Tradeoff

Tradeoff

The migraine-inducing news peaked last week with the announcement that California, the sixth largest economy in the world, was going to outlaw all vehicles except 'zero-emission vehicles.' Note there is nothing said about the source of power here because EVs use electrical battery-charging from all sources, 80% of which is carbon-based. That is to say, carbon energy, once removed. They are not going to ban the cheap wellspring of the modern world, they are going to make it less visible, more expensive, less reliable, and less convenient.

California is outlawing the internal combustion engine, a power so integral to man's development it sounds like the outlawing of gravity.

Somehow, this craziness has caused us to flail about in our criticism and focus on the bizarre risk-reward conflict: do we know this is worthwhile, especially when the real change is not the energy source but only its location? Is this pain being endured for symbolism and virtue-signaling?

But there is a much larger point: How does the California governor get to do this? What business is it of his what kind of car we drive? The point is not that California is a huge and important market, it is that the governor is not that market, we are. His opinions might be interesting--even valuable. But they can not be edicts. Unless, of course, the notion of limited government and power ceded to the state is no longer a foundation of the nation. And that, along with the concept of the equality of peoples, is sort of the essence of the land.