Insightful thinking

Often the most insightful thinking can be found in the most secret and hidden of places. Not so say that anything is being hidden on purpose, but rather that something can be found only after doing a little digging.

An example is found here, in a comment to an entry on the Mises Economics Blog:

The turning point in the global warming debate will come in about 10-20 years when the weather is observed to be the same as it is today for all practical purposes. Then we will stop worrying about actively doing anything to stop CO2 increase. In the interim, we will actually do nothing about it. How do I know we will do nothing? I only have to observe how angry people get about high gasoline prices.

Oh so true! People, who during their daytime job (as Leftist public opinion analyzers) complain about gasoline prices, write articles and reports every day, saying that man should reduce its energy consumption for the sake of reducing energy generation. Is that not some kind kind of hypocrisy? I can't see how not.

Another comment on the same post is a long speech about the great wonders of nanotechnology and its ability to greatly increase energy generation using solar power (vastly superior to the modern day, space demanding solar panels).

We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth), but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells.

If these words are correct, this will mean one thing, and one thing only: Entrepreneurs will pump money into this new, superior way of generating energy, and eliminate all competition from companies who depend on expensive and risky oil-drilling methods, at best an extension of a principle of putting a hollow metal object in the ground where oil is located. The market will soon put the these words to the test. No other action is needed, let alone government action!

Magnificent speech!

I must encourage everyone to see (and hear) this speech! It is truly an inspiration to anyone who believes in liberty and opposes State coercion and violence! Full text here. Enjoy! I know you will!

"The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan!"

Why the hide and seek?

Those who strain themselves to give taxation a moral character are under obligation to explain the state's preoccupation with hiding taxes in the price of goods. (#)

Yes, indeed they are! But they won't. They won't try to justify taxes on goods, because people assume goods are taxed. Once you don't have to justify why you are beating the person, because the person has gotten used to the beating, you won't!

The politically challenged employee

Why does the federal government so consistently fail to carry out even its most basic and necessary functions? Why is it that Wal-Mart can get supplies to Katrina victims days ahead of FEMA? Why do private veterans hospitals provide top-notch care, while government run facilities like Walter Reed fester? Simple. They have better administrators. Why are their administrators and managers better? Because they aren't hamstrung by politics, and constantly changing priorities. Think about how difficult it must be to be a government bureaucrat. For four years, you're told to do things one way, then four years later, you must do things entirely differently. Your priorities, goals, and methods are always in flux. Is it any wonder why bureaucrats get such a bad name? (#)

This is a point that is never made too often. It is not just that public officials, contrast to private employers and employees, are protected from competition and sheltered behind a thick wall of regulations and laws. It is also their great curse to have shifting managers that have to dance the political dance to get themselves anywhere in their job. Imagine a company that one day decides to follow some kind of Lean-method, and changes the whole structure of the company to meet its principles. Imagine that the next day, Lean is no longer the goal, but some entirely different approach. How will this company succeed? How will it satisfy its clients? It won't. It will waste resources and time and slip into bankruptcy. Why this hasn't happened to any public agency is no mystery. Taxes and regulations sustain the unsustainable. This is why a private company will always outperform the public, political one.

The Filthy Environmentalist?

A friend of mine, a single young male living alone, once told me that sometimes he didn't bother to do the dishes. He could usually find a plate and a glass that were "clean enough" to eat of and drink out of. He wasn't making any special point by telling me this. I too am a single young male living alone and I know this approach to dirty dishes and glasses all too well.

However, there could perhaps be a message in all of this. What do we need to wash our plates and glasses? We need running water, soap, a plastic brush, and access to a sewer. The water comes from the ground (in our case), the soap comes from a chemical factory, the plastic brush is made up of oil and usually some colur-chemical, and the sewer leads to the ocean where it dispense of all the soap and the food-leftovers from the dish.

In other words; washing the dishes and glasses is very "bad" for the environment.

Then would not a Leftist-Green person celebrate the filthy lifestyles of me and my friend? Would they not compliment us for using less resources and pumping fewer chemicals into the ocean? He should, compared to his general philosophy of life. He should compliment people who don't wash their clothes, don't shower, don't do the dishes and don't buy chemicals and plastic brushes.

The fact is, of course, that Leftist-environmentalism is a philosophy of filth and human misery. It damns all which uses natural resources and leads to disposal of foreign agents into the nature. It celebrates that which preserves nature in its current state. It attacks the lifestyles of the clean and celebrates the lifestyles of the filthy.

I guess that is why many people who say they are Leftist-Green ignore themselves so much harder when they travel the world in private planes, wearing clean cotton shirts, silk ties and shiny leather shoes, just after eating of clean dishes and drinking from sparkling glasses.