Solyndra and the Creativity of Need

Solyndra, a green company that develops solar power sources, has gone bankrupt and taken with it 500 million dollars in government subsidies.

Certainly there must be examples of government funding a successful business or technology before it was successful. But generally these decisions are distorted by favors owed, loyalties established and hope. The green energy problem is a wonderful example. We want to decrease our dependence on foreign energy. But we want at least the appearance of cleaner sources. So we create ethanol subsidies where we burn food for petroleum; even though it is more energy expensive, it satisfies some requirements as it gets farmer votes and it appears domestic. We are actually burning food for fuel and less efficiently than if we did nothing. Yet imagine trying to reverse that now.

Next is the electric vehicle. Again it sounds nice as there are no ugly fumes at the tailpipe--although there are plenty at the coal plant that charges the batteries. The problem is we do not have an electric system that actually is competitive. The cars are expensive, limited in range, don't run in the cold and tend to explode. But at its heart, the electric vehicle plan depends on hope, the hope the technology will catch up with our dreams. The hope that something will evolve.

Darwin and Marx have been very bad for these planners; they believe there is an improved endpoint towards which we, nations, leaders, batteries, ethnic groups, religions are progressing. In essence they believe in the inherent creativity of time. Not of us, but of time. If necessity is the mother of invention, the whole world must be pregnant with solutions.

We are cursed with misapplied or outmoded philosophies poorly understood by bureaucrats who were exposed to them in introductory humanities courses.