Like all good economists I take the Economist, but sometimes I despair at its total lack of connection with the real world and particularly the future. Economists used to have a catch-all get out of jail card which blinkered their intellectual rigour - externalities.
One would think in a post-Katrina and Peak Oil world they would have shed this view, if only through natural wastage as old fart journalists shuffle off this mortal coil.
So why the fuck is this week's issue including cover story 'Your Journey to Work? How to fix Britain's transport system'? It is joke journalism at its very worse. Classic laugh out loud line is 'First, roads should take priority over rail'. WTF??
How the fuck will that work? We should be carefully reducing the road network so that Peak Oil doesn't back foot us and send us into economic Depression. Rail is so economically and environmentally superior to road (RIP) that there is no argument to even maintain the current system let alone increase it or - amazingly - put it BEFORE rail. What are the Economist writers thinking of?
But reading the article carefully gives clues as to why they're getting it so wrong. The 'Transport Department' forecasts that road traffic will INCREASE by 40% by 2025. Yes, you read that right, increase, not decrease!! Er, how exactly? Using what fuel?? It's like the idiots forecasting INCREASES in air traffic! It is communist rubbish, and they know it.
But the daftest thing is that the article is pushing for road pricing, which as much as Peak Oil will reduce road traffic substantially. They don't know whether they're coming or going.
Economists, more than anybody, HAVE to be 100% realists because the post Peak Oil world will not be a place for dreamers and thickos. They will be DEAD, and not just metaphorically.
Cancel the Economist? I'm tempted!
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