattan.
The news is filled with reports of spiking crime in our major cities, most especially in New York. Am I not in constant danger? How do I dare to go outside, particularly at night?

What rural and suburban readers may be missing is an understanding of the extent to which serious and violent crime is concentrated in a handful of quite small areas.

April 25, 2023

April 25, 2023/ Francis Menton

It’s obvious to any person with the faculty of critical thinking that intermittent renewable “green” energy will never work to power a modern economy.
So as various U.S. states and foreign countries press forward on their crash programs to go fully “green” with their electricity generation, the next obvious question immediately arises: who will be first to hit the green energy “wall”? That is, which state or country will be the first to find that without enough reliable generation its electricity system no longer works? And how will that impact the population?
But let’s now look at South Africa.

April 22, 2023

April 22, 2023/ Francis Menton

As stated in my previous post of April 19, two separate Reports addressing the question of New York’s net zero electricity future have recently been brought to my attention.
These two Reports are distinct from the so-called Scoping Plan, issued by the state’s Climate Action Council. The Scoping Plan is supposed to be the official word on how we are to achieve “net zero” electricity by some time in the 2030s.
Unfortunately, this Scoping Plan is not a feasibility study, or anything close to that, and despite enormous length — 700+ pages between text and appendices — really comes down to no more than a direction to the low status people to figure out how to achieve the decarbonization mandates set by their superiors.
My subject today will be the other Report, titled “Initial Report on the New York Power Grid Study.”

April 19, 2023

April 19, 2023/ Francis Menton

Here in New York State, we have an electricity system that, as of this moment, is functioning just fine. Granted, we pay more for the electricity than we should — probably in the range of 50% or more extra — mainly because we have banned the exploitation of our own abundant natural gas resources from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in the upstate areas. And granted also that we just in 2020 and 2021 closed the two big nuclear reactors at Indian Point, about 40 miles north of New York City, which had supplied more than 25% of the City’s power.
It is not news that our existing, functional electricity system grievously offends the sensibilities of environmental activists, particularly due to its high reliance on natural gas to generate the power.
No feasibility study or demonstration project for us! The only option is Full Speed Ahead, without a clue as to whether this will work or not.
We will go Full Central Planning. Has that ever proved to be a problem anywhere in the past? Not that anyone here seems to recognize.