Stop Eating and Drive

It never fails to amaze me that people put such cult-like confidence in the ability of government until they actually see the results.  One only has to reflect on how happy you were the last time you encountered the IRS, DMV, or the US Postal Service.  How effectively did the government manage the housing crisis or the Katrina disaster?  People rail against the government yet put an almost religious faith in the ability of bureaucrats to make life altering decisions. 

Ethanol is just such a debacle.  It was predicted to be and has indeed resulted in a colossal failure. 

Wednesday The Washington Times reported in “Rising global food prices an ‘extreme poverty’ crisis” that “food prices are now 29 percent higher than they were a year ago” and pointed out that “Corn prices are about 73 percent higher than they were last year, and sugar has seen its price rise by about that much . . . "

Thursday Robert Bryce followed up with a superior OPED in The Washington Times titled: The Absolute Madness of Bio-Fuels

In it he points out that “the U.S. corn-ethanol sector . . . will consume 40 percent of all U.S. corn - that’s about 15 percent of global corn production or 5 percent of all global grain - in order to produce a volume of motor fuel with the energy equivalent of about 0.6 percent of global oil needs.”  And points out that “Congress lavishes about $7 billion in annual subsidies, mandates and tariff protections upon” the industry.  

If this isn’t the very definition of madness – I don’t know what is.  

Many quote Einstein who said that insanity was doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result.  I would say that true insanity is doing something that had no chance of success and then subsidizing increases in the level of effort while ignoring the increasing severity of unintended consequences.