Douglas Wilson's Letter From America

No Bureaucratic Shadow 

Culture and Politics - Politics
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, 20 February 2013

All the early returns indicate that the available supply of energy in North America is virtually inexhaustible. Using words like inexhaustible is problematic to Malthusians, but it looks to be a good description. Energy, it appears, is about as abundant as salt water. With the discovery of new reserves and the development of new technologies of extraction, it has become apparent that if we had an unregulated energy economy, we could drive back and forth across the country for pocket change on the gallon, and do so without getting permission from a single federal official. And that, at least to them, presents a problem.


So it will be important to watch how the Left, the avowed enemies of you staying warm and dry without their permission, will easily pivot away from all the old arguments in order to keep cheap and clean energy out of your house and car. It used to be "no blood for oil," but when entrepreneurs said, "okay, we found plenty for us here," the argument suddenly shifts, and we are talking about a bunch of other stuff. But the upshot of their objections is always against obtaining cheap energy.

They are against drilling in the Middle East -- there are impoverished Third World nations affected. They are against drilling in Oklahoma -- there are non-impoverished residents of Tulsa affected. And they are against drilling in the far reaches of the north -- there are entertained and bemused caribou affected.

Charles Krauthammer recently said that liberals don't care what you do, so long as it is mandatory. This is the real issue. A wealthy middle class (and energy costs are a big part of this) is a middle class that will be much harder for them to manipulate and control. Suppose for a moment that the vast majority of the populace had food, clothing, warmth, and so on, and it was all affordable and within reach. The first and most obvious fact about this state of affairs is that such a people would not need a bunch of government mongers hovering around them. Obviously intolerable.

So these people would rather us be poor and dependent upon them than well-off and independent of them. The government-johnnies want to offer everyone goodies . . . with conditions. But their conditions involve us becoming craven in various ways. That is a lot harder for them  to do when the free market offers a bunch of goodies . . .  with different conditions, things like enterprise, courage, hard work, and no hassles afterwards.

The thing to pray for is for energy innovators to outrun the regulators. This is comparable to the development of the Internet -- which was long gone down the road before the graspers woke up to what was happening.

Another way of putting this is that advocates of free markets, which all consistent Christians ought to be, should be looking for entirely new areas for human freedom to operate in. This is a planet filled with opportunities, and most of them have never had a bureaucratic shadow fall on them yet. Why? Because no one has thought of them.