Abertyniad hi maen nhw'n fu再见 those? Pen yw y moddり aio o'r Un Boxford Instiwt ar ôl sp unfoldau ysg apartyng. If you don't know it, essentially it's very simple, it does what it says and the energy studies, we do it though from a social, political, economic perspective rather than the technical one. So a lot of what we do, is to look at policies and my subject today as the chairman has said is a little bit provocative. Europe's energy and climate policies coming apart at the seams but I think it does reflect Ieithio cyfnod o'r llesaf. Mae'r llesaf ffondiol yw'r llesaf, ac mae'r llesaf eich bod yn gweithio. Mae'r llesaf eich bod yn gweithio'r llesaf i gyd yma'r eich ddaeth. First of, yma yma eich eu cyfnodau i wych yn ei hunain sy'n meddwl i'ch meddwl. Gweithio'r llesaf? Gweithio'r llesaf eich meddwl i'ch meddwl i gyd, gallwch gwaith oherwydd i gyd yn gweithio. Dw i'r Unreal yn cael chael amddir ein allan iawn yw'r ysgrifiad yma ymddir iawn y newid ymddir iawn. Ymddir iawn, y byddio y gwestiynau sydd o byn a Efraeg, y byddio'r syniad gen i allan iawn o'r energ séf. But the second is to do with a slightly different area with that issue is that the second half of the topic is that, about how do you reconcile climate policy and liberalised market scud? I think there are some fundamental difficulties there which is quite difficult to grapple with with and my main thesis is that the commission understandably is trying to cope with the first sort of of problems, how do you get sensible policy within the EU? most o'r rwyseid ymarfer o'r cyfle o'r llwylo fathogreig o'r newid. A'n dda fi'n rhoi'r rhaid i'r lleion llymaeth a'r mar�� cyllidau i'r llythbrion cyffredin... i'r lleion cyffredin.  Fy fyddwch yn gweld ei wneud, y cynhyrchu cyfrifio'r Eurwyr mewn ddechrau'r cyfrifio. It's not so much the overall policy objectives that the EU's got in energy. They're essentially the same as every government's. They're called—it depends which country you are in—often called the three e's. It's to do with the economy, with the environment, and energy security, reconciling these. Now the EU objectives are essentially the same. But it does face a number of complications. First, for the EU, the economy part of it is represented, essentially, by the single market. But that's difficult. Energy, as you probably know, has been a late starter in EU terms. The energy market is still not really a single market. It may or may not get there next year. But there is another fundamental problem there that the treaty basis is such that member states still control their own energy mix. Now, whether you can have a single market along with member states in charge of their energy makes it to me an open question. But that is a very difficult set of problems to reconcile. And as I say, one can understand why the commission has been spending so much time trying to get to grips with that set of problems. Climate change, which is probably the most important environmental problem, there is a more of an EU structure there in the sense that there are overall goals across the European Union. But underlying those are different carbon and renewable targets for every member state. So again, you've got more diversity, I would say, than unity on this. Energy security, the third of the objectives. Again, everyone agrees on the overall objective, but the fact remains that, as far as the network industries in particular are concerned, regulation is still at national level. There is in the EU nothing equivalent to the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a body which has real power across state borders. It's more a matter of either the commission or the regulators amongst themselves.  So if I think the commission hasn't solved all these problems, I'm not really blaming it for a failure. I'm just pointing attention to the difficulty of the challenge. Just to give some simple pictures of some of the diversity that comes out of this, here is an indication of the level of support in different countries for different renewables. You can see both that the total level of support, well maybe you can't see because it's a difficult chart to see, but I don't need to go into the detail. The picture is that some countries like Finland offer hardly any support for renewables because they don't really need to. Some countries like Germany say or France offer very significant levels of support, but the balance of support for different sorts of renewables, the level of support is very different. They involve in some cases quite significant proportions of the market. So in Germany about 15% of electricity already gets support. In Spain nearly a quarter of electricity is supported by renewables schemes of one sort or another. It varies between countries, but of course for all countries under the EU's 2020-2020 target, this proportion that is supported outside the market is going to increase. So that's one of the difficult starting points that the Commission's got. But there's a second set of problems. I'll start by going into them at a slightly theoretical level. The problem with reconciling markets and environmental policy arises in the fact that they tend to be framed in different ways. Markets are not about outcomes. They're about setting frameworks within which the market will produce whatever outcome market forces determine. And in the small print, which you may not be able to read there, there was the original statement from Nigel Lawson in the UK as to why liberalisation was taking place in the UK. It's because he said he didn't see the government's role as being to determine the future shape or to plan the future shape of energy production and consumption. What it should be doing is setting a framework and letting all that be determined by the market. But environmental policy, at least to date, has always been framed in terms of outcomes. It's always been framed in terms of targets, targets for renewables, targets for carbon emissions, targets for just about everything. I won't be going into the theory of it. At some level of theory you can reconcile this via economic instruments. But all I would say is at the moment that in practice that's not the way environmental policy works. It works in terms of targets. I doubt in theory whether it could work that way, which we could discuss later if you want, but that is not what happens in practice at present. But the second set of problems which I think not all concerned have grasped properly is that if you're serious about climate change, it takes priority as far as energy is concerned. Again in small print, there's a little quote there from a report in the UK which says that where energy policy decisions involve trade-offs, then environmental objectives will tend to take preference over these other objectives. The problem is most policy makers don't like that situation. They all stand up and say it's all about a balance. We've got to balance the energy and the environment and the economy. But if you're serious about the environment, that doesn't apply. The environment has to take priority. The reason is simple that energy is where the carbon is. If you want to reduce carbon emissions, you have to do something within the energy sector. That's not the case for these other objectives. If for instance, just to take an example, if you have a high carbon tax and you're worried about the social outcomes, you can probably deal with those in some other way by direct subsidies to consumers affected or whatever. If you're worried about the economic outcomes in terms of competitiveness, then you can reduce taxation elsewhere and so on. You can do things outside the energy sector to deal with the other problems, but the only way of achieving the environmental objectives is within the energy sector, so they have to take priority. That's something that politicians find very difficult to come to grips with, which is very important as far as the subject we're on today is concerned. Now, I've put a little chart here which is just dealing with the UK, and there's no special reason for that except that I know more about the UK than about other member states. My argument here essentially is, in grappling with the problems I've mentioned, the European Union is about 10 years behind the curve in actually dealing with some of these fundamental problems. It was slow in a way compared with some other countries into liberalisation. I've got there 1986, then the first major liberalisation measure in the United Kingdom, 1996, the first liberalisation package in the EU. In 1998, you had full energy market liberalisation in the UK about the same time as a third energy package in the EU. But the other thing that happened, of course, in 1998, was the Kyoto Protocol was agreed. Since then, an awful lot of thought in member states like the UK and Germany and there are others have been aimed at saying, how do you resolve this market that you've now set up? How do you reconcile that with these climate objectives we've set up? The UK has been through a very considerable process of, I won't go through all the details, but, for instance, coming up with 2050 scenarios, how much can you actually reduce emissions by 2050, which underlies the present policy, which is about equivalent to the EU's 2050 energy roadmap, which came out in 2011. An outcome of those scenarios in the UK was, firstly, a climate change act, which requires by law that these targets be met, which is actually quite important. And secondly, the setting up of a department of energy and climate change, and I think for the reasons I've given, if you're going to take climate change seriously, that's what you have to do. You have to see energy and climate change together in a single organisational unit. Now, I haven't put all the steps on the EU side here, I haven't sort of put the 2020 agreement in, but I've focused on the right-hand side on the rather minimal moves they've made on that front towards reconciling energy in the environment. There's a 2012 meeting of EU energy environment ministers, they hardly ever meet together, and there was no meeting of mine, as I'll show on that occasion. And then, this year, the European Council discussed energy, but it didn't discuss the environment, it just discussed competitiveness. It said, well, we'll look at the environment some other time, but I think that doesn't work if you're serious about climate change. You have to look at energy and the environment together. This, I won't read it all out, but I find it slightly amusing. This was described as good background reading by the then presidency for the 2012 energy and environment ministers meeting, and it's quite amusing in a way. It draws attention to essentially the same two problems I've drawn attention to. There was a problem in Europe of targets without governance. It comes up with all these targets, but it's got no way of delivering them. And there are two underlying problems. One is, it says there that the consensus that energy policy should determine energy policy is eroding. I'm not sure there was ever a consensus on that in Europe, but as I've said, you have to start off in that way if you're going to be serious about climate change policy. And secondly, at the bottom, that Member States haven't accepted that there will need to be a major curtailment of their national sovereignty over energy policy. So you have two big problems here. I'm not really trying to blame the Commission for the lack of overall progress. These are some of the fundamental underlying problems it's facing. This was the outcome, which I find very peculiar of the 2012 energy and environment ministers meeting. First of the energy ministers agreed in three options, no regrets options, energy