•I confess – though
I am not really a collector anymore – that I checked out some of DC’s
relaunched comics over the past year, finishing up (for me) with a few of
the Zero Month issues (all numbered #0) they put out this month. My main conclusion is that they’ve nicely
simplified most things (almost like the whole universe is one big pilot episode
for an animated series now, probably not by coincidence).
There are already
some bungles in the new continuity, such as both Dick Grayson and Tim Drake
being the first person ever to deduce Batman’s secret identity, but on
the bright side poor Hawkman, for example, seems to have a single, simple
origin for the first time in twenty-seven years. I wish them well.
(And for those
wondering, no, I really will not even try to find out what this Trinity War
they’re building up to is – I leave that for the young. If my favorite comics writer, Grant
Morrison – who
is a strange man – actually finishes his miniseries Multiversity and his Wonder Woman graphic novel, though, I’ll
probably come back a year from now to check those out. If those don’t happen, there are literally ten major superhero movies coming out in the next
two years, so I should be sated.)
•On a more serious
note, the latest issue of Critical Review
(Vol. 24, No. 1) contains, among other interesting things, Jonathan Adler’s
article “Is the Common Law a Free-Market Solution to Pollution?” which presents
some evidence that in the past the market didn’t always arrive at the
hypothetical problem-solving means free-market environmentalists envision. Sorting out who to sue when there are
multiple effluent sources, for example, can very complicated. No doubt true – but usually it’d be just as
complicated for regulators as for class-action-suit lawyers, it’s important to
note.
Adler steers clear
of the (almost “God of the gaps”-like) leap of assuming that what is
complicated for markets is easy for government, though – and even notes, for
instance, that the financial pressure from lawsuits can create purely
market-based incentives to add things like tracer chemicals in effluent
to prove you aren’t one of the
polluters in a given area.
As with countless
other institutions such as mutual aid societies for poverty relief, industrial
capitalism was only working on these issues for a very short time before
government usurped the problem-solving mechanisms involved – and environmental
issues weren’t as high a priority or as easily dealt with technologically in
the past. As with so many things, I
think we can do even better in the future without resorting to government.
(In the mushy
interim, here
is a partly public/partly private rhinoceros being guarded by men with machine
guns as he roams around in Kenya, as I noted recently on Facebook.)
There is no reason
to do anything rash like declaring ourselves “crunchy conservatives” (as Rand
Paul does in his new book) or resurrecting nineteenth-century-style
agrarian Toryism with its disdain for industrialism (at the same time, after yesterday’s
entry, I’ll end the paleo-bashing, I promise – it’s just such an uphill battle to
get people to make econ calculations as it is).
•Love ’em or eat
’em, animals are mighty entertaining, so here are:
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