There are some sources that will try to convince you that there is some huge ‘New World Order’ or ‘Bilderberg’ or whatever global conspiracy to grind all free men under the heel of some totalitarian boot heel. While I have a good deal of sympathy towards those who espouse these views, and understand that there are those who are attempting to work towards such an end I understand these dreams of power are doomed to failure. My own view is that the enemies of free men and women everywhere are more prone to fall under the category of ‘aspirational but inept’. The evidence for this contention is everywhere in plain sight, and does not require a massive intellect to spot.
To quote the Scottish poet Robbie Burns; “the best laid plans ‘o mice and men gang aft a-gley.” In short; fuck up rules. The world is FUBAR. The first time this principle was openly vouchsafed by a public figure was in a furore over the relaxation of UK Sunday licensing laws. I believe the actual quote was; “It wasn’t a conspiracy – it was cock-up” The American version of which is known as Hanlons Razor. A pithier, more generalised form was uttered by Sir Bernard Ingham; “Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory.”
Living in Britain during the Blair years, and watching Brown decimate the UK economy (And two of my pension plans – the bastard) I was constantly struck by the ineptness of these people. They wanted power, but had not a clue what to do with it, nor the vaguest understanding of the things they sought power over. The situation has not improved with a PR man in the hot seat. You might as well have put Madame Tracey, Owner / Manager of ‘Curl up and Dye’ in the governmental driving seat, and I think said imaginary hairdresser might be doing a better job than the current incumbent. Same for the current Federal US administration.
Notwithstanding, my contention is that for every evil genius plotting world domination with scarred and bandaged hands from petting a bad tempered White Persian cat, there must be a dozen henchmen who bunk off early on Friday leaving critical henching jobs until Monday, having inconvenient bouts of illness, or bulk deleting important emails concerning plans for world domination after a heavy on the intoxicants long weekend. Having inconvenient dental appointments, or simply saying “But Boss… I thought you meant…” Which are pretty poor words to end a life as the trapdoor over the Piranha tank drops from under their feet. Even the late Ozzy B must have repeatedly ground his teeth to his jawline as a minion got cold feet over dying for his cause, or simply missed their bus because they got gossiping to an old friend on a point of religious dogma, or simply forgot to put a fresh battery in a detonator or soldered wire A to connection C instead of B. Fired a rocket launcher from within a car without opening the window to let out the backblast, toasting all within the vehicle. Bought raw materials for bomb making with their own personal credit card. I’m sure any anti-terrorist officer worth his salt can come up with a list of these comedy terrorist failures as long as your and their arm put together. The point is, the grander and more complex the scheme, the more likely it is that there will be too many potential points of failure.
Anyone who has been engaged in large scale IT projects, or even keeping a modest database completely up to date will be aware of this singular fact. ID Cards were (and still are) an expensive accident waiting to happen simply because databases are not static. Data values change with every passing hour and rapidly go out of date without constant intervention (Subject to aforementioned quality of staff and their motivation). The various schemes to bind everyone in red tape only work if everyone obeys the rules implicitly, not taking short cuts, or forgetting to check for typo’s. Show me such a perfect organisation with perfect staff, and I’ll show you the dayglo pixies living in my back yard.
Other examples would be the Euro. Wind and Solar power likewise. All top down, ill thought projects which were politically and ideologically driven. Ones that make no room for human fallibility. Schemes that are not practical but political. Aspirational rather than realistic. This is their weakness.
Practical objects work because they have purpose; a wheel rolls because it is round and will roll downhill until it reaches the bottom or falls over halfway and is left to rust. Certainly not because it is simply pushed. Purely political projects fail because they are impractical. Let’s look at the current mania for Wind Turbines. The only reason these things are going up is because they are huge subsidy generators, not because they are in any way, shape or form cost efficient generators of electricity. Greed, not need is behind their proliferation. The current Wind boom is a taxpayer funded bubble which is due to burst when the subsidies dry up, which is beginning to happen right now (Spain and Portugal – look it up). Simply because increased energy costs have demonstrably artificially prolonged the current world recession, meaning fewer employers are hiring, even more are laying off because they cannot afford to invest, so the downward spiral continues. To keep the subsidies mill turning the tax take has to increase, even though the taxpayer base is shrinking due to increased unemployment; which is due at least in part, to increased energy costs.
Again, the vicious circle tightens. The pips are squeaking and there is no more real money left in the system. The mania for ‘green’ jobs can therefore be seen to be destroying the real economy for which we will all suffer. The attempt to create a top down initiated ‘green’ economy can clearly be demonstrated to be a complete failure.
Not that anyone wanted everything to go tits-up, far from it, but the road to hell being paved as it is, this is what is happening and what must stop. Unfortunately it won’t. Not until those myopic carbon credit slobberers with their snouts slurping snugly in the subsidy trough have their swill supply cut off. That’s the problem, and it won’t go away until the subsidies do. Reliance upon expensive and unsustainable (Without subsidies wind and solar power technology will never be good enough) forms of energy generation because of the erroneous belief that carbon dioxide is a significant climate driver. That’s the cock up, and it’s so bloody huge that when it fails it will take half the world’s economy with it. Unless viable alternatives are allowed to be exploited.
On the other hand this seems to me like a self correcting situation. The subsidies will dry up because there’s no more money left, the political Environmental lobby that has demanded the ‘Green’ this and that will wither and die because their funding will shrivel. Their patrons money supply will evaporate as they move on to other tax-teats to suckle. Why? Because the political environmentalists do not do or produce anything useful, their memorial will be the stumps and rusting towers of defunct wind turbines when the subsidies dry up, and the West will slink into a dark age, silent but for the scratching of quills in candlelight as scholars and economic historians argue over what really happened. Not that there will be a dark age. Newer forms of affordable energy are becoming available, and unless the politico’s (Who, let’s face it, aren’t all that clever – most of them wouldn’t be in politics if they were really intelligent) completely fuck things up and somehow succeed against all the odds, at making more efficient energy resources illegal or too expensive, things shouldn’t get too bad. There’s no money for exploiters in abject poverty – apart for slum landlords and low pay exploiters. If you enjoy irony, you’ll understand this is the other side of ‘sustainability’.
However, in what passes for democracy in this day and age, policy swings with the political pendulum and that swings in time to the mood of a populace. Because when people finally understand that they’ve being played for fools, that mood can swing faster than a schizophrenic on bad acid. Policy can’t keep up, and tumbrils roll. In the meantime, the only people to get hurt by subsidy inflated energy costs will be John Q Public, who in their underinformed wisdom, vote for said politico’s, and fail to see that they are being bribed with their own money. Not that anyone who is part of the vested interests is going to ‘fess up and tell them what is in front of their own eyes. We humans are that good at deluding ourselves.
So there you have it; a classic example of how greed contains the seeds of its own undoing, and how cock-up both birthed and will bury it. Cock-up, Screw up, SNAFU, whatever, rules.
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