 Walls that divide ideas
During the Cold War the United States and the USSR fought a conflict of attrition; each using proxies to fight their ideologies across the planet. Almost until the end it was not clear which ideology would prevail: the US with their belief in individual expression and the power of the dynamic tension of freedom of expression and economic competition; or the USSR with their belief in state-directed development in which the needs of individuals were sacrificed for the good of the whole.
At their core the two philosophies centred on an ideal: is society better off when we allow unrestrained expression of all ideas, or when those ideas are limited and constrained by notions of equality and fairness?
The US decided on the former, the USSR on the latter.
While the experiment itself asked a fundamental question about the nature of humanity, the result of the displaced conflict left a legacy of destabilised nations across Asia, Latin America and Africa. Millions of impoverished people are still subjected to governments who offer the naïve hope that they alone know all the answers about how economic development should take place. The gap between free societies and controlled societies widens every day.
Unless anyone is still in doubt: societies that allow individual freedom - in which ideas survive only when they receive support - perform significantly better than societies in which a chosen few decide on what constitutes fairness for everyone. The more ideas that compete for the attention of a society, the more choices there are, and the better-off everyone is.
Now we have global warming. We again have two competing ideologies: is the world better off when we allow unrestrained expression of all ideas, or when those ideas are limited and constrained by notions of how to stop global warming?
Over the past 50 years, throughout the period of the Cold War, free-market economies have developed revolutionary and astonishing technologies. Not a single futurist ever came close to imagining the extent of development. And innovation is accelerating.
When Russia emerged from their communist experiment it was as a nation materially and spiritually worse-off than they were at the end of the Second World War. Far from accelerating their process of development, communism destroyed wealth and opportunities for everyone and drained away their best and brightest.
Now we have global warming.
On the one side we have Europe, as before, leading the charge to declare the way in which we should combat the problem. Their belief is that we should set artificial constraints on development, on the market of ideas, and that a small committee of select minds should decide for everyone how we should respond.
On the other side are China and India; two nations with massive levels of poverty and astonishing levels of economic growth. Neither are going to declare to their poor, "We’re sorry, global warming means we can’t build that coal-fired plant near you, you’re going to have to remain unemployed, poor and without hope. Sorry." They are more than willing to see developed nations artificially limit their development so that they can catch up and surpass them. They are allowing a free market in ideas. With continued innovation it is more than likely that they will invent something which will not only solve the problem of global warming but reap huge rewards to them for doing so.
This is not to suggest that global warming is not a problem. But it is impossible to declare what the solution should be. The nature of the problem has been defined. It is now up to the market of ideas to sell innovations to combat that problem. The more ideas the better for everyone.
Limiting that market will leave Europe, and its fellow travellers, behaving like the Soviet Union; punishing people for expressing their ideas and - ultimately - worse off once the problem is solved.
|
|
|
Add your comment
|
