Pull Peddlers

Once upon a time men of great merit ruled the lands through free trade, although for a very short time. One person in his or her free will was able to trade their ideas and products with one another, very few people forcing them to do the things they did not wish to. Men were not forced to purchase or endorse items and ideals that were not what they wanted. People actually had to develop sound business tactics and have a great new product in order to make it big in business. However, we have slowly been destroying our basic tenets of capitalism and giving way to the pull peddlers. It used to be someone would have a great idea or an improvement on an old idea and would then begin to seek all the necessary financing and such needed to run the operation. If the operation was good and solid with great leadership and economic foresight it very well could last the test of time and competition, to become a great organization. Nowadays it is straight to politics for new up and coming businessmen. Men of small minds, small ideas and gigantic ambitions go to politicians on both the right and left in order to get the things they want. They say ‘I’ll bring you constituents from the environmental group if you just simply sign off on this tax subsidy’. Or, ‘I’ll help get you elected if you just push this bill to ensure my company gets first dibs at new developments and tax breaks’.
A great, or rather horrid, showing of this is a 131 foot wind turbine which is on display near the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. In an article by Andy Vuong of the Denver Post entitled “Eco-energy advocates crank up efforts” (8/26/08) He quotes several businessmen in the Denver area whom are “showing off” their new technologies, and hoping to gain political allies to help their business ideas. Sam Ley a chief designer for Boulder-based Standard Renewable Energy discusses why he wants political pull to help his business. “In a new industry like this” he says, “the only way any company can survive is if everybody bands together.” Whatever happened to ‘may the best man win’? Capitalism is all about selling a superb product to the customer, if said customer is uninterested they will likely go elsewhere. In a free market renewable energy would actually have to prove its merit to their customers. Unfortunately, what we have now is far from a free market. With congress blocking the road to energy independence through offshore drilling, with politicians and the media alike misinforming the public about oil drilling on currently owned leases, and with a ever confused population, we have a very uncertain future. What we need now more than ever to save us is capitalism, what we need are those ‘greedy’ businessmen to step in and develop the energy sources we have available and ‘exploit’ the resources in order to make a dollar and provide us with outstanding products at a low price. That’s idealistic people would tell me. The businessmen would only be after their mighty dollar and neglect the public. But, to neglect the public would be to neglect the almighty dollar. If we were to have all energy be completely free, which means no subsidies to big oil or little renewable energy sources, also if we were to allow drilling in ANWR and off our coasts as well as lifting any and all environmental bans we would see a torrent of new energy supplies and we would see what the people really wanted. My guess would be the people would want nuclear energy, the safest, cheapest and all round most productive energy source available to us now. Even if we just slowly lifted bans off of our energy market we would still be light years ahead of the rest of the world. America would do what America does best, stand alone. We don’t need pull peddlers like Ron Lehr of the American Wind Energy Association who was quoted in Mr. Vuong’s article, at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, that securing political favor is a part of this week’s efforts!
Bring back the men of merit the men who built railroads (without political help) the men who built skyscrapers, eradicated many diseases, built the first planes, jets and so on. America doesn’t need people like Sam Ley, what America needs are the Bill Gates, Michael Dells, J.P Morgan’s, Andrew Carnegies, what America needs is a Rockefeller.