One of my favorite descriptions of the folly of mankind is an old Robert A. Heinlein quote from the Notebooks of Lazarus Long:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
Alice Rogoff’s fish wrapper reminded me of the quote a couple days ago, with a breathless story about the recession hitting Alaska and the surprise to the writer, Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development analyst interviewed, and a lot of the commenters that it was actually taking place. It is one of the more hilarious articles I have seen in weeks.
How do we make our own bad luck? By warring against the oil companies, by warring against mining, by warring against sport, personal use and subsistence fishermen, by warring against logging. In this state, a combination of unions, democrats and greens war against literally every single way to employ more Alaskans.
When you elect a governor whose entire history is as a lawyer suing the producers, he will continue doing what he knows how to do best. Perhaps it is the only thing he knows how to do, as he is certainly doing it well. In a mere six months, over 5,500 jobs have been lost. But at least we have Backbone and are putting Alaska First. Working Alaskans? Not so much.
When you allow the richest man in the state to conduct a virtual jihad against a mine that will put some 16,000 of our neighbors to work in one of the poorest parts of the state for the next 50 years, you end up making your own bad luck.
When you fight a coal mine across Cook Inlet from Anchorage to save roughly $9,000 worth of sport caught coho and reds yearly while trading 1,550 jobs making as much as $10 million yearly payroll, you make your own bad luck.
When you put the economic interests of some 1,200 Cook Inlet commercial fishermen above those of over 200,000 sport, subsistence and personal use fishermen, you make your own bad luck.
Worst of all, is the incessant cheerleading in support of this foolishness from the economic illiterates among us. It is very easy to pit the economic interests of one against another. It is much more difficult to figure out how to grow the economy without the benefit of state spending, at least for the usual suspects on the left – the unions, their elected officials, the greens, Backbone and the Alaska First crowd.
We are a resource development state. Time to get out of the way, develop those resources and put our neighbors, ourselves, children and grandchildren to work.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He is a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
