Capitalism works

Listening to a bunch of Sunday morning political shows. Cap-and-tax and its possibilities for passing the Senate were mentioned. Many commentators brought up a number of issues, mainly that the legislation won't actually reduce carbon emissions by very much, won't reduce carbon emissions significantly globally because China and India aren't playing, and it mainly only gives Comrade Osama a different hand to play at upcoming international Climate Change events -- he'll be able to sell out the USA to the latest version of the Kyoto Treaty.

Wow, doesn't that just send a tingle up your leg?

Domestically, Pazzo Pelosi insists that cap-and-trade will add many jobs to the US economy in a new "green" sector, that is, making and installing windmills and solar panels. You know, Pazzo, if that were true it would already be happening without any compulsion from the federal government. If citizens were mad for green energy, and if it were affordable compared to fossil fuels, right now everyone would be trading in their old furnaces and air conditioners for the new technologies. The truth is, green power generation technologies are more expensive, less reliable, less applicable to things like cars. And massive windmill farms and solar panel installations -- those large enough to actually power a whole community -- come with their own disadvantages.

If there was money to be made in this field, a lot more capital would be moving toward it. As it is, a very few companies are wholly dedicated to green power -- primarily those in which Pazzo, Gore, and other green fanatics are heavily invested. The so-called green industry has, however, given rise to a lot of kinda dodgy "carbon offset exchanges" that on their faces look like schemes contrived by Bernie Madoff. (When you get on a plane, buy $50 worth of carbon offsets that I will give to my friend who is experimenting with solar batteries in his garage.)

A big argument against the Alaskan pipeline was that it would prevent the caribou from migrating and otherwise displace all kinds of wildlife, etc., in the Arctic Circle. One thing -- exactly how much wildlife is there in the Arctic Circle? Not a really diverse range of critters can stand the cold or find food enough to sustain themselves there. And consider that the pipeline is passive 90% of the time and doesn't take up any more space than a highway.

Then look at wind farms and solar panels. They occupy much more space in more temperate climates and for that reason alone, would seem to disrupt the lives and habits of many more species, human and other. Are windmills and acres of mirror-like solar panels any more attractive than oil derecks? They will probably kill the sage and cacti living in their shadows, along with the entire spectrum of bugs and snakes and things that live on the sage and cacti.

Proponents also claim that forcing US citizens to abandon fossil fuels in favor of wind and solar -- and increasingly, biomass -- will free America from its dependence on foreign oil. However, we do have fossil fuel resouces in the US that we are forbidden to exploit, so that's just a lot of crap, isn't it? If freeing America from its dependence on foreign oil was the big issue, right now we have a lot of options to accomplish this, including nuclear, but apparently our dependence on foreign oil just isn't important enough to Comrade Osama and Pazzo Pelosi to let Americans take advantage of our domestic resources and ingenuity.

Biomass is a strange thing. Biomass is organic materials, mostly wood and wood products. Many people who are now promoting biomass as a fuel preferable to fossil fuels are the very same people who in the past have chained themselves to giant sequoias and even douglas firs, to protect certain species of squirrels and owls from losing their habitat. How do you get around that? I mean, were the tree-huggers reasonable then, or are they reasonable now? Or, just exactly when did these people ever concern themselves with reality? How can anyone believe their desperate pleas and protestations on anything, when they seem to just attach themselves to the latest subcultural fad or fancy?

And speaking of cultural fads and fancies.... Is there really any proof that CO2 is destroying the planet? We all exhale CO2 when we breathe out. Anyone working on any new technology to change that to create a more hopeful future for you and me? ("For you and me" should be sung.)

The Kyoto Treaty is simply a nightmare for both developed and underdeveloped nations, and ensures that the third world will remain poor, sick, and dependent. It's kinda like a global cap-and-trade scheme, whereby countries like the US, Japan, England, France, Germany, et. al., will be compelled to purchase carbon offsets from countries like Angola, which don't use them. It's simply another way to create a global welfare system. Proponents say the money the third world derives from worldwide cap-and-tax will fund its development. But how can these nations develop when development would mean eliminating their income from cap-and-tax? Their development would force them to become buyers rather than sellers of offsets, and ultimately that would drive up the cost of development and especially growth for everyone.

The Kyoto Treaty and its 2nd and 3rd generations are all half-baked drivel OR a thinly-disguised attempt at the 1st world to keep the 3rd world under its heel. Is this what the "We Are the World" people had in mind? I honestly don't think so, and I don't understand why they support it as one of their liberal causes. Except that they accept it like some kind of silver bullet to solve everyone's problems instantly. You know what? Real magic like that hardly ever happens.

What third world nations need is unrestricted capitalism -- that is, investment from outsiders to fund their own domestic industries. Radicals are fond of calling this sort of thing "industrial imperialism," but foreign investment serves a couple very important purposes. One is funding the R&D that goes into developing industry, or actually surveying a nation's resources and determining the best and most profitable pathways for development. Two, foreign-funded industry sets up the infrastructure of communications and transportation necessary for trade, as well as the internal legal protocols -- like establishing the principle of private property. Three, foreign-funded industry trains managers and technicians and pays them enough to improve their standard of living. In general, forein investment paves the way for domestic development and ownership of industry. And it's all done with a profit.

Isn't this a better model than the Kyoto Treaty? I mean, really, think about it. That's all I ask.

Finally, and never the least consideration, capitalism ensures political freedom and individual liberty -- so long as it's individuals and private investors who own, operate, and work for a nation's industries. These people all become stakeholders in a free society and grow reluctant to surrender their property, rights, and freedoms. Their personal individual ownership also gives them a powerful means of resistance to political demagogues and dictators. Like, the French Revolution could not have ever happened without the resources of the new bourgeois middle class behind it to fund and implement it. Poor, starving people rarely rebel. They usually just shuffle off into oblivion and die quietly.

Isn't capitalism a better model than the Kyoto Treaty? Really. For the love of God -- look at human history. Exactly who has succeeded and who has failed? And that's success by any measure -- material prosperity, health, freedom, a civil society.... you name it.

And this is even with full awareness that capitalism can bring excesses. Individuals will find opportunities in capitalism for crime and corruption, but not on the massive and unstoppable scale of government fraud and corruption -- both of which are hallmarks of governments in the third world (and more and more, in the USA) and are huge obstacles to their further development.

That's all for now. Have to go cut my grass while the good weather holds up -- or make hay while the sun shines, as we used to say in the US.