efficiency, renewables and energy infrastructure. You didn't really meet the environment ministers. The environment ministers however had a lunch when they talked about this and they said it was very good because the EES was the cornerstone of their policy. So there you've got the energy and environment ministers not really meeting, coming up with two different sets of policies, and actually if you look at them, none of them are remotely up to the scale of the problem. So it's not a very encouraging start. The Commission sort of half accepted that in the green paper on the 2030 framework for energy and climate policy. They admit failings in four areas. One is the management challenges of renewables, another is the incentives to invest in infrastructure, another is the ETS simply not working, and finally energy efficiency targets not being met. If you look back at the previous list of four measures which were discussed at the 2012 ministers meeting, it's in exactly those four areas that the Commission admits that things aren't really working very well. So it's slightly strange that they didn't do a more fundamental rethink at that stage but went on to essentially say we need more of the same. Now a good change as I say for the second part of my talk to looking at electricity market design and the challenges posed by decarbonisation. And the first set of challenges which I think have been fairly widely recognised is a security challenge that they pose. It's because most of the low carbon plant being supported are intermittent renewables. They get priority and dispatch, they reduce the load factor for a dispatchable generation. They create market volatility. The numbers there were numbers from a UK study which preceded electricity market reform in the UK because the government asked some consultants with a high wind power system could the market as it's currently constructed still work and they said, well yes in theory but in order to get the right amount of investment you would have to have prices in this range from minus 50 pounds per megawatt hour to 8,500 pounds which is a fantastic range. The negative prices by the way are because the renewable plant gets support in those days it was from the renewables obligations scheme even with a negative price they would still continue to operate and much nuclear plant would still operate even with a negative price because it's expensive to turn it off and on. So there would be quite considerable periods of negative prices on their modelling about a third of the time. The only way in which fossil plant could actually coverage costs would be if there were also periods of very very high prices and that 8,500 is very very high and the price in the UK just now is about plus 50 pounds 8,500 is extraordinarily high. It's not just high, it's got two problems one is it's quite difficult to rely on it depends on the precise way the system is operating but it's also very difficult to guarantee that the government won't intervene because if your short run marginal cost of production is going to be about 50 pounds but you're selling at 8,500 pounds the chances are that the regulator or someone else is going to intervene and say that's not right and there is a fundamental problem here which again we could talk about later if you want but it's almost impossible within electricity to tell the difference between what one might call scarcity costs and exerting market power because almost by definition in electricity as you get to the top of the load curve there are very few plants in operation so there isn't really a market and it's always going to be possible up the load curve for someone to exercise market power and I don't think regulators have any clear way and we've seen this across the EU whether there have been any number of examinations of competition in electricity markets and in the UK where Ofgem keeps looking at electricity markets saying why were prices so high then so fossil generators really have no way of being secure about investment yet we need that plant, that flexible plant that provides security and that's why the UK is currently talking about introducing a capacity payment Ireland has had a capacity payment for some time I think a number of other countries you can see from this map are looking at capacity payments so the trend is towards capacity payments across Europe they're all facing the same sort of problem they're all facing the problem of remunerating fossil plant, the flexible plant they'll need to provide security and they're all thinking about capacity payments but there's a second problem and I think people have not really paid so much attention to but which is very important in the longer run that renewables in this situation can't themselves be remunerated by the market either because when all the wind plants are operating together you get low prices so or zero prices in Spain for instance in March there were 165 hours of zero prices there was a weekend in May I can't remember which weekend now but when all the main European markets had negative prices and some of them were down to minus 200 euros on that weekend these negative prices or zero prices you can't have negative prices in Spain because of the way the rules work but many other markets allow negative prices these long periods of zero or negative prices are by definition the times when you're getting most renewables output the theory on which apparently the commission is operating is if you introduce high carbon taxes then eventually the renewables plant will be competitive in the sense that on a levelised cost basis that is the cost per unit of output the cost will be about the same as that of lower than that of the fossil plant with the carbon but of course that won't be true of the market price because the carbon price again by definition will only apply at the times when there's high demand but low supply from renewables the whole purpose of the high carbon price is to ensure that high carbon intensive generation is used as little as possible and therefore only at the time when there are no renewables so the renewables plant will never benefit from that high carbon price so there's a fundamental problem in the market structure at the moment because they're mainly remunerated by feeding tariffs renewables don't have either their investment or their operation signalled by market prices it's difficult to see any way out of that as long as you have the same existing market structure what you've got is what is technically called pecuniary externalities it's been described by the OECD as an increasing wedge between the cost of producing electricity and the prices on electricity markets prices and costs are coming out of sync and there's no exit strategy from that and it's due to the current market structure and that's a problem with which Europe is struggling not very successfully to cope with because as I say the commission is focusing almost exclusively on its single market issues and this is what was said at the time of the European Council that Barozo wrote a letter to the council members saying that the completion of a fully functioning market is central to Europe's competitors and must not be fragmented and fragmented as a bit of Euro jargon essentially saying we don't want capacity payments despite the reasons I've given earlier why Member States are doing that they're focusing on their needs which are security which is understandable commission is focusing on its need which is a single market which is also understandable but there's no meeting of minds there they're saying this is what we want they're saying capacity markets are likely to perpetuate the fragmentation of the European market and this general negativity is continuing they're resisting the development of capacity markets they've made clear they think they are negative they've suggested a huge long list of criteria for introducing capacity mechanisms of the sort that would inevitably delay any capacity mechanisms being introduced or at the very least add uncertainty as to whether they were going to be acceptable they're proceeding with their target market and I won't go into details about what it is but it's basically a market which relies on energy only the commission's aim is to get a price a single price per kilowatt hour ultimately across the whole of Europe in the same way that you have essentially for other markets the oil market you get so many dollars per barrel they would like to have something similar with electricity and so they're going ahead with that with that design pushing it as far as they can without really taking account of these other things which they see as problems in fact basically they're working on a set of guidelines now to deal with the support for renewables to deal with the general market issues and mentally the commission it is clear thinks capacity payments are subsidies it thinks they're anti-market not just because they make the internal market more difficult to develop but because they are a sort of subsidy that the only way in the same way that say you gave a fixed amount of money to an oil producer and they still got the market price that would be a subsidy they see capacity payments as a sort of subsidy for security they see it as a market mechanism they see it as an extra market mechanism purely designed to produce security their mindset is very different from that of member states who see it as part of the basic market and is paying for a service which is essentially a reliability service which is a service that consumers value and something that they want so there is a failure of meeting of minds of this and I think what's driving it within Europe is very much the competition directorate and their view of what makes a market and their view of how markets should be constructed and it's slightly odd in a way because if you look at other markets which I think most people accept are competitive like say broadband or telephony with most of those markets you've got much more complicated pricing structures you don't price just in terms of gigabytes or minutes of phone calls you have more complicated structures with fixed payments and access payments and that's fully accepted and no one says that's a subsidy in some way I think the problem with electricity arises because it's inevitable that the government has to be involved in some way with setting markets because of the monopoly aspects the network aspects the fact that you're selling all into a single market with a single operator and that means that the commission has to take it out of the mindset of seeing these as effectively subsidies so you've got in the commission's latest sets of guidelines it's working on a slightly strange approach on the one hand it's trying to challenge a basic pricing and value element which does make sense it's treating that as a subsidy and saying that's the one we should attack on the other hand it's not doing anything about what is a market distortion the cunary externalities I've mentioned I mean there is a real problem in the markets but it's not the one they're addressing they're addressing the wrong problem and not the problem that actually matters because as I say they're concerned it's just about developing a single market they are trying to do something about the exit strategy but it's in a strange way it's by trying to get stronger market signals for renewables for instance having feed-in premier rather than feed-in tariffs but that doesn't address the basic problem if the basic market prices are not giving you accurate signals about costs are not giving you accurate signals either to drive investment or to drive operation what is the point of trying to link renewables