I’m sorry Frank but Ron Paul never really stood a chance. His ideology is often on target but he clearly isn’t the guy to carry the flag for libertarians. He lacks charisma and his inconsistencies cause him too much trouble.

I respectfully disagree with Derek about the market being the cause of our energy and environmental problems. The ethanol fiasco is a prime example of how government intervention in the market is the common source of the problems we have.

Ron Paul thinks that the government has no business cozying up to the ethanol tycoons. I agree.

It will never be too late to remind ourselves that Ron Paul is/was the best candidate for President in 2008.

I’m asserting that industrialization, resource management, economic development, modernization–whatever you want to call it–could have, to paraphrase you, proceeded more sensibly. We could have, should have, and still should consider better the entire range of costs and benefits—including social and ecological costs –when deciding economic policy. While there have been many incredible benefits of modernization. The maximization of resource exploitation which occurred as a result of the free market ideology, and the conspicuous consumption which that ideology and the overuse of resources encourages, has wreaked enormous social, health, and ecological costs. Maybe the cost/benefit analysis comes out favorably, but the fact that free market proponents never seem willing to address or consider those costs is what really turns me off from the ideology.

I’d love to hear more of your argument against industrialization and how the “willy-nilly rush to reliance on petroleum and mass consumption” is a bad thing.

Of course it isn’t easy to come up with an idea of what history would look like if these things hadn’t happened but I’m still intrigued by your assertion that it was a mistake to create an economy based on mass production made possible by petroleum and other fossil fuels. Is the fact that the world can support more human life than ever before in an economic environment where the comfort and welfare of human beings is a higher moral priority than ever before a bad thing then? Whatever happened to the second great commandment?

Also, what was this willy-nilly rush into reliance on petroleum? The first oil well was drilled in 1859 and at turn of the last century there was a healthy debate about using petroleum or ethanol to fuel automobiles. I don’t see a willy-nilly rush into using petroleum. It was an superior product to the alternatives.

I would point out that our overall environmental mess is a result of not being sensible in our techologization. We rushed willy-nilly into reliance on petroleum and mass consumption, without carefully considering the ramifications. Such is the way of The Market.