Wot Economy?

“Change” is the great word of 2008: for instance, from burning oil to underground heat, wind, tide, nuclear . . . Excellent example of economy, using waste heat from an electricity generating plant for district heating. It has been demonstrated in New York City, where there are very many residences in close proximity to the power stations. However, in New York coal or oil can be brought to the power station quite cheaply, by ships; but the more usual practice is to build the power station near the fuel source, and transmit the electricity over long distances. If the power station was built to burn oil, it would be possible to convert to natural gas, but impractical to adapt to coal.

“Change” to diesel or electric automobiles. Diesels are no longer dramatically more efficient; the Environmental Protection Agency has imposed on all of these United States exhaust emission limits that require very expensive, highly refined fuel. The electric car has the monumental advantage that its fuel is not taxed, but for years, perhaps even decades, capital charges will be expensive because electrics will require novel materials and tooling.

Far better to make “changes” that would not cost, but save, money!
For example, abandon the practice of selling licence plates that give access to every highway indifferently. The purchase price of the vehicle may perhaps be correlated with the space it occupies and the time it spends on the highway, but all highways are not equal: a State should offer three different plates, giving access to county, state and Inter-State highways. Then we would no longer find that main roads run fast out in the country, but slow down, often to the minimum speed, in and around cities. Again, States should adjust the tolls at bridges and tunnels, to be high when traffic is heavy, low or nothing when traffic is sparse. And we should do away with driving licences, which are nothing but a protection racket – the only reason to have a licence is to avoid prosecution for driving without one; if Hertz and Avis and National Car Rental want to know whether their customers are competent, let them issue licences (they would actually have a strong incentive to get the decisions right.)

Pay for results, not for expenses! In a true health maintenance organization, one would pay membership fees only when you are well: then the h.m.o. would have a strong incentive to keep you fit – or kill you quickly. Every adult would choose how cheap an h.m.o. to join; teaching hospitals might offer very low fees indeed.

Not only collective bargaining, but also collective remuneration! A factory owner could let the facility to the lowest bidder: a union normally includes all the different tradesmen in an organization, and it well knows which workers are more, which are less, productive. Of course, the union would be responsible for repairing any widgets that came back as defective.

Abolish compulsory prisons! The purpose of any sentence is, avowedly, to correct the convict. But imprisonment does not improve human beings, created in the image of God: it degrades them. When the prisoners are released, they cannot live as equals among citizens, they need a “half-way house.” If the accused did not believe that what se did was wrong – at the moment when se decided to do it – then se is NOT guilty: se does not merit correction. Perhaps se was mistaken, but in that case se has, presumably, learned better (and anyone whom se has damaged can seek redress in the civil court.) Perhaps se is not capable of knowing right from wrong, but in that case se is not an equal of ours; se can be abandoned to the mercies of whosoever chooses to set up a farm (or perhaps a salt mine) to utilize incompetents.
Some of the persons accused DID know they were doing wrong – they simply hoped to get away with it! No doubt one per cent, or ten per cent, or perhaps even more, were indeed guilty. But, we all know, nowadays we have rediscovered the ball-and-chain; convicts (or even suspects) can be fettered with an irremovable anklet that brands them as “less equal,” they could be let loose to beg or to starve. And then the great cloud of “correctional” officers could be dispersed, also to beg or to starve.

There ain’t no such thing as a free education: end compulsory school attendance! Education consumes a significant portion of State, and even U.S., expenditures. So far as I know, no State has a capitation tax, levied equally upon all adults. Why, then, should all non-adults equally be compelled to attend (if not acquire) education? The reason why Johnny can’t read, or subtract, or divide, is that the teachers are always eager to teach the interesting things, at the expense of the elementary things. But this would not matter – if the classes were filled with bright children who enjoyed striving to learn new theories. And this would indeed be true – if the dullards were left outside, free to find activities that actually interested them (from what we hear, many of the goods we enjoy are made in countries where the labor force is incomparably less educated than ours.)