Chain Reactions

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My sister came home last night and told me about a chain reaction she saw on the freeway. A highway patrolman pulled behind a woman with his lights on and made known to her that she should pull over. In the course of her maneuvers, this woman forced another car to careen and crash into the median. So, adding to her previous infraction, she caused, under the watchful eye of the highway patrol, an additional infraction that inconvenienced another person.

Policies of the envirostatist do the same thing. Where they are not overtly harmful, even if inadvertently so, they are at least an inconvenience. They solve one problem without answering the entire issue, and by so doing they create more problems than they solve.

In attempting to solve climate change, which is in itself a red herring, they have produced all the problems they now decry. They forced automakers to build cars Americans don't want and can't use. How many groceries can you cart home in a smart car? How many kids can you transport to school? How many trips does a smart car necessitate to Home Depot for the same payload as a Suburban? What of the tax revenue lost in sales tax on the cheaper (but not per capita) smart car and on the fuel it saves? What about jobs lost when Americans stop buying gas or the cars GM and Chrysler build? What about the homes lost as a result of those lost jobs?

Unintended consequences of our actions cause a lot of pain. My parents used to always ask me what I was thinking, and truth was that at least in part I wasn't thinking about anything but myself. I didn't calculate in all the putative repurcussions that might occur as a result. Yet, Pavlovian politicians pursue a pedagoguery no matter the cost or collatoral chaos they create.

Today, GM unveiled a new kind of smart cars that will swerve to avoid accidents. How many of these will cause accidents trying to avoid them? When one car swerves, the others will have to as well, and the more things that move the more things there are to go wrong. You cannot reduce danger without changing human nature, yet that is exactly what government wishes to avoid. Instead of instilling character, they want to enforce behavior and thereby keep us all safe. Man often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it. As a result, our population will be less safe, less happy, and less prosperous.

My philosophy remains the same. Let Americans alone and we will feed the hungry, right the wrongs, and fight the battles that need to be fought. Let people choose. Let them win or lose no matter who comes and tries to turn their way about. You cannot be an individual if you buy into the notion that technology or government will solve your problems. Yet, people in an attempt to be individuals consistently sacrifice it under a false premise that it will save the world.

The only surefire way to eliminate automobile accidents would be to ban the automobile. That would be tyranny. If you cannot have peace without tyranny, I do not want it, and neither should you. Every man who eagerly sacficies freedom under the premise that it will do the world some good is he of whom Franklin spoke when he said, "Those who trade liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." What's worse, they put the rest of us at risk. That's irresponsible.