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16 comments on Energy Policy: SER-2 [01] Introduction

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RobinPC on January 9, 2009 - 11:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Well, can anyone think of any examples of policymakers having acted ahead of a crisis?** There are plenty examples of action delayed till after events or till too late (the energy peak being only the most glaring).
I reckon policymakers are almost/always too authoritarian (hence closed to 'new' ideas) to take on any predictive reasonings they are shown.
**I've just thought of these two examples: Millenium bug and MMR vaccination campaign to avert epidemic. I suggest key factors here are (1) no big biz opposition to the action and (2) yes big biz pressure for the action. As ever, government decisions are decided in favour of the big money.

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Magnus Redin on January 11, 2009 - 6:32am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The best local Swedish example might be changing the pension system into one that automatically adjusts the pension levels to the available funds instead of running out of money and crashing. It were set up about 15 years ago and the worst demograpic problems are still to come.

It might in some ways have been a response to a crisis. The Swedish banking crisis led to a number of changes to make our financial system more stable and they might have observed that the pension system were unstable.

In the same era were the national bank made formaly independant of parliament in setting the interest rates and we agreed on a government budget process that capped spending with a goal of a surplus over a full ordinary enconomcial cycle. This has so far held and governmet debt have gone down.

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RobinPC on January 13, 2009 - 8:38pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks Magnus. I suspect that Sweden has more competence than most other countries (though I've heard it has been yet another to benefit from its welcoming of the "religion of peace").
But unfortunately most of the world isn't Sweden!

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16 comments on Energy Policy: SER-2 [01] Introduction

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