A few months ago, I opined that America, home of the best educated and most dynamic people on earth, have become so abused by the toxic mix of politics, special interest greed, and media idiocy, that virtually every policy decision would be the most stupid decision imaginable.

Once again, I think I will be proven right. The article below outlines just how idiotic the “next big thing” is going to be. Like the mortgage bubble, it will end badly.

Fueling Up the Next Bubble

The market normally dispatches the grim reaper to punish foolish entrepreneurs and credulous investors on a slay-as-you-go basis, returning talent and salvageable assets to the fertilizer heap. When played right, only the participants in the game lose their shirts. The cautious crowd gets to watch and say “Tsk-tsk, they should have known better.”

Sometimes, just sometimes, a crazy idea works. When it does, the lucky, smart and bold earn rich rewards. This rare dispensation of disproportionate wealth, along with the knowledge that failure is rarely fatal, is what motivates the thoughtful risk taking that propels genuine progress. Welcome to capitalism in its purest form.

When the grim reaper’s hand is staid by the twin forces of mass delusion and public policy, the game of capitalism mutates. It can become rational to bet on the irrational if you believe your timing is good enough to leave the greater fool holding the bag. Crazy ideas that have a chance of working get lost in a flood of crazier ideas chasing rewards whether the ideas work or not.

Every idiot fad in public education comes to mind…

Quick buck artists crowd out fundamentals players as slick positioning trumps due diligence. Early stage investors who cash out not by resolving risk, but by hiring fat-fee investment bankers to package and sell off their risk attract ever more capital when they trumpet their “returns.” Political entrepreneurs outnumber market entrepreneurs as landing government subsidies proves more lucrative than landing customers. With the exception of loathed shorts that are punished mercilessly if their timing is bad, and investigated by authorities if their timing is good, everyone is motivated to keep the delusion alive.

Sooner or later reality rears its ugly head and the grim reaper breaks loose. Except now he doesn’t come for just the foolish and imprudent. With pent up fury he spreads devastation far and wide, breathing down the necks of even the cautious crowd as they flee for safety. Thanks to the unlimited powers of a democracy stripped of constitutional limits run by populist princes on the payroll of this perverted version of capitalism, the hapless taxpayer is usually called on to clean up the mess.

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A Nobel Prize winning PowerPoint presenter wants to end our reliance on fossil fuels in ten years. More power to him if he chooses to bet his own money to make it happen – may he become the wealthiest man on earth if his crazy ideas prove right. But are we really going to gamble 20% of the GDP of the entire human race?

Great banks came tumbling down because they believed computer models could predict housing prices five years out. Are we really going to bet our collective industrial infrastructure on computer models that predict the weather fifty years from now?

A car company that has proven it can only make a profit selling pickup trucks to Joe Six-pack is going to get a public rescue. Do we really think they can be made successful by forcing them to switch over to making compact cars for a handful of affluent environmental zealots with short commutes?

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Experienced real estate appraisers proved incapable of honestly assessing the value of a house. But an army of green jobs is going to be created for freshly minted specialists to estimate carbon footprints?

Trillions are going to be spent on bridges and highways by the same people who are browbeating us to drive less?

The world’s most powerful energy source generates no greenhouse gasses. Yet it can’t get a foot in the door because it’s held shut by gale force winds emanating from an army of bloviating lawyers?

You have to admire the way this guy writes. Though the article is more rant than analysis, you simply must know that he’s right. One only need look at “Cap and Trade” proposals to see that the opportunities for waste, corruption, and financial chicanery abound with such schemes.

Look, providing some tax incentives for saving energy is a good idea, as is raising the gas tax to a point that spurs innovation and changes in behavior. We all want a better environment and less waste. However, the idea that a pack of morons like Chuck Schumer, Ted Stevens, Larry Craig, and Barbara Boxer are going to be able to manage the “energy economy” is a bet so stupid that you have to be an intellectual to make it.