Robert Owens
If We Have No Solutions All We Have Are Problems
By
Sep 3, 2008 - 9:07:31 AM

“Where’s my flying car?”  Back in the 50s, Popular Mechanics promised me a flying car by 1980, and I’m still waiting.  At least give me a rocket backpack or something to fly me from here to the energy-rich, non-polluted, everybody’s-free-and-happy world of “Star Trek.” Instead, I feel I’m stuck in Pottersville waiting for some Great Dictator to drag me through 1984 to the Brave New World and a Wonderful Life.

Ever feel the monkeys are running the zoo, the inmates have taken over the institution, or wondered where’s Nurse Ratched when you need her?  I keep waiting for one of our presumptive leaders to suggest anything besides more state control as the answer for all the problems state control causes.  Our two corporate-supported media-enhanced monopoly parties act as if they’re divided by huge principles and vast policy differences, but in fact, they both agree, government is the answer that makes me want to stand on my roof and shout, “Government isn’t the solution; it’s the problem!”

In my estimation, the choices offered by the Republicrat Dualocracy is either socialist policy with drilling or socialist policy without drilling.  As if no one ever heard of freedom.
One side calls for “efficiency,” which means make the purchase and use of energy so prohibitive we will use less as we sit in the dark boiling in summer, freezing in winter, and walking to the overcrowded bus.  While at the same time repeating, “we can’t drill our way out of this,” clicking their heels three times, thinking this will magically return them to the New Deal.  Where filling our tires replaces exploration and calling government subsidies investment means no one notices government interference in the market drove up prices to begin with.

The other side shouts, “Drill!” without thinking about opening up a few thousand frozen acres of swamp where we know there’s enough oil to really make a difference.  Get real!  If you’re for exploration and development, maybe it should be a long-held principle and not an election-eve epiphany.   No matter what is said, we all know either plan adds up to tax-and-spend, subtracting money from the pocket of producers and transferring it to non-producers.

I say let’s try something radical.  How about free people making free choices in a free market not coerced by government power nor bribed by government incentives.  Why isn’t freedom even being debated?   Instead of shrinking our opportunities, why don’t we grow our way out of this zero-sum game?  If we want to grow the economy and maximize opportunity, I say get government out of the way and let freedom ring.  Or as one of our last conservative presidents, John Kennedy, once said, “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now... Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

Or, as our last conservative president Ronald Reagan said, “First, if I may, I’d like to establish the scope of the topic under discussion. For when we speak about the economy, we’re dealing with more than mere numbers, more than statistics about productivity and employment. We’re dealing instead with one of the most basic aspects of human existence: We’re dealing with the way the great majority of men and women spend most of their hours, most days, throughout the most productive years of their lives...I believe it’s important to remind ourselves that in dealing with the economy, we’re dealing with human creativity. This insight has represented the underpinning of our economic expansion. We cut tax rates, reduced government regulation, and restrained federal spending; and we unleashed the creativity of individuals and businesses. We gave them freedom to create; to keep the rewards of their own risk-taking and hard work; and to reach for new, bold ideas.”  If we don’t turn from the central-planning command-economy model and return to the freedom that is our heritage, I just have one last literary question, “Who is John Galt?”

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