I missed the Summit Carbon Solutions meeting at Maynes Grove Lodge yesterday. As I wrote earlier, Summit plans to build a $4.5 billion pipeline to transport carbon dioxide to North Dakota for burial (so plants can’t use it). It was an informational meeting presumably to fulfill state requirements and maybe attract investors.

Well I sure miss Monty Python. Those guys did comedy right. Summit is doing it like a billion dollar game of who can take the most money out of a productive economy and make it look right. What makes so-called conservatives buy into this wacko environmentalist garbage?

How ironic real conservatives joined forces with leftists to oust “constitutional conservative” Steve King from Congress. His support for socialist alternative energy scams was the opposite of constitutionality. And his language regarding “undocumented” residents sealed his fate with so-called moderates. Yet the leftist / environmentalist steam roller keeps chugging along. Many conservatives support big government meddling like ethanol mandates. Companies like Summit present a bizarre project like a CO2 pipeline as a legitimate use of resources.

We met a nice guy while shopping yesterday. The topic of where to put savings came up. He said he’s thinking of putting some money in the carbon capture pipeline.

Further discussion led to agreement that all government mandates and subsidies ultimately lead to wasted resources. Short term thinking dominates as long as a bailout is expected. The real issue is personal. What does he do with the fortune he accumulated through decades of hard work? The hope that a fascist alliance of business and government like carbon capture or ethanol can get us old guys through a comfortable old age looks better than 1% interest. He may be right to invest in this craziness. It’s been almost 45 years since I thought the farm program made no sense and couldn’t last.

The trepidation about where to invest is well-founded. A lot is written about the ominous debt across the world. There is a huge amusement park in China that sits empty because the developer is broke. But word has it that his debt is minuscule compared with the debt of thousands of communities across that country. Here, we have mind boggling student loan debt. To deal with these imbalances the only option will be for governments to monetize it.

Basically that means loaning banks billions of dollars at no interest forever. That means people like our new friend can’t earn enough interest to maintain his retirement income. In a free market savers go through banks to loan to borrowers. Now the Fed has replaced those savers as a source of capital. Savers are discriminated against. So our friend sees nowhere else to go but insane… insane wasteful and ridiculous pie-in-the-sky nonsense that makes sense to him at this point in time but will ruin the lives of coming generations through wasteful misallocation of resources.

It’s a shame that such a beautiful system as a free market voluteeristic economy has been hijacked by opportunists who apparently lacked good ideas for an actual valuable niche in society, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.