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Doesn’t democracy promote peace? Isn’t that why we have a United Nations? Yet Revelation describes democracy as “unclean spirits like frogs... to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” [Rev 16:13-14]. The current Iraq war gives part of the answer: democratic nations seem inclined to go to war to spread democracy. Socialist nations are just as willing to go to war to promote their ideology. It almost makes you miss the days that kings went to war because they held grudges against their cousin ruling some other country!

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Do we have a moral obligation to jump in a flooded river after a child in distress? What if we can’t swim, so we know we’ll drown in the attempt? The Army Corps of Engineers says, "reach, row, throw--don't go!" Going after a swimmer in trouble, unless you're a trained rescuer, won't help and will probably force rescuers to go after you as well. Someone should tell that to the jury in Claysburgh Pennsylvania that convicted Susan Newkirk of endangering the welfare of a child and sentenced her to 18 months in prison.

Meanwhile, what about the ethics of stealing, if you’re starving to death? In what I hope is the final word in the long-running discussion with Dan in Florida, we discuss the full implications of the Bible proverb that says, “Men don’t despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he’s hungry--but, if he’s caught, he will suffer the consequences.”

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Democracy is a humanist system, unleashed by the French in the late 18th century (the US, founded a few years earlier, was a republic, not a democracy). We connect them with the “three unclean spirits like frogs ” in Revelation--liberté, fraternité, egalité, sinon le mort . These unclean spirits “go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty” [Rev 16:13-14]. This very day, the US is locked in a struggle in Iraq to democratize the Middle East , and is meddling in Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority to the same end. Most people seem to believe that this is a wonderful thing--but I ask, what’s so great about democracy?

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Eerily, my newspaper contains the headline, “Oil Armageddon Awaits”! This was after completing the episode about doomsday myths and oil-crisis chicken Littles. An economics professor, no less, predicts “Armageddon” from the consumption of oil. It’s hard to believe the author is an economist--there are so many contradictory and ignorant statements in the article. For example, he starts out by condemning the high gas prices, and finishes by bemoaning Americans’ “addiction” and unwillingness to conserve. He should have learned in school that high prices trigger conservation! Demanding low prices and conservation is absurd. He also explains that “oil supply is limited and demand is not.” This statement is economic nonsense: “demand” is only meaningful with respect to a given price, and given a price, demand is indeed limited. At $1,000,000 per barrel, the demand for oil is virtually nil. At $1 per barrel, the demand might exceed the world’s supply. Again Mr. Heise is apparently ignorant of the key role that price pays in limited demand.

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In a word, Armageddon. We’ve talked about the political and economic aspects of oil prices, and also the way in which the United States strengthened OPEC in the 1970s. Some speculate that oil will be the trigger for the final conflict in which Messiah will intervene and save Israel. We don’t know that for certain, but we do know for certain that Israel will achieve a time of peace, and that war will suddenly erupt, catching the world by surprise. Perhaps oil will be discovered in Israel? How would the Arab nations react to THAT?

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Terry in California writes, “You claim that competition between gas stations keeps prices down, but what if they agree together to fix prices? They can make a killing by banding together...” What Terry is describing is called a cartel , an organization of suppliers for the purpose of price fixing. Economists have recognized for years that cartels don’t work in the long run, or even the short run. Each member faces immense temptation to cheat on the cartel to increase its own profit. Indeed, the cartels that last are precisely the ones that are able to convince the government to enforce their price fixing! A prime example of this is OPEC itself. In the 1970s (PDF), the United States empowered OPEC by sharply restricting American oil production; prior to that, OPEC was plagued with cheating by the member nations.

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Conserving natural resources has been a big issue all my life. I was a kid during the “oil crisis “ of the 1970s, and now I have my own kid in the “oil crisis” of the early 21st century. Oil , water , trees --we’re told to conserve them all! Recently, President Bush has asked us to “maybe not drive... on a trip that’s not essential...” The question the President didn’t answer was, “How do we know what’s essential?” After all, I work every day--isn’t driving to work essential? Or should I carpool ? Or take the bus ? How do I know? The answer is that the price of gas tells me what to do! An excellent book offers some perspective on the subject. It’s entitled The Doomsday Myth: 10,000 Years of Economic Crises .

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Now we look at “price gouging” in the Bible and economics. The Bible says very little about “price gouging”, but not because they never heard of it! Several famines are recorded in scripture--along with the high prices that go with them. In fact, Revelation describes high food prices, and expects us to realize that it’s predicting a time of famine! Scripture is consistent with the law of supply and demand, even though it doesn’t say much about it. Economics tells us that “high prices” are more dynamic than we imagine: raising prices does cost customers, because people react to them by finding alternatives. The result is to balance a scarce resource. After all, what would happen if we forced gas stations to give away gasoline in times of crisis? Think on that one...

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Florida , Georgia and other states have enacted laws against “price gouging” at the gas pump. What is price gouging ? It’s a term used by politicians to describe high prices, especially gas prices, that are charged in times of shortage. The problem is that they’re ignorant of both economics, and of the realities of the gas business . The gas station owners profit margins on gas are razor-thin--they charge less than 10% over wholesale, and from that must pay the 3% fee charged by the credit card companies, as well as the costs of their own business. About 1% of the pump price actually goes to the gas station owner. That’s why 75% of gas stations are also convenience stores in the US. The price at the pump is sharply restricted by competition between gas stations. In times of crisis, like the recent hurricanes, there is a sudden massive increase in demand. The law of supply and demand dictates that prices must rise in that case. In part 2, we ask whether that’s such a bad thing.

