Opposed Sortie
columnist: Random Outlier

Topic: Libertarianism
John McCain's $300 Million Battery

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If there is a way to negate a good idea, the bureaucrats will find it.

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by Random Outlier
(Libertarian)
Thursday, July 3, 2008

I am looking for a way to vote for John McCain without squandering the last vestige of a libertarian's self-respect.

Fat chance.

But Captain McCain is giving it  his best shot with his plot to award $300 million to the inventor of a decent battery to run our cars.  There has been no better platform plank in the history of organized politics;  a shame  it won't work. 

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Libertarian policy analysis relies somewhat heavily on history, as should all policy analysis. Every politician on earth should understand that his brilliant new concept is a variation (at most) on an old idea proven loony by actual trial, not necessarily because the idea is faulty but because it will rely on the bureaucracy for implementation.

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Captain McCain, may I present Mr. John Harrison of England? If he looks a little peaked, forgive it. Being dead a couple of  centuries will do that to a fellow.

And if the name rings a bell, perhaps you  were attentively present in class the day your Annapolis navigation  instructor mentioned longitude, that measurement of one's position east or west of some agreed-on line circling the earth through the poles.

He may have told you the early British ship masters fell into two classes when they needed to know their distance west of Merry Old England,  Greenwich to be exact.

Often, they just took a guess, based on dead reckoning, a system that often makes you dead wrong.

Or they were that rare sailor with enough math savvy to perform the intricate calculations about where the moon should be as opposed to where it actually is. Try that  with a goose quill on parchment -- the only practical calculating system available at the time. Then try it  while  the bloody Spanish are raining grapeshot on your poop deck. 

The Sceptred Isle masters eventually noticed that HM's Wooden Walls were routinely and expensively grinding themselves to saw dust on unanticipated rocks. They decided that  learning how to determine longitude was therefore important, just as finding cheaper energy is of concern to the poor old guy wondering if he can afford to run the minivan a couple of hundred miles to see the grandkids this weekend.

It is now A.D. 1714. Enter the Board of Longitude or, as it was more sonorously and officially called, "The Commissioners for the Discovery of Longitude at Sea."  

Because efficiently calculating  longitude required, above all, a precise knowledge of time, they needed a good clock, just as we need a good battery. The commissioners offered a big prize to the chronometer  inventor, even as Captain McCain offers one to some as yet unknown battery wizard. 

Albion's admirals and bureaucrats dangled 20,000 pounds of the croppers' tax money for an adequate timepiece. None other than Sir Isaac Newton gave it a whirl, then, so far as we know, gave it up.  

Enter Mr. Harrison, a carpenter who happened to  like fiddling with clocks. By 1736 he had designed and proven one at sea. 

Not good enough for the royal commissioners. He didn't jump through all the hoops in what today would be called the committee's "mission statement and evaluative criteria,"   though they awarded him a 500-pound-pittance  to keep trying.

Thirty-two years later, in 1768, a doddering Mr. Harrison, living out his final few years, got the promised prize, having divided his adult existence between refining his chronometer  and begging countless London bureaucrats and Somebodies at Court for help in getting the original promise fulfilled. It finally  took an act of Parliament.

One final note on the Commissioners for the Discovery of Longitude at Sea: Having begun in 1714, it dissolved itself in 1828 or  114 years later --   92 years after the first successful Harrison chronometer and 60 years -- roughly one lifetime in those days -- after they had decided, yep, the damned thing really works. 

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Captain McCain, permit an old petty officer 2/c to suggest that without a departure in administrative procedure, the above is the fate in store for the United States Federal Commissioners for the Discovery of Economical  Energy Ashore and Afloat.  

Your  idea is sound enough -- basically finding and motivating one (most probably) person with the necessary brain power.  But  your dream,  tossed into the usual bureaucratic seas will, at best, emerge a generation hence as a request  for more funding.

Never mind that it's also penurious. You're asking for an objective genius to focus his all on one world-changing  task. For that,  $300 million is on the cheapskate side.

Administratively, you need a little objective genius yourself, starting with an answer to "Whaddya mean by a successful car battery?" Your reponse needs to be crystal clear.

You say: "Sir (or Madam), the prize, tax free and paid cash on the spot, is for a battery which will propel a 2,500-pound vehicle up to 65 miles per hour for at least 400 miles on a single charge of no more than eight hours from ordinary household current  and which will accept no fewer than 250 such charges."

You add:  "The base cost of entire vehicle must not exceed two-thirds of the average annual U.S. per capita income, and battery replacement shall cost no more than one-quarter of the original vehicle price."

And finally you make explicit who decides the winner, and how.

That, I'm afraid, requires a committee simply because a variety of skills is required.  But three folks should  be plenty.

May I suggest a journeyman electrician from Kokomo, a CPA from Lubbock, and the  best Ford mechanic in Nazareth, Arkansas, with the proviso that having sought or held public employment, elected or otherwise, shall be disqualifying? (So should a history of seeking appointments to committees of any kind, down to and including those of churches and local PTAs. On some points one must be brutal.) 

And you put it writing. You escrow the cash and, dammit, no fair investing it in U.S. Treasuries a la  social security. Think Zurich, the gnomes thereof. Further, by an iron-clad contract the successful inventor must be empowered to enforce his claim with six U.S. Navy SEAL teams and the 82nd Airborne Division.

That should do it. If other minor administrative details need to be worked out, that task should be assigned to the first person you discover who can quote, from memory, the complete works of Laurence J. Peter.

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A former colleage of mine adored  organized bureaucratic endeavor so much that he kept a  prominent sign near his desk. "None of Us is as Smart as All of Us."

I lost his friendship for a while by suggesting, "Tom,  doesn't it follow that None of Us is as Dumb as All of Us?"

Captain McCain, you're on the right track, even though it may not be clear to you that you're looking for an engineer named John Galt.

If you happen to find him, you're going to have to make sure he understands that a President McCain will treat him better than Wesley Mouch did. Better than the admirals treated Carpenter Harrison.

Make it happen and the ghost of Ayn Rand will smile upon you. And so, even, might the American voter. 

As I may have observed, fat chance. 

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2008 Random Outlier, all rights reserved.
Published: Thursday, July 3, 2008
Last modified: Thursday, July 3, 2008

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