Readers know by now that I believe in the free market, and this week has provided much evidence to warm the cockles of my heart.
The market works hard to solve our energy problems. Tata, the large Indian car manufacturer, plans to put on the market this year what they call an “air car.†Fill it with compressed air and off you go. I don’t know diddley about the air car. I don’t know if it will be successful or not. I do know that a bunch of folks in India believe it will sell and they are investing a lot of money in it. I, thanks to the working of the market, can sit back and wait to see without investing a cent. That’s wonderful.
I know a successful inventor. Note that word “successful.†He has invented things, put them on the market, and made a profit on them. That impresses me. He is currently working on a machine that will—powered solely by the differences between high and low temperatures during a normal day—create electricity. Put it in your back yard and it will, he says, produce more electricity than you need to operate your home. You can sell the excess to your utility company.
Again, I know nothing and understand less about this. All I know is that a man who has been successful with past inventions is working on this at no cost to me. If he succeeds, it will save me a bunch of money. If he fails, it costs me nothing.
That same guy thinks he has a process that will profitably extract oil from used tires. Will it? Who knows? All I know is that he thinks it will work and has plans to invest in and operate the plant where it will be done.
People are doing this type of thing all over the world, and that is wonderful. If any of them—and some will—win the big prize—profit—we will all benefit.
Ain’t that a great system?
Now, look at the latest from the guvmint. It wants to force all of us to buy only compact fluorescent light bulbs by the year 2014. Note that the guvmint doesn’t have to compete on the free market. It can just tell us what we can buy. If the bulbs are good, we will benefit. If not, it will cost all of us. Does anyone remember when the guvmint forced us to buy those pitiful toilets?
In the meantime, the guvmint’s inferior system thwarts the free market’s superior system. If the guvmint mandates that we all buy a certain light bulb, why would anyone invest in developing a better bulb? It would actually be illegal to use the better bulb. Bingo, folks. The guvmint has done it again.
When will they ever learn?
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