prices closer to market prices it still won't offer an exit strategy in the long run now the commission is in its latest thinking just assuming that will happen somehow automatically when the carbon price is high enough automatically all this will work they're not really addressing the problem that if they leave the market as they are when they get very high carbon prices the market will be saying all that renewables is excess what you're doing essentially is dumping electricity on the market from those renewables which have been subsidised how you would get out of that situation I don't know so just to draw it to conclusion I think the EU does face major challenges and reconciling its energy and climate change objectives I don't really say blame them for not having succeeded in doing so so far the problem is I don't think they're really making much progress towards doing it because they're not taking account of the changes in market structures which are underway at present because of the also EU objectives in terms of decarbonisation 2050 and so on what they need to do is set clear priorities so it's clear what is driving this and how these different objectives can be reconciled they have to find some way of matching targets and governance and I don't know how that can be done it may be something has to be done at member state level as well as something has to be done at EU level but meanwhile there's no real point in setting targets for which you have no governance which you have no way of delivering and I think they need to do more to provide both clarity as to the direction of policy and robustness for the longer term otherwise I'm not sure if I was being too much over the top in saying that I think it's coming apart at the seams at the moment there are very definite strains and no clear indication that anyone is trying to knit the two parts together thank you


Okay, Jay's beam is done at the Royal Hibachi Buffet Route 46 West side of the New Jersey. That's my favorite sign. And we got a plate. What do we got here? There it is, the the so-called fettuccine Alfredo with shrimp. It is actually not fettuccine it is linguine with shrimp and it is not Alfredo. But a second week in a row. Alright. There you go, buddy. It's a nice cut. It just came out. We got a succulent big cut. I'm at our Jeff Sandbello and Exorcist Bishop Brian from the Hit Show Ghosts Adventures on the Travel Channel. From the briny deep from Davey Jones's Lanka. Let me see if that woman left me any duck.  Crab soup. Crab soup. Alright, let me see what I got here with the duck. Look at this. Look at this. This paper. Unbelievable. I gotta love the human race. I gotta love the human race. Man. It's not even worth it. It's not even worth it, really. Slim pickens. Screw it. Screw it. It's all bones. You know what would go well? I really enjoyed the Turkish salad. I really did. I really enjoyed the Turkish salad. Lemon ardi choke. Really? Lemon chicken ardi choke. I don't see no damn ardi chokes. It might choke ardi, but it's not gonna choke James, that's for sure. Right? Commodore Jeff Sandbello? What's this? I have no idea what that is. Spinach or Gratin. You know what? Spinach and cod. It is the official Popeye dinner. We have Northern Squat Cod fillet with spinach. Popeyes Delight with cheese. There you go. This meal is an order of Popeye the Sailor Man. Alright, before I forget, for the very finest in Buffalo Chicken Hot Wings, for your next sporting event, come to Royal Hibachi Buffet Route 46 West out of New Jersey and come in and buy the chicken wings in bulk. That's right. You heard it. Buy the chicken wings in bulk for your very next sporting events, party at home. It could be any sports. It doesn't matter. For the very finest in Buffalo Wings, here we have some Tostones. I'll take one Tostones made from Platanos Verde, green plantains. Okay, here we are. Let's see what we've got here.  What do you got? Oh, avocado salad. This is a delight. This certainly is a definite delight that I am going to eat without a doubt. Okay, it is Greek salad in honor of the creator Mario Petrus, my good friend. Oh, what's over there? That looks colorful, even though I should get a separate bowl. Really? But anyway, I just want to show you this very colorful delight, squash and sweet potato salad, which might be but might be butternut squash. It has walnuts in it though. Okay, and I'm returning to my booth this time, but I'm a little confused. Oh, I see what she did now. She brought me lemons in a coffee cup. Oh, how very nice of her.  What a nice girl. See, she is the Chinese waitress I always have here from Chengdu, China. Busy today. Okay, here we have my lemons for the lemon water. We got spinach. We melt the cheese. Succulent, thick, scrubbed cod filet. The only two pieces of duck that had meat on it, really, and a tostones. Okay, now it's time for some of this avocado salad. It's definitely avocado in there. Unlike the steak pot pie I got from Trader Joe's, it was all white potatoes, cheap filler. And the photo in front of the box showed it was loaded with steak. But of course, I did a video for YouTube and exposed them, like I exposed everything. Well, I didn't come out right. Yeah, as a consumer, I meant. Yeah, it was horrible. It was all cheap, cheap filler, all potatoes. All right, go ahead and fill the rest. Thank you. Okay, you got to watch those pot pies. The chicken was good though. Young lady got a kick out of my narration of the Trader Joe steak pot pie. But anyway. What's your child's name when you're done? What's your child's name? Oh, Megalife 21 on YouTube. I have progressive discussions. I do mostly political shows. Oh, okay. Sometimes I, every time I come here, I do a video. Oh, okay. Yeah, you know, I got, I got a fan base, the guy from the Exorcist Bishop from the Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel. He likes the videos I talk to him once in a while. I got an Exorcist and a competitive power with them, among others that I don't even know. It's like a Facebook friends list. You don't even know probably three quarters of the people who are on their avocado salad. Okay, now it's time for some crab soup, a coordinated oyster pot. Okay, I better grab this while it's still here. Oh, look at that roasted sweet peppers, that grilled eggplant. Beautiful, beautiful. Very colorful. Very nice. When you get some flan, this stuff goes really fast. Oh, look at this lovely baklava. Very good. Excellent. I'll take a couple of these.


Thank you very much. I am absolutely delighted to be here. I'm a little bit worried about this talk though. Last weekend I was at a conference for Liberty Fund and I mentioned to a very senior, very esteemed, very market-friendly humanities scholar that I was going to be giving a talk on Dickens and market friendly ideas in Dickens.  Oh, the ideas. So I'm thinking that Larry and Carl might have invited me to give this talk tonight because since the place is sold it's not going to matter if the roof actually falls in from your combined shock and horror. I'm also a little bit worried about this whole Jonah Lehrer thing that's been happening. I don't know if you guys have been following this. This talk originated as a talk for API, the Association for Private Enterprise Education, and then it spent a little bit of time as a post on my blog and I think that means that I can't write for the New Yorker, doesn't it? What it does mean I know is that I'm following in the pattern of a master. In a discussion of Dickens' famous public readings from his works, Joyce Carol Oates argued that one must not think that Dickens was reading authentic Dickens to these mass audiences. Instead, he prepared scripts showcasing his and his audience's favorite characters. Now, there's probably a way to justify referring to a reading given by Dickens from excerpts made by Dickens taken from novels written by Dickens as being inauthentic Dickens, but I have yet failed to figure out what that could be. So I want to assure you that whether it is qualified for the New Yorker or not, this talk is authentic Sarah. And I would like very much to thank Larry and Carl and everyone at Fee for the opportunity to share it with you. And I very much want to thank all of you for taking a summer Saturday evening to spend with me thinking about Dickens for a little bit. So let's get going. All of us who love literature and who love private enterprise and business have heard a lot about the problem.  Literature, we are told, hates business or at least holds it in contempt. And it hates or at least holds in contempt those who engage in it. And the most contemptuous, the most opposed of all authors to the power and the capabilities and the promising potential of private enterprise is, of course, as my friend from the conference knows, Charles Dickens. We know this because when we, even we, need a term of repugnance and distaste for a businessman of a certain type, we instinctively think of Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. How instinctive is that thinking? Well, since the 1950s, the Oxford English Dictionary records multiple uses of Scrooge's name as a common noun used as a synonym for miser in a wide range of contexts, contexts that have no bearing on Dickens' work, contexts that have no explicit or implicit reference to Christmas. For example, in October of 1976, a Texas newspaper noted that Jim Catfish Hunter, baseball's foremost money picture, turned in a Scrooge-like performance on Saturday. You all know this guy, Disney's Scrooge McDuck, a familiar character to Disney and comic fans. And this common vision of Scrooge is no surprise. We're supposed to hate him. Dickens built him that way. And because Dickens is a writer of undeniable power and influence, we can't resist. And how could we resist? How could we be expected to resist with descriptions like this one? Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire, secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rhyme was on his head and on his eyebrows and on his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about him. He iced his office in the dog days and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. Scrooge is a villain. And we take our pleasure from his story as we see him get punished and we undergo a catharsis as we see him reform. At least most of us do. Apparently tired of the endless drubbing that Scrooge takes as an exemplar of every form of financial evil and possibly even more tired of sugar-coated financial advice books that use Scrooge's fictional transformation to sort of this picture of charity as a model for how rational people should handle their money. Witness, for example, the financial wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge, which comes with a foreword written by the esteemed financial wizard Naomi Judd. The economists Bruce Buena de Moschita and Steven Landsberg have both published defenses of Scrooge's miserly behavior before his reformation. Landsberg's 2004 article in Slate, which is called What I Like About Scrooge in Praise of Misers, is a ringing defense of the social, not just individual, virtues of saving money. Landsberg writes, put a dollar in the bank and you'll bid down the interest rate by just enough so that someone somewhere can afford an extra dollar's worth of vacation or home improvement. Put a dollar in your mattress and by effectively reducing the money supply, you'll drive down prices by just enough so someone somewhere can have an extra dollar's worth of coffee with his dinner. Scrooge, no doubt a canny investor, lent his money at interest. His less conventional namesake, Scrooge McDuck, filled a vault with dollar bills to roll around in. No