Green Businesses and Cut-Throat Economies – When politicians manage the economy, failure is relentless

A report at the Atlantic Wire on the growing scandal surrounding Solyndra begins, “On Wednesday, the bankruptcy of a solar power company in California with political ties to the Obama Administration appeared to be a story about the difficulties of nurturing green businesses in a cutthroat economy.”

Can someone show me where the Constitution authorizes the federal government to “nurture green businesses in a cutthroat economy?”

When is the free market not cut-throat?  That’s a feature, not a bug.  One of its advantages is that stupid business plans get their throats cut, and die.  By contrast, there seems to be no way to stop President Obama from throwing billions of taxpayer dollars into “green energy” rat holes.  Even as congressional hearings into the Solyndra disaster got under way, the Energy Department was announcing a new $1.2 billion loan for more solar panel projects.  The total of such loans is pushing forty billion dollars.  In the free market, no business plan as disastrous as “green energy” would be able to keep finding investors to take its sucker bets.

Of course, the point of all this is to use compulsive force to make American taxpayers “invest” in politically favored projects, which by definition can’t succeed in that “cutthroat” free market, because nobody wants their products enough to buy them at a profit.  If “green energy” was a winner, it wouldn’t have to ride on Uncle Sam’s shoulders.  The purpose of these initiatives is to compel Americans to change their behavior by reshaping the market, which created through the preferences and desires of millions of free people, and therefore hostile ground for statist ideology.

Political pressure was used to shovel tax money into a patently absurd “business model” at Solyndra, explained by solar industry analyst Peter Lynch as follows: “It costs them $6 to make a unit.  They’re selling it for $3.  In order to be competitive today, they have to sell it for between $1.50 and $2.  That is not a viable business plan.”               More