Legislating Progress...NOT!!
Last week, I listened to a young man say that the thing to do about the energy crisis is to raise the price of gasoline, significantly. I was sitting outside at a coffee shop, and he and a young woman were carrying on an animated conversation that I couldn’t help but overhear. I haven’t heard that suggestion, offered seriously, in a long time. Except for those with bizarre political views, those who see raising prices as a solution know very little about economics, science, or people. Where does such naiveté come from? I suspect is comes from the brainwashing that passes as public education.
In this boy’s case, he seemed to think high enough gasoline prices would wean Americans off the American automobile. Only a healthy young person could imagine everyone trading in their cars for bicycles. Others believe that such a plan will force the development of fuel-efficient vehicles and alternate energy sources. These notions have as much merit as the idea of forcing prices down by taxing oil profits, freezing prices, and rationing. All of these ideas have one thing in common: none of them will work! They will place unnecessary hardship on the poorest and most vulnerable people and put more of our private lives in the hands of a bloated, uncaring government bureaucracy.
Science discovery, engineering progress, and invention cannot be legislated or driven by social policy or wishful thinking. The most effective tool for producing new ideas is the profit motive. People who stand to gain by creating something new are most likely to discover or invent. Creativity comes from within people but cannot be forced from them, no matter how great the demand, threat, or law used to compel it. For years, many have dreamed of the cheap energy that might come from cold fusion, but the reality will only happen if and when someone unlocks the key to the process. When I began as a student, computers took up entire floors of buildings filled with machines and climate controlling equipment; we saw small computers on Star Trek, but we had no idea that laptop computers would become commonplace or that an entire computer could exist on a microchip. Progress came as ingenious people made unexpected discoveries. The same is true for all manner of technological and biological advances; no one can truly predict them until basic science discovers a fresh insight, gains a different perspective, or creates an original process. These breakthroughs are unpredictable, no matter what ideology a person has.
Too many Americans, like that young man, arrogantly assume they can “have their cake and eat it, too”—reduce global warming, protect the environment, continue to enjoy prosperity, and make sure everyone has all good things equally. This is the insidious lie of socialism that public schools inculcate into the minds of children without teaching them any sort of critical thinking. Most of us understand instinctively that our ancestors would regard modern life as filled with magic because the inventions so far surpass their comprehension. Such is the nature of discovery that the spark of creativity is a mystery, often unique to the discoverer or sometimes a very few. They often build on earlier knowledge and discovery, but some have flashes of pure genius that no one could predict or anticipate. Let's face it; most of us don't understand after the discoveries either, but we surely enjoy the convenience and benefits they bring
In How William Shatner Changed the World, Shatner credits Star Trek for many modern devises like the cell phone, a version of the show's hand-held, flip top communicator. He makes a good case for saying that. Gene Roddenberry’s vision inspired a generation of geeks, my generation in fact, to create the things he imagined, within limits. So far, no one has developed a phaser or a transporter. May they also be in our future? Who can say? If they are possible, yes, but fiction is filled with impossible ideas that have never and will never happen. Neither a dreamer nor a bureaucrat can distinguish true possibility from scientific absurdity; sometimes neither can scientists, although the better of both groups may project trends and imagine a credible future.
Unfortunately, ideas have consequences, often unintended. The idea of legislating progress is a good example. The power of public opinion is persuasive; the power of government is coercive. Persuasion preserves freedom of choice, as long as those persuaded are not government leaders. Legislation reduces freedom. Freedom is not only the oil of democracy; it is the oil of progress. The progressives' vision of the future requires progressive restrictions on freedom, on everything from energy to the kinds of vehicles we drive to the foods we eat and, certainly, the manner in which we spend our money.
The young man with his desire to raise gas prices doesn't matter; there are always a few people with ideas so absurd that they find few supporters. Unfortunately, that young man and many other comparably deluded voters probably supports Barach Obama, a candidate who promises change and a better future filled with many equally damaging proposals. If those of us who see and understand do nothing more than vote, without making some effort to open the eyes of some of these clueless folks, we will find ourselves in a very different United States.
To the present, we could afford to be generous in our tolerance of foolish ideas. Gas was cheap. Food was plentiful. America was prosperous, even for the poor, compared to the rest of the world. People were remarkably free to enjoy life in nearly limitless ways. However, the vision of progressives, who are wholly undeserving of the name, have been “progressively” changing all that. Environmentalists have so restricted energy production in this country that we are no caught funding the very nations that despise us, our liberties, and our way of life. Multicultural ideas and political correctness not only stifle our freedom of speech but also threaten our very ability to defend ourselves from our enemies. Identity politics discourages discussion of ideas in favor of candidates who represent the right group—blacks, women, soon it may be gays. Global warming deserves its own special place in this discussion for it, more than any other, would shift power into the hands of government, not even American but global government.
True progress offers better solutions to each of these problems. People who trust powerful leaders and huge bureaucracies to make a better world are foolish beyond belief. Centralization of power guarantees oppression and corruption, soon or later. I see signs of it already. The genius of this nation was its creative alternative to that. Our constitution, the literal document not a “living entity” subject to the twisted reasoning of progressive judges, created and assured real progress. If we everyday, ordinary citizens fail to assert our “inalienable rights” and work to prevent it and even restore it, this nation “of the people, by the people, and for the people” will perish from the earth.
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