Just a Little Bit Pregnant

By Floy Lilley, J.D.
December 9, 2004

In civil society we listen to each other. We take each other seriously. And, every now and then we understand each other.

In that spirit listen closely to what the President of COP 10, Gines Garcia told over 5,300 attendees:

The need for players in the economy to apply their creativity and ingenuity to the achievment of a new technological revolution that may support the welfare of the citizens and their prosperity in a path of sustainable development is the subject of discussion. Some accuse development, but it is a false notion that it is the cause of pollution; we believe rather that the problem lies in the technology used for such development.

We are listening to you, Garcia. We do understand. Do you?

Garcia, whose day job is being the minister of Health and Environment for Argentina, is close to accuracy when he sees the role that technology can play in peoples' behaviors. Buckminster Fuller had that same vision. However, Garcia's words display a false belief that citizens are somehow not part of the creative human action scenario. He appears to see creative energies as existing only in some supra-souls, some "players in the economy."

Garcia's words imply that, as separate and apart beings, economic magicians can simply be called in to clean up any mess the gangsters of collectivism have made. Always on tight leashes, of course. Notice that the assumption here, as prevalent elsewhere, is that markets can simply be ordered to produce.

But serfs are not creators. When citizens are straightjacketed by suffocating interventions by the state they do not have the essentials to produce anything. Only the evolved functional utility of private property ever supported the creative process. It is only individuals –ordinary citizens– who create, not Boards and Councils.

When Garcia refers to "the change of climate problem," his economic views put him in infamous, if not famous, company. No less than Tony Blair now and Bill Clinton whenever possible have held the same impossible mixed economy views. They termed it "the Third Way." But, the Third Way was always and everywhere simply socialism cross-dressing as capitalism. Mixed economies can exist well for no longer than females can be just a little bit pregnant.

If technology offers positive direction, then the bad boy United States will progress faster than the ratifiers of the Kyoto Protocol. The European Union boasts of contributing 369 Million dollars to the Convention on Climate Change program. That will be as useful as aid to dictators is today.

Although the current reality of taxation in the USA simply takes from producers and redistributes to favored entitled groups, nonetheless the figure that our government is spending on key technological climate change efforts is a monumental $3,000 Million each year.

As it has been mentioned, the United States has chosen a different path. The possibility exists that some of that stolen production, from taxpayers, will find its way into individual hands which can actually create substitute resources and opportunities for all humankind, on the incentive of self-interest.

If humans are going to be pregnant, let us not be just a little bit pregnant. Let us proudly birth a dignified market economy for free peoples everywhere. Do you understand now, Garcia?