A lesson which history should have taught us thousands of years ago was finally driven home. No man can wield absolute power over other men and still retain his own mind. For no matter how good his intentions are when he takes up the power, his alternate reason is that freedom, the freedom of other people and ultimately his own, terrifies him. Only a man afraid of freedom would want this power, who could conceive of wielding it. And that fear of freedom will turn him into a slave of this power.
Samuel R. Delany, The Jewels of Aptor (1962), tenth chapter.
On June 5, 1851, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery serial, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly, started its ten-month run in the National Era abolitionist newspaper.
Under the policy of Sweden’s current government, the Swedish people are to be allowed to illuminate and heat their homes and do all the other things they use electricity for. The Swedish parliament has formally relinquished the government’s former target of somehow reaching “net-zero” renewable energy by 2045.
Such unreliable means of generating power as erratic wind and erratic sunshine just don’t cut it, says Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson.
“We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity, and we need a stable energy system. In substantial industrialized economies . . . only a gas-to-nuclear pathway is viable to remain industrialized and competitive.”
The new energy policy is an about-face for Sweden, which decided in the ’80s to nuke nuclear power and pursue 100 percent “renewable” energy.
Sweden is now following the lead of Finland. After Finland’s latest nuclear power plant went on line in April, reports Peta Credlin, “wholesale power prices dropped 75%, almost overnight. The Olkiluoto 3 plant is . . . delivering 15 percent of the country’s power needs. Nuclear now provides around half of the country’s total electricity generation.”
Nuclear power has gotten a bad rap in many countries, including the United States. But if societies and governments are rightly or wrongly determined to retreat from reliance on fossil fuels while also not pulling the plug on industrial civilization, a steady supply of electricity has to be obtained somehow or other.
If you light the fuse of a bomb, after warnings that this will cause it to explode, you should not be surprised at the explosion.
California’s lawmakers and governor recently imposed super-high minimum wages for workers in fast-food restaurants ($20 an hour) and workers in healthcare facilities ($25 an hour). When the legislation was in process, the impact on companies, customers, and job applicants was deemed irrelevant. What mattered was appeasing the labor lobby.
Governor Newsom is suddenly “realizing” (he’d been warned) that these new costs will also burden the state government, currently facing a $45 billion budget deficit.
But this isn’t causing him to seek repeal.
No. Instead, he has signed legislation granting an exception to the new minimum for fast-food restaurants that are on government land. “Democrats don’t want the mandate interfering with government concession licenses,” The Wall Street Journal observes.
And Newsom also wants to defer the kick-in of the new minimum wage for workers in healthcare facilities — which he projects would cost the state $4 billion more annually because of the impact on Medicaid and state-paid health workers — until state revenue is in better shape. He would also permanently exempt state-owned facilities from having to pay the new minimum.
Carveouts and minor delays are as far as the governor and lawmakers are willing to go. Whatever gets them past the uncomfortable present — the next moment and the one after are things to worry about later. With any luck, with time the voters will have forgotten the issue, and who caused what.
Exemptions are the order of the day for politicians and bureaucrats. Private sector businesses must remain on the rack.