matter. Ebenezer Scrooge lowered interest rates, Scrooge McDuck lowered prices. Each Scrooge enriched his neighbors as much as any Lord Mayor who invited the town in for a Christmas feast. So with his tongue firmly in cheek but his economic principles firmly intact, Landsberg concludes his article by noting that great artists are sometimes unaware of the deepest meanings in their own creations. Though Dickens might not have recognized it, the primary moral of a Christmas carol is that there should be no limits on IRA contributions. Now, I love that one. Well, Landsberg's article uses Dickens novel and its representation of Scrooge as an example of one kind of thinking about miserliness, and then challenges readers to reexamine that kind of thinking in ways that are productive of intelligent economic thought. Bruce Buena de Moschita actually rewrites the novel. In his book, The Trial of Ebenezer Scrooge, he engineers a new history for Scrooge, one of consistent and consistently hidden charity of grinding personal poverty that is only increased by the many sacrifices Scrooge makes in order to help others. It's a novel of a man who is misunderstood, misjudged and wrongly punished. Now, while Buena de Moschita asserts that he does this by relying on evidence found within the body of Dickens great work, he finds himself driven to borrow characters from other novels by Dickens and other Victorian writers to accuse Charles Dickens of non specific but damning unhallowedness and to blacken the reputation of tiny Tim in order to defend Scrooge. Now, I understand the impulse. For those who are exhausted by yet another negative representation of the businessperson in literature, it must sometimes seem as if the whole problem could just be solved if we could turn Scrooge into a hero. If he's the root of the problem, we should just be able to reinterpret Scrooge and revision Dickens, as we say in the English department, until the problem goes away. The problem with this approach, though, as contrast into Landsberg's use of the Scrooge story as a springboard for an intriguing economic counterintuitive, is that the Buena de Moschita approaches all but guaranteed to enrage people who love literature. Now, that might be your goal, in which case go for it. It's a winner. But if the goal is instead to open up a conversation between lovers of literature and lovers of private enterprise, there may be a more productive technique to use. And the work of Charles Dickens is perfectly suited to it. It's my contention that in order to rescue the representation of business and literature and more specifically to rescue the reputation of business in literature by Charles Dickens, that great enemy of private enterprise, all we actually need to do is do the reading. This is not meant to be insulting advice. The Oxford Illustrated Dickens weighs in at 20-month volumes, more than 30 pounds and over 12,000 pages accounted. There are excellent reasons. And Dickens, in addition to all that, he knocked off about 14,000 letters in his spare time and wrote weekly newspaper columns. So he was a busy guy. There are excellent reasons like opportunity costs and aging vision for not reading everything that Dickens ever wrote. I certainly haven't read everything that Dickens ever wrote. However, with novels and conveniently he has put them out. With novels like those right there that frequently add up to over 800 pages, with thousands of characters, little Dorot alone has 45 named major characters and countless unnamed shopkeepers and maid servants and beggars and cavern keepers and so on. And with scores of scenes and characters who are so memorable and so ingrained in our popular culture that we think we remember them before we've even read them. The danger when reading Dickens is that we assume that we know what it's about. This danger is only increased when we approach the novels wanting to prove a point, particularly a point about something we care as much about as private enterprise. We know, in other words, that Dickens created Scrooge. That's not a point in his favor. We know that he wrote Hard Times, where he describes Coketown, his analog of 19th century Manchester like this. And here's 19th century Manchester, which Dickens uses as a model for the village of Coketown in his novel Hard Times. And he describes it this way. It lay shrouded in a haze of a city that was in its own which appeared impervious to the sun's rays. You only knew the town was there because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke now tending this way now that way now aspiring to the vault of heaven now merkily creeping along the path as the wind rose and fell or changed its quarter. A dense formless jumble with sheets of cross light in it that showed the city's vastness. Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen. Well, the wonder was that it was there at all. It had been ruined so often that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely, there was never such fragile chinaware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made. Handled them never so lightly and they fell to pieces with such ease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before.  They were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works.  They were utterly undone when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke. We know that what we will find on every page of Dickens is contempt for industry coupled with the mockery of businessmen and their over-inflated egos. Businessmen like Scrooge, businessmen like Paul Dombie Sr., who believes that the earth was made for Dombie and Sun to trade in and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships. Rainbows gave them promise of fair weather. Winds blew for or against their enterprises. Stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve in violet a system of which they were the center. We know that we won't find anything in the writing of the man who produced these Jeremiah's against commerce and industry anything that supports business, private enterprise, free markets or the kind of financial responsibility that is so important to a free society. The problem is we're wrong. The works of Charles Dickens, and I'm thinking of the major novels here, not the letters or forgotten magazine articles, the major works provide a range of counter arguments to the anti-market, anti-business arguments made in other places in his own works. Indeed, it's not at all unusual for these supportive arguments to occur in the same books as the arguments that critique business and the market. Whether it's support for the importance of innovation or the respectability of work or the moral failing involved in personal financial irresponsibility, these arguments are available in Dickens. It only remains for those of us who care about these issues and not merely about heart-wrenching accounts of families ruined by malevolent dishonest schemers to draw attention to these moments and create a fuller and more sophisticated picture of Dickens' work and thought. So Dickens and innovation. When we think of Little Dorot, and you did all read Dickens' major novels before the talk tonight, right, because there's a quiz after, and I'll, okay, well, then just try and follow along. When we think of Little Dorot, we think of its portrayal of the Marshall C, which is London's notorious debtor's prison, about which we're going to talk a little bit more later, and the novel's account of the financial chicanery of Mr. Myrtle, upon whose demise, by his own hand, out of shame at being exposed as a scoundrel, it is discovered that numbers of men in every profession and trade would be blighted by his insolvency. Old people who had been in easy circumstances all their lives would have no place of repentance for their trust in him but the workhouse.  Every partaker of his magnificent feasts would be seen to have been a sharer in the plunder of innumerable homes. Every servile worshipper of riches who had helped set him on his pedestal would have done better to worship the devil point blank. He was simply the greatest forger and thief that had ever cheated the gallows. Now just for the record, it does not seem to me that hatred of graft and corruption and forgery and theft is an anti-market or anti-business stance. People who value and appreciate free markets and honest business should despise the people who corrupt them. Just as people who love their religion should despise those who bastardize its teachings. That said, I'm certainly not going to try to make the claim that Dickens' presentation of Mr. Myrtle, the Bernie Madoff of 19th century London, is in any way intended to encourage private enterprise or to encourage the sort of risk acceptance that is needed for investment. But Mr. Myrtle is not the only character and not the only businessman in Little Dorot. An important foil to Mr. Myrtle and his criminal misuse of funds is Dan Dois. We are introduced to Dan Dois by Mr. Meagles, keep this all straight, who a kindly retired banker. Please note that despite Mr. Meagles' occasional character flaws, he is kindly. He is so kindly that Dickens even describes him in the list of characters as a kindly banker. He's kindly. As Meagles tells us, Dan Dois is a Smith and engineer. He's not in a large way, but he is well known as a very ingenious man. A dozen years ago, he perfects an invention involving a very curious secret process of great importance to his country and his fellow creatures.  Dois is, in other words, an independent businessman, an inventor, and an entrepreneur. Notice too that Dickens is very careful to specify both the enormous potential utility of Dan Dois' invention and the cost of time, intellectual effort, money, and energy that Dois has invested in it. The invention we are told repeatedly throughout the novel will be of great, if unspecified, benefit to England if he can only get a patent and put it into production. However, in order to do that, Dois has to get past parliament and the Circumlocution Office. The Trials, Dickens writes about the Circumlocution Office. The Trials for patents were made in the presence of a board of six, of whom two ancient members were too blind to see it, two other ancient members were too deaf to hear it, one other ancient member was too lame to get near it, and the final ancient member was too pig-headed to go look at it. He also tells us how the Circumlocution Office in the course of time took up the business as if it were a brand new thing of yesterday, which had never been heard of before, muddled the business, addled the business, tossed the business in a wet blanket, how the impertinences, ignorances, and insults went through the multiplication table, how there was a reference of the invention to three barnacles and assault stocking, parliamentary members, who knew nothing about it, into whose heads nothing could be hammered about it, who got bored about it, who repeated physical impossibilities about it, how the Circumlocution Office saw no reason to reverse the decision at which my lords had arrived, how the Circumlocution Office, upon being reminded that my lords had arrived at no decision, shelved the business. Dickens makes it very clear to his readers, as he takes us through Dois' rough but accurate accounting methods and business practices, that the problems Dois faces in achieving his patent and in being allowed to produce his invention and to profit from his own innovation are not due to any failing on Dan Dois' part. He does everything right.  