When government doesn't meddle, capitalism wins

To the Eagle:

To get people and goods where they need to go requires horsepower, and manufacturing horsepower always creates pollution of some sort. Back in the good ol' days the only way to make horsepower was to use real horses, which caused manure pollution problems in big cities -- the bigger the city, the bigger the problem. By 1894, New York City had to try to dispose of three million pounds of horse manure per day, not to mention 40,000 gallons of horse urine and three dozen dead horses each day. It made for a stinky atmosphere, with swarms of houseflies, which spread typhoid and infant diarrheal diseases. But the economy was thriving and New York was a veritable boom town.

Now if those folks back then had been smart enough to elect a President Obama and create an imperial EPA, their problems could have been solved. They would have imposed a super high license fee on horses and a super high tax on manure. Ordinary folks then couldn't travel, and few goods could get to market, but the streets would be cleaner, and the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Morgans could pay all the fees and do business as usual, while the local economy crashed.

Instead, what really happened was that Henry Ford figured out how to make those automobile contraptions so cheap that an ordinary person could afford them, and the electrical gurus of the time put electric trams on the streets. By 1912 the insoluble problem had completely disappeared. In short, government didn't meddle, and capitalism won the day. Wish we could have it so good 100 years later.

If we had executed our 1970's plan of building 100 nuclear plants across the country electricity would now be dirt cheap, and totally nonpolluting, but enviro influenced government meddling has almost shut down the nuclear industry. Government had the oil industry staggering until the merry capitalists did an end run by developing the Dakotas on private land with advanced fracking techniques. But government is fighting still with high gas taxes (which are methodically misspent), prohibitive requirements for new refineries, and a biofuel program that is spendy at both the gas pump and your tax return as well as wreaking havoc in agricultural markets.

So a century later, the horses are gone but our governments are burying us in manure.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island