Reply #1: Wars are started by government, not by corporations. [View All]

[Mackenzie]

And it's cheaper to buy oil on the open market, than it is to go to war.

And government ownership of energy in Eastern Europe didn't lead to any new technological innovations.

You want new innovation? Great. Then get rid of the corporate welfare. Get rid of energy subsidies. Get rid of the military involvement in the middle east. Get rid of having the government trying to pick winners and losers.

Most great technological advancements were created through small independent laboratories and scientists working on their own. Look at Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers, for example.

In fact, the idea of using petroleum for energy was something that came about through an independent researcher in the 19th century. Prior to that, petroleum actually had negative value, as it was simply a nuisance that got in the way of people who were digging for water wells.

Science and ideas and technology and information wants to be free. It wants to be decentralized. It wants to break through barriers. It wants to turn current thinking on its head. It wants to render old ideas obsolete.

And you won't get these things through any centralized government bureaucracy.

Orwell's 1984 was inaccurate in that it portrayed government technology as actually working.

A much more accurate portrayal is the movie Brazil, which showed government technology as being inefficient and incompetent. Everything was always broken and nothing ever worked.

Nationalizing the energy companies is about the worst thing that you could do if you want new technologies in energy to be developed.

Of all the technologies that we use on a daily basis that are used by everyday, average, ordinary citizens, none of them were invented in the Soviet Union.

Think about it. The U.S.S.R. had a huge number of well educated, well trained, brilliant scientists. And they had huge deposits of many valuable and important natural resources.

And yet, they did absolutely nothing to advance science and technology in ways that were useful for the average citizen. And they had shortages of almost everything.

If you put all the natural resources and energy under government ownership, it will all be reverted to military uses. More bombs. More missiles. More war. More destruction. More death.

Bush already has too much power.

Can you imagine how much worse it would be if he had all the energy resources and all the natural resources at his disposal?

Thomas Edison and the Wright Brothers did what they did precisely because they didn't have anyone breathing down their backs or telling them what to do.

Think of the hypothetical 17th century person who said, "The government must invent new energy sources for people to light their homes at night, because the world's supply of candle wax and whale oil is running out."

Sounds pretty ridiculous, right?

The people of the 17th century never thought that the people of today would have electricity and light bulbs.

In a few hundreds years from today, people will use energy sources that we today cannot comprehend. And they will think it utterly ridiculous that the people of the 21st century ever worried about running out of oil.