Sometimes it’s hard to keep up with all the muddled thinking that is passed off as keen economic insight in much of the mainstream media.
My thoughts along these lines started last week with this David Ignatius/Washington Post op-ed in which Ignatius extols the virtues of undertaking a “fundamental national mission, equivalent to President John F. Kennedyís call to put a man on the moon” to solve everything from General Motors’ current problems to dependence on foreign oil, Americansí high living, and the decline of manufacturing in America. Ignatius’ enthusiasm is fueled by Amory Lovins recent book, Winning the Oil Endgame: Innovation for Profits, Jobs and Security (RM Institute 2004), which calls for a big government plan of higher taxes and government subsidies to facilitate fundamental change in the materials used to build such big things as automobiles and buildings. Although Ignatius admits that he knows nothing about the financial viability of Lovins’ big plan, that doesn’t stop him from endorsing it enthusiastically:
I’m no technologist, so I can’t evaluate the technical details of Lovins’s proposal. What I like is that it’s big, bold and visionary. It would shake an America that is sitting on its duff as foreign competitors clobber our industrial giants, and it would send a new message: Get moving, start innovating, turn this ship around before it really hits the rocks.
Of course, Ignatius ignores the little detail of what happens if those carbon-fiber composite automobiles that are created as a result of the government money don’t sell all that well. I guess we’ll just have to work around that later.
