Bootleggers and Baptists
Bootleggers and Baptists is the name of an economic theory first published by the American scientist Bruce Yandle . It says that groups with fundamentally opposing goals certainly support each other if each dogmatically only pursues its goal without paying attention to possible negative consequences for their own work through opposing groups.
background
Bootleggers (in German: Schwarzbrenner or Schmuggler ) and Baptists (German: Baptists ; here based on the strict religious and abstinent direction of this church, which can be found in the so-called Bible Belt of the United States) were two social groups with little in common. In the southern states of the USA there are still so-called " dry counties " ("dry counties"), in which the sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or prohibited (see Prohibition in the United States ). Baptists and other religious groups support this regulation for moral reasons. At the same time, fraudsters and smugglers can only make high illegal profits because legal sales are prohibited. So each of the sides benefits from the other, because the churches also have a higher influx due to the many sinners . Most benefited, however, politicians who on the one hand rhetorically supported the pious wishes of the Baptists, while on the other hand they accepted campaign donations from criminals.
use
Bjørn Lomborg compared the behavior of energy companies and environmental protection organizations with this catchphrase, when a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assumed that 80% of energy could be generated from renewable energies in the foreseeable future. Both the energy producers welcomed this because they saw their business policy confirmed, and the environmental protection organizations because they saw their demands confirmed. In reality, the study was based on illusory assumptions from a single study funded by Greenpeace , while 163 studies to the contrary were ignored. In doing so, the climate change Baptists would help the energy billionaires keep earning billions without actually changing their business policy.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Randy T. Simmons, Ryan M. Yonk, Diana W. Thomas: Bootleggers, Baptists, and Political Entrepreneurs at www.independent.org online as pdf, English (accessed November 7, 2014)
- ↑ Bjørn Lomborg: Green Smugglers and Baptists at www.project-syndicate.org (accessed November 7, 2014)