George Orwell's observation about Dickens is well worth noting here, and Orwell's observations about Dickens are virtually always well worth noting. He writes that Dickens despises politics, does not believe that any good can come out of parliament. He had been a parliamentary shorthand writer, which was no doubt a disillusioning experience. Entrepreneur and innovator that he is, Dois takes the only possible action. He shrugs. He picks up his invention, and the considerable intellectual capital contained in his innovative brain, and he heads for other countries. The result of this move, which I think is a fine example of the need for international labor mobility, is that at the end of the novel, Mr. Meagle is able to report back on Dan Dois. Don't talk about happiness until you see Dan. I assure you Dan is directing works and executing labors over yonder that it would make your hair stand on end to look at. He's no public offender, blushing now. He's meddled and ribbed and starred and crossed, and I don't know what all, like a born nobleman. But we mustn't talk about that over here. Britannia is a Britannia in the manger, won't give her children such distinctions herself, and won't allow them to be seen when they are given by other countries. As a result of this outstanding success, Dois is able to return to England at the end of the novel to pay off the debts of his business partner, Arthur Clenum, who's the novel's romantic hero, who lost all of the firm's money when he invested it with Mr. Myrtle and enabled the marriage of our hero to the heroine, little Dorot. All of this good, every last bit of it, is achieved through Dois's innovation and entrepreneurship. Wealth and happiness for scores of characters in the book are assured through Dois's good auspices, and Dickens readers are assured, in some final comments by the narrator, that the firm of Dois and Clenum will continue successfully long into a fictional afterward. That's Dan Dois. Dickens and work. It is a truth universally acknowledged that the Victorians considered work un-gentlemanly. It has been endlessly pointed out that the only occupations available to Jane Austen's male heroes are land-owning gentry, officer in the military, preferably the Navy, or member of the clergy. Trollope does a lot better, bringing in lawyers, engineers, and a few others. Wilkie Collins gives us some drawing masters and police detectives added into the mix. In Dickens, however, almost everyone works. Here I disagree with Orwell, who says oddly, I think that Dickens does not noticeably write about work. I suspect, though, that what Orwell is seeking and not finding in Dickens is a sort of day-to-day occupational detail that you get in novelists like Trollope or in Melville.  Donald Hawes notes that in Everyone with Dickens, there's a list of 1,024 occupations and vocations for men and 137 for women. And that drawing from a more restricted range of Dickens' works, another author has compiled a list of class list of characters that distinguishes among 150 different professions, trades, and occupations. So at a minimum, we can say that in the novels of Dickens we have a much fuller picture of the world of work than is available in other Victorian novels and novelists. But a fuller picture of the world of work doesn't make a whole lot of difference if the work is being described by a writer who, like Jane Austen's Netherfield Ladies, would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade and within view of his own warehouses could have possibly been well-bred and agreeable. Happily, Dickens is no Netherfield Lady. For the young heroes of Dickens' novels there are generally two central questions. First, whom should they marry? And second, what ought they to become? For both David Copperfield of David Copperfield and Richard Jarndice of the novel Bleak House, that second question, what should I become, is an enormous driving factor in the plot of their respective stories. David Copperfield begins his working life when his mother dies in childbirth and his stepfather sends him to work in the family bottling factory. This episode in the novel David Copperfield famously replicates a miserable episode from Dickens' childhood. He spent a year pasting labels onto bottles in a blacking factory in order to try to repay some of his father's accumulated debts. So this is an autobiographical incident that Dickens has put into a novel that has a lot of autobiographical moments. Taken in later by an eccentric and sympathetic aunt, Betsy Trotward, David Copperfield is then established as an article clerk, apprentice to a lawyer, and a proctor at the courts of Doctors Commons. Purchasing David Copperfield's articles, making him an article clerk, cost his aunt £1,000, which the web tells me comes out to about £70,000 in today's money, so it's a significant sum, and it commits David to years as an unpaid apprentice. The expectation, however, is that entering David into this apprenticeship will assure him of a comfortable income and a respectable profession for the rest of his life. All of this changes when Betsy Trotward's money is lost through the machinations of the vile Uriah Heap, who is the chief villain of the novel. Suddenly, Betsy Trotward has no income out of which to support herself, let alone David or her friend who is the mentally challenged friend who she supports, and someone needs to earn some money somewhere. After a fruitless attempt to get his articles cancelled and get the £1,000 investment returned to him, David sets out to try to earn a living. His determination to do this leads him to work first for his old tutor as a secretary and ghostwriter, to try to learn shorthand in order to be able to report parliamentary debates for the newspapers, as Dickens did, and eventually to establish himself as a respected writer of novels and non-fiction, as Dickens did. What is notable, I think, is that after one night of absolute despair, when David thought and thought about my being poor, about my not being what I thought I was when I proposed to Dodora, about how I should contrive to live during the long term of my apprenticeship, when I was earning nothing, about doing something to assist my aunt and seeing no way of doing anything. After that one night of despair, his focus immediately shifts to hope and to practical consideration, knowing that he must support himself, that he hopes to be able to support his future wife, Dorah, and that he must help to support his aunt as well. He resolves, what I had to do was to show my aunt that her past goodness to me had not been thrown away on an insensible, ungrateful object. What I had to do was to turn the painful discipline of my younger days to account by going to work with a resolute and steady heart. I had to take my woodsman's axe in my hand and clear my own way through the forest of difficulty. And that's David and Dorah learning to be responsible, aren't they adorable? David Copperfield is a model and perhaps a particularly useful model for these times of the way in which those of us who believe in entrepreneurship and personal initiative should respond to reversals in fortune. He may grieve over lost opportunities and destroyed wealth, and he's well justified in doing so, but he never lets that grief stand in the way of his determination to find work and do it well. Rather, it is the work and the determination to do it well and to improve himself and support himself and his family that carries David through the maddening years of his marriage to his utterly charming and completely irresponsible child-wife, Dorah. His work pulls him out of his depression after Dorah's death. Indeed, by the close of the novel, David has become a successful novelist of his own. He writes, I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a story with a purpose growing out of my experience and arranged for its publication very advantageously for me. And then he begins to work on another book and another book and another book. His work, specifically the self-examination and contemplation required by working as a writer, turns David Copperfield into an adult who's able to realize that his love for Dorah was true but childish, his love for Agnes, his second wife is full, lasting and adult. It is work, learning to do it, and finding the right kind that helps David Copperfield to his happy ending. Much less happy is the ending that awaits Richard Carstone of Bleak House, another Dickens hero in search of a profession. There's Richard Carstone. As one of the heirs in Jarn Dice, Richard is waiting and will spend his entire life waiting for the resolution of Jarn Dice and Jarn Dice, the longest-running suit in the history of the Courts of Chancery. A lawsuit over a will that in fact lasts so long that it completely consumes through its legal expenses every penny from the estate, which was enormous. It's quite the lawsuit. So in one of the novel's lengthy discussions about what Richard is to do, his guardian, John Jarn Dice, suggests that this interminable waiting over the lawsuit has left Richard incapable of making decisions. How much of this indecision of character, he says, is chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and procrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth? I don't pretend to say, but Chancery, among its other sins, is responsible for some of it. It has engendered or confirmed in him a habit of putting off and trusting to this, that and the other chance, without knowing what and dismissing everything as unsettled, uncertain and confused. Now, with such a character driving his decision-making progress about professions, Richard tries medicine and the law and the military and fails abysmally at all of them. Unable to make any kind of commitment to working diligently because that lawsuit going to be settled any day now, Richard alienates his affectionate guardian, falls into debt, begins compulsive and expensive pursuit of the hopeless law case, and eventually dies destitute, leaving a wife and infant son behind him. Much of the blame for Richard's death is squarely laid at the feet of the lawsuit, which is certainly the great evil hulking over the entire novel. But nearly equal responsibility lies with his failure to find a profession that could carry him through the vicissitudes of a life darkened by that madness of that lawsuit. On his deathbed, Richard seems to realize this, saying, I have to begin the world. I will not begin it in the old way now. I've learned a lesson now. This resolution to begin the world echoes the hope and determination of the job seekers setting out to the market or the young apprentice beginning his profession. The suggestion is clear. With a real profession to study him and help him grow out, grow up, as David Copperfield's profession does, Richard might have made it out of Jarnadis and Jarnadis alive. Without it, there was never any hope. Dickens in debt. That Richard Carstone slides into debt while waiting for some sort of resolution to the case of Jarnadis and Jarnadis is not in any way unusual for Dickens characters. Dickens is justly famed for his grim representations of the dire conditions and the Alice in Wonderland logic that drove the creation and existence of England's debtor's prisons. Little Dorrit is the novel that most focuses on debtor's prison in particular. It's mostly set inside the Marshall Sea. But it's secondary characters in David Copperfield and in Bleak House who best served to illustrate the complex relationship that Dickens had with debt and debtors. Without giving in to the fraught temptations of a psychoanalytic reading of Dickens's novels, which I suspect would not go over real well with you guys, it's important that we remember when we talk about debt in Dickens that his father was imprisoned in the Marshall Sea for debt and that as a result of this, 12 year old Charles was sent to work in a blacking factory to support himself and his family and attempt to pay off his father's debts. It is only the death of his grandmother and a 450 pound legacy that releases Dickens' father from prison and eventually allows Dickens to stop work and return to school. The debt problems continued throughout Dickens' adult life as the returns from his endless writing and performing often went to pay for his father's and brother's and son's equally endless debts. Knowing that, it is no surprise that Dickens' portraits of the financially improvident, personally irresponsible debtors, Wilcomes McAuber and Harold Skimpole are drawn with a complicated mixture of affection and disgust. Mr. McAuber, everyone's favorite, Mr. McAuber, is famously based on Dickens' father and ever since his appearance in David Copperfield, he has been one of Dickens' most beloved characters portrayed in film by stars like W.C. Fields, McAuber's comic language and his irrepressible good cheer in the face of self-created adversity and his unending faith that something will turn up have made it seem to some as if his portrait is an example of a moment when Dickens is overly kind to a dangerously flawed character. Now certainly it would be ridiculous to argue that McAuber's portrayal isn't affectionate, described in the list of characters for the novel as jaunty, grand, eloquent, recklessly good-natured and improvident. McAuber is funny and charming and he inspires unceasing devotion in his wife, children and friends. He also, by the way, gives the single best piece of financial advice ever given in any work of fiction. Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 19 pounds, 19 and 6. Result? Happiness. Annual income 20 pounds, annual expenditure 20 pounds, ought and 6. Result? Misery. McAuber's inability to abide by his own advice is the source of much of the comedy of his story and much of its tragedy. For despite every scene where McAuber makes us laugh, one thinks, for example, of his plans to put bow windows into his house the minute something turns up, although just that morning he has sold all of the family's cutlery. There's a distinct air of sadness and even potential menace surrounding Mr. McAuber. He and his family are forever traveling from one place to another in search of promising opportunities, which even when found he's incapable of following through. In the course of these travels they're separated, often destitute, often in prison. Their exigencies in the end drive McAuber to what initially appears to be an unholy alliance with Uriah Heap, surely one of the most revolting characters in Dickens' long catalog of memorable villains. There he is. One of a series of malevolent seconds in command in Dickens, Uriah Heap exploits the growing alcoholism and irresponsible behavior of David's friend and mentor Mr. Wickfield in order to pillage and ruin his business. Heap's plan is that by so doing he will render Wickfield's daughter, David's future wife, into such a state of submission that she will agree to marry him purely in order to save her father's reputation. We know from early on that this is Uriah Heap's plan. We have with David loathed Uriah Heap since his first appearance in the novel. Thus to hear McAuber tell David, I have entered into arrangements by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to our friend Heap to assist and serve him in the capacity of and to be his confidential clerk while we shudder. And when McAuber further specifies, my friend Heap has not fixed the positive remuneration at too high a figure but he has made a great deal in the way of extrication from the pressure pecuniary difficulties contingent on the value of my services. We are sickened.  For the next 200 pages we believe entirely that Mr. McAuber is in league with Uriah Heap. It is no more of a relief to him than it is to us when he finally breaks forth to tell David, I'll know nobody and say nothing and live nowhere until I have crushed to undiscoverable atoms the transcendent and immortal hypocrite and perjurer Uriah Heap and crush him he does. After serving as his confidential clerk he knows every detail of his plots and plans. He is able to destroy them and save his friends. He is in the end heroic although he is in the end relocated to Australia where he is conveniently unable to borrow any more money from David or any of his other friends. McAuber's happy ending might still trouble those of us who want to argue for the importance of personal financial responsibility so we may find ourselves more satisfied with the story of Harold Skimpole in Bleakhouse. Such critics, sorry, one of John Jondo's innumerable friends and charitable cases. Harold Skimpole introduces himself to us as a mere child who has two of the oldest infirmities in the world. One was that he had no idea of time and the other that he had no idea of money in consequence of which he never kept an appointment, never could transact any business and never knew the value of anything. Upon their initial meeting with Skimpole our young hero and heroine confessed themselves enchanted and dazzled by his charm. Later that same evening he's arrested for a debt of more than 24 pounds, about 2000 pounds today. Utterly charmed by him the young people give him all the money they possess in order to clear him of the debt. John Jondo says at first horrified that Skimpole has squeezed his young heirs this way like a couple of tender young oranges but he calms himself by remembering what a child Skimpole is. This initial counter however leaves the reader feeling a little bit nervous about Skimpole. As the novel continues he blithely fails to pay his butcher's bill and blames the butcher for wanting to be paid because the butcher could have paid himself simply by not wasting his time trying to collect money from Skimpole. Skimpole has all his furniture unpaid for confiscated until he pays his rent also unpaid for. The expenses for which he cheerfully refers to John John Dice. To ensure that we are further troubled by this sort of behavior Dickens is careful to have our virtuous heroine note I always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs. Skimpole and the children and in what point of view they presented themselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand they rarely presented themselves at all. It's possible possible even with this discomforting reminder that Skimpole has a family that he is utterly neglecting to still find him comical we're all still laughing particularly if one is familiar with Mr. McCobber as a precedent. But once the pathetic character of Joe the crossing sweeper crosses paths with Skimpole such comic possibilities aren't no longer available. Joe and here's an actual Victorian era crossing sweeper the squeegee guy of the 19th century. Joe first wins our sympathies as the loyal friend of the mysterious law writer Nemo. He's an utterly uneducated all but totally solitary orphan who sweeps the streets of London in hopes of getting tips. He's one of the lost and the least of Victorian society.  And he's made all the more pathetic by the death of his only friend at the beginning of the book. Now that death for a variety of plot reasons that I promise I'm not going to get into leads to Joe being chased through the city of London by the police. Harold Skimpole enters his life when Joe appears sick and harried near Jarnadis' home. Esther our young heroine brings him inside and Skimpole argues that the child should be turned out into the street instantly. He's not safe you know there's a very bad sort of fever about him. I am a child then I never pretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road you only put him where he was before he'll be no worse off than he was you know. You could even make him better off if you like. Give him six pence or five shillings or five pounds ten. I recommend you're turning him out before he gets any worse. This child Skimpole's utter lack of sympathy and human compassion for an actual child is chilling all the more so when we remember that he's a father all the more so when we remember that he's a doctor. It would be chilling enough if Skimpole's effect on Joe ended there but it doesn't. Joe is put into a comfortable bed in the hayloft where he will be warm and safe and not risk any of the house's occupants. The plan is to take him to the hospital in the morning but in the morning Joe is gone. No one in the house knows what to make of his disappearance and they worry that maybe he's wandered off in a moment of delirium. They all worried that is to say but Mr. Skimpole who repeatedly suggested in his usual easy lifestyle that it had occurred to our young friend that he was not a safe inmate having a bad kind of fever upon him and that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off. We find out though at the end of the novel that Skimpole knows precisely what has happened to Joe and he knows because it was Skimpole who in exchange for five pounds turned Joe into the police who harry Joe so relentlessly from place to place that he dies from illness and exhaustion and there is no one to blame for that but Skimpole. As Mr. Bucket the policeman who pays Skimpole notes whenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in all things concerning money look well after your own money for they are dead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to you in worldly matters I'm a child you consider that that person is only crying off from being held accountable and that you have got that person's number and it is number one. Skimpole is reprehensible and any whimsical charms that he possessed at the beginning of the novel turn our stomachs by the end. We should note too that Skimpole's treachery is driven by his financial irresponsibility incapable as he claims of understanding the value of money he does nothing but waste it chase it and spend it. When he is presented with the chance of a five pound note it would be madness to expect him to do anything other than what he does. It is this moral turning point where the difference between macabre and Skimpole comes to light. Macabre turns against the villain who has bought him and emerges heroically though still in debt from the moral challenges he faces. Skimpole continues as he always has destroying everyone in his path. There are other aspects of Dickens novels that while perhaps of somewhat less specific interest to fans of business economics and free markets are still surely of great concern. Dickens for example uses his novels for extensive discussions of charity. His vision of private charities complex with competent and helpful characters like the cheerable brothers and John John Dice contrasting with figures like Mrs. Jellaby who's so devoted to hoping helping the poor and neglected children of Africa that she utterly ignores her own. His vision of public charity is much less nuanced. He hates it. The workhouse, the state orphanage, the state charity school all of these are places of absolute horror for Dickens. Surely those of us who believe in the importance of private charity can make something of this acknowledgement that while private charity has its problems and complexities public charity has even more. Dickens noted hatred of for force in all forms and his distrust of political force in particular also deserves our attention and respect. As Orwell notes of Dickens if you hate violence and don't believe in politics the only major remedy remaining is education which I really think you guys need to have on a t-shirt. I will buy it. It would also be an interesting although enormous project to track the stories of the young lovers in Dickens novels. How many of them claim as many of them do that they do not need