Bad Ideas, and Answers to Them

I have to admit I’m a fan of some ideas and not of others. I’m not a fan of the idea of socialism. Frankly I hold socialism to be an evil idea that holds a lot of ideas that are inimical to human flourishing at least, and given some of what I have heard from certain sources socialism is against human existence.

At its best socialism holds being poor as a social good or a condition which may not be remedied without government intervention. I find both of those ideas (that being poor equaling a social good or that being poor as something that may not be remedied except through government action) to be reprehensible. For this reason even though my disorganization has prevented me from implementing his ideas I’m an absolute fan of Dave Ramsey daveramsey.com because he has done as much as any one in modern times to explode the myth that government action helps those who are in dire financial straits.

I’ve lately also become a fan of Dr Alex Epstein https://industrialprogress.com/ (I may be incorrect that Alex is a Doctor of Philosophy) but if he is not he works with a couple of actual doctors of philosophy. But enough of the man’s credentials, as far as I’m concerned there is far to much concentration on credentialism these days. That is that we first concentrate on a person’s credentials rather than his ideas.

I’ve long been against the ideas forwarded by the ‘green’ energy cabal. First because they ignore or discount the obvious solutions to using less ‘fossil fuels’ and second because most of their preferred solutions are at best not reasonable if our goal is human flourishing. After all ethanol requires that we grow crops then turn them into fuel for our transportation needs. And yes if our goals are human flourishing then transportation is a basic need. I’m convinced that at best ethanol is a net negative as far as a fuel goes. That is that it takes more energy to produce ethanol than is yielded in the final product.

I’m not sure I could prove that right now, however that is my feeling, that is that ethanol produces less energy than it uses. Therefore I leave that argument to people willing to do the mathematical work and research that question at this point it is only a contention of belief for me. However be that as it may, there is another and worse effect of concentrating on ethanol for transportation fuel. That is that at its very best this idea changes the use of land from producing food for humans (for humans to flourish they must have a consistent supply of food) to using it to produce crops to be turned into fuel. Even if we assume no net loss on the energy produced by making ethanol and using it for transportation, repurposing land from food for people or for food animals to producing fuel is going to interrupt the economy so far as food production goes.

I’m a fan of nuclear energy, and two designs that I’ve seen pieces on, though I don’t think I’ve seen the technical papers on either of them but the overviews I’ve gotten say that either one is much safer than current LWR (light water reactor) designs. The designs I’m speaking of are the MSR (molten salt reactor) and the PBR (pebble bed reactor) as far as I can understand (and if the summary pages I’ve read are correct) both the MSR and the PBR are meltdown proof. Which eliminates one of the major concerns when dealing with nuclear power. Now why is nuclear exciting? Because the fact is that reliable access to electricity is indicative of the ability of people to flourish, oh and by the way improves the probability that people will move from poverty to wealth!

If I were to argue at all for a ‘renewable’ fuel in the transportation sector I would argue that we must move to CNG (compressed natural gas) natural gas is easy (relatively) to produce, and as a bonus could be produced in large quantities from something that we are already throwing away. I E a ‘resource’ that we are treating as a waste product. Of what am I speaking? I’m speaking of sewage! How easily could we change our current sewage treatment systems to methane (CH₄) I don’t know? But I do know that as long as we have sewage, we could produce endless supplies of natural gas (methane) if we were willing to spend the resources necessary to do so. However at this point of time I’m guessing that turning our waste water treatment systems into methane breeders is not economically feasible.

However if I were in a place where the state has embargoed the importation of methane via pipelines I might start asking if it was possible to build a proof of concept plant for a small city. That though is not really my point today. I want to go back to the beginning of my piece and note that there is an idea (socialism) that is bad for humans as it tends to militate against human flourishing. Once you understand this then you can see a virulent strain of socialism is actually at the base of the ‘green’ energy movement. And that folks frightens me, and ought to frighten anyone who has any historical perspective, for socialism has been responsible for all sorts of human suffering in the name of making all men equal in their outcomes.

Have a good day and resist bad ideas!