It's too bad that
politicians do not have their version of the Hippocratic Oath
governing Medical Doctors where the first rule is to do no harm.
Political ideas take a long time to gestate. At the Federal level
they are bargained over to the lowest common denominator by lobbyist
favoring rent seekers. The final result is usually more harmful than
the ailment to be cured. There was a lot of self serving patting on
each others political backs recently because Congress was able to
pass the Farm Bill in a bipartisan effort. What a hideous compromise
that was of giving millions to rich farm interests and crumbs to the
poor folk. With such result let's cheer paralysis instead of
bemoaning it.
Yes global warming is a
reality, but let's not put the innumerates in charge of developing
solutions. Europe's green energy policy subsidized solar and wind
projects that make no economic sense. Energy costs in Germany are
roughly ten times higher then they need be and most damming is that
carbon emissions are high as well because coal power is needed to
cover during green power's down time! Surely we understand that we
must sacrifice for the common good, but let's not make it a pointless
sacrifice. The enumerates refuse to understand just how the low
density of green energy scales, which is terribly, to the point of
having to wind farm the entire Atlantic Ocean and solar panel up the
North American continent to replace our total carbon burn. (I haven't
done the math on this claim so go ahead and call me the innumerate,
but I bet I am within the right factor.) European legislators have
done great harm to their constituents with their activism and thanks
to our paralysis we are fracking our way to a cleaner more
independent energy environment without any help from our misguided
Departments of Energy, Environment and Agriculture.
One particular activist
solution here in the U. S. was the mandating of ethanol to supplement
gasoline for auto transport. Unfortunately it is an innumerate's
solution that just can not be discarded now that it has a following
in Washington among those lobbying for Agribusiness. That this
mandate grossly wastes power with its many energy conversions and
contributes to world hunger by dedicating farm land to feed our cars
and not our bodies means nothing to the rent seekers it benefits and
the public whose attention is focused elsewhere.
As a believer in open source
computer programming my Libertarian inclination is toward a crowd
sourced wiki form of governance that is more like the techie petri
dish that is Silicon Valley and it's many other hot beds of our
economic progress. The paralysis we see today is a rejection of
sweeping dumbed down mandates from Washington because with today's
networks there is power for the people to act intelligently and at a
more granular level.
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