money but find that their best happy endings are resolved through money they have earned or inherited or been put in the way of. Bleakhouse is a great example of this. Esther Somerson's happy ending is insured by her receipt of a house from her guardian. Her husband's receipt of an excellent position made possible through her guardian's influence and presumably their expectations of inheriting her guardian's wealth when he dies. Of all of this Esther notes we are not rich in the bank but we have always prospered and we have quite enough. Now I confess I find it find it difficult to decipher what Esther who's just gotten a house and a job and an inheritance could possibly mean by the phrase not rich in the bank but prospering. I suspect it may have more to do with the Victorian difficulty of attaining ready cash, actual cash on hand, rather than any claim to actual poverty. Regardless, in each of the three books I've discussed most extensively tonight, Little Dorrit, Bleakhouse, and David Copperfield, the happy endings enjoyed by more than one pair of young lovers are enabled by literal financial prosperity. It would be madness to try to turn Dickens into a thoroughgoing fran of private enterprise, free markets, entrepreneurship, and business. There's far too much evidence in his work that goes against that. And to ignore that evidence is an injustice to the work and to the man. But it is equally an injustice if we allow Dickens to be thought of as some sort of mealy-headed, overly emotional romantic who thinks that all rich people are evil, all work as oppression, all businesses corruption, and all financially irresponsible people are charming butterflies. We have the tools to argue against this. We have Dickens' own work. So over the years a host of great scholars from my dissertation director Richard Stryer to the economist Deirdre McCluskey have reminded all of us that we have to answer the so what question. Their response to a talk like this one, and it's a justified response, is to say, all right, so great, so Dickens doesn't always hate business and markets. So what? So a couple of things. So it's worth our while to be better readers of Dickens, simply in order to be better readers of a great writer. So it's worth our while to stop making glancing negative references to Christmas Carol and hard times in front of our students, giving them the false impression that Dickens isn't much more than a punching bag. But more importantly, and as I said recently over at Cato Unbound, here's the big so what. The whole debate over weather literature, Shakespeare or Dickens or pick your literary punching bag of the week is pro-market or anti-market is a false argument. It's trying to make literature do something that it does not do well. Literature, particularly novels and plays, thrives on subtlety and complexity. This is because it gives writers this space to explore a range of opinions and attitudes towards a problem as well as a wide set of responses and possible outcomes. So to expect any novel by a good and intelligent author to be always and always on message about anything, be it business or religion or love or death, is to expect a novel to be no more than a campaign speech. And that's a foolish error. As Steve Horwitz recently commented, libertarians have to stop judging other thinkers in black and white terms. The world is not just about good guys and bad guys, but about people, real people, who are good and bad in various mixes. And we need to appreciate them when they were good, even if it wasn't all the time. And Tyler Cowan notes, now some things actually are good versus evil. We know this, right? But as a general rule, we're too inclined to tell the good versus evil story. As a simple rule of thumb, just imagine every time you're telling a good versus evil story, you're lowering your IQ by 10 points or more. Literature is not for clear answers. Literature is for complicated questions. There's vital empirical data in literary texts. Not data about economic fact, though there's some of that. But there's data about how people felt and thought and wrote about economics and about market issues. If we care about that, if that's as important as Deirdre McCloskey and others have argued, we have a responsibility to find that data, to write about it, to share it and to teach it. And the reason we want to do that? This may be hard to believe, but there are those of us who are more readily able to appreciate the glorious aesthetics of Little Dorot or Bleak House than the equally glorious but very different aesthetics of Stubblebine and Buchanan writing about externalities. So if we accept the same old assessment of Dickens and others, if we simply and weakly agree that yes, literature is anti-market, we're conceding a frontier that we do not need to concede and we're forfeiting an audience that we do not need to forfeit. We're giving up eloquent discourse and humane arguments and weighty support that we do not need to give up. We cannot afford to surrender literature, to surrender culture without a fight. And every time we do, we are increasingly rhetorically impoverished, emotionally bereft, and culturally bankrupt. Thank you very much.


Okay, so is it is entitled interracial? Interracial dating and weight She said hey, I just saw your last video That's something I've wondered about for a while. I'm five eight and two hundred pounds.   That's just gonna look right. It's got she got the curves on right We'll place it.  Okay, so that's where we at right now, okay?  Anyway, so she's dating dating mostly black guys she said, um She said I get the feeling they don't think I'm attractive It makes me feel guilty to date black men because I feel like I'm dating them because I've been rejected by my own race What do you think am I part of the stereotype? Yes Uh, you are part of the stereotype. It's a it is what it is. Okay overweight white girl you going out with black dudes. Yes, that is a stereotype but I mean Also You said like a white man not too many white men ask you out. So Look at America as a whole most people don't want to date someone overweight Right.     They're asking you out.  So, you know You know, there's no other way about it.  Either you dating spanish shoes or black dudes.  I sell security systems.  Okay, so, uh, stop feeling guilty. All right If you feel so guilty, hey lose all the weight and then start dating the white man But you already used to us so you might as well find a white man that you love and get married or whatever I don't know, but uh, uh, I hope this answers your questions for you.  Not the stereotypes are all bad. Okay, not all stereotypes are bad.  That's not a bad stereotype. You got what I'm saying?  If you think about if you turn around it's kind of More accepting like the black people like a thicker type woman like we're not into the bone thin Like there's no way I could date a bone thin woman, but I don't date anything.   I did not like it. I can't remember now. I can see it right now I was above her.  You got this 511 205 pound man with this What she had to be what maybe five foot one or two And she was like 98 pounds like no First pedophile experience I've ever had that wasn't a true pedophile. She she was growing.    I don't that she's staring right through me like superman Man of steel she could burn Right through my head right now Don't worry, babe. I ain't gonna leave you for older woman All right, older women get at me. Listen magna sights. Let me know what y'all think about this joking Let me know what y'all think. This is a joke. I swear to guys this joke Uh, yeah, yeah, you're a stereotype get over it. Don't worry about it. Be happy and you're gonna be fine


Satish Thallange, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Vyalchand Institute of Technology, Solapur. In today's session, we are going to see minimization of the objective function of the linear problem using graphical method. In today's session, the learner is going to determine the solution of linear problem problem for minimizing of the objective function using the graphical method. Now, let us see what is the linear problem. The linear problem problem is a mathematical modeling technique in which the following terms are involved. Here, the objective function is a first term which is defining the maximize and minimize case. Second is the n decision variables presents is the non-negative variables which are subjected to the set of constraints expressed by linear equations. It may be equality or inequality equations. The object of the linear problem problem is to maximize the profit benefits production of goods, etc. Second, to minimize the time loss and the wastage of resource, etc. Finally, it is planning and making of decision about resource allocation. Now, the particular linear problem problem can be solved by following method that is graphical method. It is also known as two variable method. Second, simplex method, third, begin method and last is two phase method. Now, let us see what is the graphical method. The graphical method is suitable for solving the linear problem problem having only two variables. It is going to find out the feasible region satisfying most of the constraints present in the problem and it helps to find out the highest and lowest point on the graph which is going to give the optimum solution according to the case. These are the steps involved in the solving of the linear problem problem by the graphical method. Now, let us start to solve the particular problem of minimize case. This is a problem in which the multiple having the water system for the distribution. Here, they are distributing the water by the gravitational method but they are facing the problem in the distribution. So, they are finally interested to place the mechanical pumps for the distribution and they are interested to find out the pressure required, minimum pressure required by the both the methods. You can say gravitational method as well as mechanically pump that water distribution should be properly. They are saying that they have three stations housing is state A, B and C and these are the particularly pressures with the gravitational method and the mechanical method for each station. Now, let us start to convert the particular problem in the LPP form. As we have seen in the first step our objective is to minimize the pressure required in the municipality for the water distribution. X1 and X2 are the two non-negative variables of gravitational method and the mechanical booster pumps. As it is a case of minimizing the pressure or to find out the minimum pressure, minimize case is equal to that is equal to X1 plus 8 X2. In the first step we are observing that there are the set of constraints for the each stations A, B and C. These are the particularly constraints for the A, B and C. Finally, we have to give the restriction to the non-negative variables. This is a plot of the particular problem in the graphical method. Here there are the three lines which are highlighting the three constraints that is of housing state A, housing state B and housing state C. As we are seeing that each state having the restriction of the pressure. In the first step they are saying that the pressure should not be of 24 kilo Newton per meter square and for housing state B the pressure should not be more than 132 kilo Newton per meter square and for the state C it should not be less than 12 kilo Newton per meter square. With the help of the particular equation that are inequality equation which are going to be converted to equality to get the values of X1 and X2 by obtaining these values we are going to plot these lines. Now we have to finalize the areas. This is a slide which is showing