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The Israelis decided to leave the synagogues standing in the territories they handed over to the Palestinians. Predictably, the Palestinians vandalized, looted and finally destroyed the synagogues. They did the same thing with other religious sites in the past, so where’s the surprise? In fact, the UN passed a resolution condemning such behavior in 2001, when Muslims destroyed buddhist sites in Afghanistan. It would have made sense to deconsecrate the synagogues and demolish them respectfully, but the Israelis decided not to do that. Why? To seek an occasion against the Palestinians, perhaps? For all their pious complaining, the Israelis didn’t always preserve abandoned mosques in Israel, but put them to other uses . I think it was a deliberate provocation--and all the more unnecessary, since the Palestinians give themselves enough of a bad name.The sole surviving synagogue has been buried in sand at Sa-Nur.

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Now that the pullout from Gaza is complete , Palestinians have been pouring across the Egyptian border. Drugs , contraband and especially weapons have been flowing into Gaza. In fact there’s now such a surplus of weapons that the price of guns in Gaza has been dropping. What’s interesting is that the Palestinians themselves have closed their border . Why would they do that? To keep the guns out? That can’t be it. So why? I have an idea...

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Dan in Florida writes, “if a man and his family were starving and looting was the only option available, SHOULD he steal to feed his family? Because if it is WRONG (albeit understandable) to steal, even in that situation, doesn't it follow that the RIGHT thing to do is allow his whole family to starve?” Obviously we have the intelligent sort of audience that gets its kicks asking questions we can’t answer. After a few emails back and forth, and much pondering, I believe I can answer the question.

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President Bush announced that the federal government will pay "the great majority " of the cost of rebuilding. Estimates so far seem to be about $200 billion, and $62.3 billion of that has already been spent. The money already spent is 2.5% of the $2.5 trillion dollar budget--the biggest government budget in the history of the universe.

For fun, you can estimate your own contribution to rebuilding New Orleans: assuming no tax increases are passed to fund it, take your tax bill last April, and multiply by 0.025. That's how much you paid already. Now multiply it by 0.08, since $200 billion is 8% of the total budget today. That's how much they estimate you'll pay in total. Now double it. That's a better guess. If I'm grumpy, it's because I have other uses for the more than $1,000 I expect to contribute personally to rebuild the city that was the murder capital of the US in the mid 1990s, and still has ten times more homicide than the national average.

How about you? Does it make you feel good to pay so much to rebuild a city whose main export is debauchery ? I'm sure you don't need me to tell you what goes on there during Mardi Gras, not to mention gay Mardi Gras . But, according to Bush, there's "no way to imagine America without New Orleans," so by all means let's pay enough money to buy Belgium so Bush can know that somewhere, someone is trading beads for lechery at Mardi Gras.

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The government announced a giveaway of $2,000 debit cards to Katrina refugees, and then changed their minds only a few days later--the abuses were so extreme that they didn't even finish the distribution. What did people do before we had a government ready to hand out money after every misfortune? Before the 1930's, such a thing was unheard of. So what did the people do--die in the streets like dogs? There aren't many people left alive who really remember firsthand.

Music heard in this podcast provided under the Creative Commons license by Michel Maurice Fortin :

        1. Smooth1

        2. BoulBeat

        3. Sambabolo

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Can you believe the chutzpah? Two EMTs report that when they found themselves stranded in New Orleans, they and 500 others planned an escape by ponying up $25,000 between them ($45 each) and chartering ten buses to get them out! The buses actually came, but were commandeered by the national guard, so the plan didn't work. But that's the kind of cooperation and inventiveness that truly puts me in awe. Wow.

Yet somehow I get in trouble when I say in conversation that people have options . They aren't helpless, hopeless and stuck. It's amazing what people come up with! My own ideas are quite lame by comparison. For example, I suggested that folks could make their own pure water using a solar still . It's easy--everyone should learn how. But somehow saying so gets me in trouble, while other folks are actually chartering 10 buses out of New Orleans . Sometimes you just can't win. You just can't.

Music heard in this podcast:
Michel Maurice Fortin , Flottances
Snu , Sonata No. 1 in D Minor

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So if stealing always wrong, or is looting justified in a disaster? Even if I admit I might do it, I still insist that it’s wrong. Which is why I like the cut of 16-yaer-old Jabbar Gibson’s jib! He actually stole a school bus and saved dozens of people from the disaster, driving them to Houston. Afterward he said he’s prepared to take the consequences of his actions. What a man--he should be mayor instead of the incompetent guy who let the school buses drown!

You’ve probably heard about that, since it’s been all over the news. Mayor Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation of the city, but never mobilized the city’s hundreds of school buses to transport people without cars. Instead the buses were left in their parking lots, where they were trapped by flood waters and rendered useless. One of the most outrageous pictures shows a lot with over a hundred buses , stuck within two miles of the Superdome:

Music heard in this podcast:
Michel Maurice Fortin : “Djogdjogguigne” and “Etpendantcetempslà”

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The chaos continues in New Orleans. If stealing is always wrong, does that mean I would starve to death rather than steal food? It's a fair question, so I'll answer it--but then I'll say why I absolutely hate hypothetical questions like that. They're an open invitation to self-congratulation and self-deception.

Music heard in this podcast, all available at archive.org and composed by our faithful friend Snu:

Sanctuary

Searching for You

Walking in Eden

As always, keep those emails coming: if you send an audio clip to lbudney@pobox.com , I'll include it in a future podcast.