Energy independence

The stupidity of relying on government vs natural gas and fracking.

Since the Nixon administration the United States government has been spending billions of dollars, hundreds of billions, to develop alternative energy sources to oil.

There is one simple lesson: the government is a useless entity for trying to create major innovations in technology. Yes I know about the DARPA, I used the first telephone connected computers. Yes I know about the Manhattan project. Yes I know about NASA.

Today, 40 years after the US government tried to develop alternative energy, we have the most dramatic success imaginable. The success comes from a commercially improved technology applied by businesses in their own field. It is called fracking and has generated the most extraordinary discoveries of oil and gas ever imagined. As Boone Pickens points out, his natural gas automobile runs at a dollar a gallon compared to four dollars a gallon for traditional gasoline.

We don't seem to have learned the lesson that rewarding people or businesses for accomplishing technological innovation is the correct way and the best way and the cheapest way to get new and better technology.