On Point: Fanciful economics

Published February 7, 2006 at midnight

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Colorado lawmakers are being asked to repeal the laws of supply and demand - and if they succeed, it will be another first for this great state. Perhaps after lawmakers have rewritten the rules of economics they can turn their attention to physics. Gravity is such a nuisance sometimes. Wouldn't a law banning it, say, on every third Sunday offer us entertainment of a far higher quality than what we usually find at the local multiplex?

But first things first. There are knavish corporations in our fair land who raise and lower prices according to the available supply of their product and in response to public demand. This is an intolerable state of affairs. And Rep. Gwyn Green, D-Golden, knows exactly what to do about the practice. Outlaw it.

Her House Bill 1251 defines price-gouging in essential goods and services as "a price increase at least 10 percent greater than the average price for the good or service charged by the seller . . . during the 30 days immediately prior to the formal declaration of the emergency."

What kind of emergency? A "natural disaster," of course, but also - and here's the part to warm the heart of any demagogic politician - any other "circumstance or event that is formally declared to be an emergency by federal or state authorities."

A few other wrinkles grace this bill, including a definition of a product's reasonable cost that might have been written by any first-grade class in Green's district. Also of course the punishment for violators: a fine of up to $10,000 a day as well as restitution "to aggrieved consumers."

Naturally, nowhere in the bill is there so much as a hint of recognition that government-imposed price controls create shortages and aggravate existing ones - and have since the dawn of the centralized state.

O Exxon, what fits of political delusion your profits now provoke!

The mouse that roared

Rob Roy Ramey was in Mexico when government scientists released a study last month trashing his research on the Preble's mouse. So naturally, none of the local news reports were able to register the Boulder County biologist's reaction to the study's claim that Preble's is a distinct subspecies after all - contrary to what Ramey and his colleagues concluded a few years ago.

Why am I writing about this mouse again? Because it's on the government's "threatened" list, meaning all sorts of costly measures must be taken along the Front Range to preserve its habitat. And because if Ramey is right and our Preble's mouse is actually the same rodent whose range runs nearly all the way to Canada, then the federal government has little choice but to "delist" it.

So what does Ramey think of the new study now that he's returned and has had time to digest it? He ticked off a number of criticisms, beginning with the study's sampling technique. But then he said something unexpected: The study's findings are not dramatically different from his own.

"The amount of DNA divergence is very shallow" between the mouse populations examined in the latest study, he told me. There is a "low level of differentiation."

But if that's the case, why is there disagreement over whether Preble's is unique and deserves listing as a threatened mouse? In part because some scientists consistently push to list populations whose only claim to fame are tiny, inconsequential genetic differences from other populations perhaps a few hundred miles away.

Ramey questions that approach, saying it will result in so many listings of "endangered" and "threatened" animals that "we won't have the resources to preserve full species that are highly unique" - such as the black-footed ferret.

"We need to establish consistent, legally definable thresholds of genetic uniqueness to qualify for listings," Ramey insists, and, of course, he's right, given the huge legal and economic stakes involved. Without such standards, the public will never accept that the listing of a rodent such as Preble's amounts to anything but raw politics - as opposed to the exercise of science that it ought to be.

Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes On Point several times a week. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

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