the areas or the arrows of two lines are towards the origin and one of the arrow is away from the origin. The first and second constraints having the limitations of the pressure. So they have maximum so they are towards the origin and the third they are saying that minimum 12 kilo Newton per meter square pressure is required that is why the arrows are away from the origin. When we are observing this particular graph we are getting three areas area X area Y and area Z. Out of these three areas area X is only satisfying the first constraint that is of housing state A and second area Y it is satisfying the all three constraints that is housing state A housing state B and housing state C and the particular area Z is only satisfying the third constraint we can say the area Z is only satisfying the one constraint. Here when we see this particular area only area Y is satisfying all the constraints that is why it is a feasible region. Now let us see the corner points of the feasible region to get the optimal solution. Once we see points on the boundary of the feasible region B, C, E, F and the point P are the points which are lying on the boundaries of feasible region. Now let us get the values or you can say the coordinates values of the particular points here B, C, E, F and P are the points of the feasible region having the coordinate values as shown on the slide. Now let us place these values in the objective function. This is a table which is showing you the various point B, C, P, E, F and its coordinates values. These values are going to be placed in the objective function and we will get the value of Z. When we observe this particular column of Z value we are observing that for the point B we are getting Z is equal to 96, for C we are getting Z is equal to 37.7, for P it is getting 66, for E it is getting 24 and for F it is getting 48. Here as we are interested to minimize the pressure or we are interested to find out the minimum pressure for the multiple water supply line we have to select such a point which is satisfying all the constraint of housing state A, B and C. When we are seeing this column we are saying that we are getting that minimum water pressure we are observing here it is 24, but this is a point E which is only satisfying the third you can say which is only satisfying the third constraint. So, we have to select such a point which is satisfying all the constraint. Here when we observe this graph P is a point see as I am shown here point of intersection P which is satisfying all the constraint of housing state A, B and C and the Z value here it is 66 kilo Newton per meter square. Now, finally we are getting the optimum solution that is a P is a point which is giving the optimum solution of minimum pressure required in the multiple T to supply the water. Here it is a point which is having the coordinate value 15 and 4.5. When we place this in the particular objective function we are getting 66 kilo Newton which is the minimum pressure required for the multiple T. Now, let us see the particular comparison. In maximize case we are going to maximize the particular benefits and here we are going to minimize the images like wastage of resource loss etcetera. Here in the maximize case resource limitations are always there, but in the minimize case resource limitations may or may not be there. The feasible region is most of the time it is bonded here the feasible region may or may not be bonded. Here we are going to find out the optimum point by selecting within the bonded region or you can say feasible region or on the boundary of the feasible region. Here similarly we are going to find out the optimum point which is lying within the bonded or unbonded feasible region. Here optimum point are the points which are far away from the origin and in the minimize case the optimum point are closer to the origin. Finally, there is one more check the iso profit line is used in the maximize case and the iso loss line is used in the minimize case to get the optimum solution. Select the correct answers for the question. Hope so you have selected the correct answer. These are the references for the today's session. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to the session, let us understand the following problem. Check the injectivity and subjectivity of the function. Given to us f is a function from z to z given by fx is equal to x square. Now let us write the solution. Let x1, x2 belongs to z such that f of x1 is equal to f of x2 which implies x1 square is equal to x2 square which implies x1 is equal to plus minus x2 which implies x1 is equal to x2 and x1 is equal to minus x2 but x1 is equal to minus x2 is not possible. Therefore, f is not 1 1. Now let us check for on 2. We observe that the range is not equal to co-domain. We find that range is a set of all square of integers and according to the given condition, the set of all integers range is not equal to co-domain. Therefore, f is not on 2. Since f is neither on 2 nor 1 1 therefore function is neither injective nor surjective. I hope you understood the problem. Bye and have a nice day.


Hello, you're watching the International Daily Roundup by People's Dispatch, where we bring you some of the top stories from around the world. Let's take a look at today's headlines. Sri Lanka faces severe economic crisis, transgender children's rights under attack in the United States, the GIEI submits report on 2019 Bolivian coup violence, and countries agree to form Global Plastics Treaty. We begin with Sri Lanka, which is in the midst of a major economic crisis driven by a depletion of foreign reserves. The government is struggling to pay for essential imports leading to severe shortages of basic goods and fuel. Oil prices are reportedly hovering around 110 US dollars per barrel. On March 2, the government announced nationwide rolling power cuts of 7.5 hours a day. There are also warnings about potential disruption of public transport and water supplies. President Rajapaksha announced on Wednesday that power cuts would end on March 5, without providing further details. Sri Lanka's economy, which is dependent on tourism and trade, was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. The government has estimated a loss of 14 billion dollars over the last two years. Sri Lankan had also hit 12.1% in December. At the same time, Sri Lanka owes 15 billion dollars in foreign bond repayments. Out of this, 7 billion are owed this year, with a payment of 1 billion due in July alone. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's gross official reserves stood at 2.3 billion at the end of January. There has been a steep rise in food prices, with the cost of staples like chicken having doubled. There has also been a shortage of food and vegetables, caused by a total ban on chemical fertilizers in 2021. While the ban was ultimately reversed, it had already impacted the yield season. Crop failure prompted farmers' protests in several areas last year to demand compensation. Next we go to the United States, where the state of Texas is witnessing a renewed attack on the rights of transgender youth. On February 21st, Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an opinion saying that gender-affirming care constituted child abuse. This includes hormone or puberty-suppressing drugs and gender-affirming surgeries. Soon after, Governor Greg Abbott directed the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate parents in providing such care for their transgender children. He stated that licensed professionals and even the general public would be required to report parents with criminal penalties for failure to do so. While the order itself was not legally binding, its impact was severe and immediate. An investigation was launched into the family of a 16-year-old trans child. On March 1st, the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of the parents. They argued that Abbott's order had violated the Texas Constitution and the constitutional rights of trans children and their parents. They also added that the directive had not been properly issued per state law. A court in Austin temporarily halted the investigation into the family and a psychologist on March 2nd. It found that the family would suffer irreparable injury if the state's directive was enforced. However, the judge has allowed similar child abuse investigations to proceed in other cases. The state attorney general's office has also appealed the ruling. The court will consider the arguments presented by the two rights groups on March 11th. Moving on, the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts or the GIEI has submitted its final report on the 2019 coup in Bolivia. The investigation was presented to the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States on March 2nd. It states that after President Evo Morales was ousted, a series of human rights violations were committed. These pertain to people's right to life, personal integrity, freedom and security. The report notes that coup leader Janine Agnes declared herself president and issued supreme decree 4078. This exempted military and police personnel from criminal responsibility. The GIEI report outlines around 60 recommendations related to criminal investigation processes and reparations for victims. The expert panel had presented its findings to the Bolivian government in La Paz in August 2021. It found that the Agnes-Lehr regime was responsible for torture, massacres and summary executions. These include the violence in Sankata, Sakhaba, Pedrigal and La Paz. At least 37 people were killed and hundreds of others were left seriously injured between October and now by 2019. The report highlighted racist violence against indigenous and rural peoples, especially the targeting of indigenous women. President Luis Arcez's government has since then taken substantial steps to provide reparations to the victims and bring the perpetrators to justice. Janine Agnes is facing charges of genocide and other crimes related to the coup. And finally, 175 countries have agreed to begin negotiations on a legally binding global plastics treaty. The landmark decision was made at the United Nations Environment Assembly in Kenya on March 2. The resolution addresses the full life cycle of plastic, including production, design and disposal. An Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee will begin its work this year with a final draft text to be presented in 2024. Countries will be expected to develop and implement national action plans for the prevention and elimination of plastic pollution. According to the United Nations Environmental Program, plastic pollution increased from 2 million tons in 1950 to 348 million in 2017. It is expected to double in capacity by 2040. Meanwhile, over 8 million tons of plastic enters the world's oceans each year, most of which escapes from land. By 2050, plastic-associated greenhouse emissions will account for 15% of allowed emissions as per the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold. Plastic pollution and waste has contributed to the climate crisis and harmed food security, drinking water and health. There is also a growing push to address the dumping of plastic waste by the Global North and the Global South. According to the British Plastics Association, the UK exports 61% of its plastic waste. Australia is also dumping plastic waste in ASEAN countries despite banning raw plastic exports in 2020. These practices have been increasingly referred to as waste colonialism. And that's all for today's episode. For more such stories, visit our website at www.peoplesdispatch.org and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Thank you for watching.