CRIME IN THE SUITES

Ralph Nader is gearing up for Big Business Day, intended to discredit the free enterprise system, the system that gives people freedom of choice. All other systems in man's history were based on coercion; and Ralph Nader, too, will coerce you into what is good for you, as he did with the air bag and a hundred other gimmicks. He will muzzle the opposition, as he did with columnist Ralph de Toledano (see AtE Sep.76; de Toledano remains muzzled and financially strapped by Nader's legalistic maneuvres). His PIRG groups coerce students into paying contributions whether they want to or not; if they don't want to (and have the guts and perseverance), they can petition to have their money returned¾which often gives PIRG the equivalent of a 6 months' interest-free loan (at long last, this has been challenged in court, see below). Nader's tax-exempt, multi-million corporate empire does not live, like the corporations he despises, by offering goods or services for voluntary exchange; it seeks to redistribute wealth by coercive legislation.

One of Nader's (and every other contemporary energy charlatan's) most exasperating sophistries is the allegation that concentrated energy sources must be tied to big government. The heck they must be: It is the ownership and control, not the technology, that determines the politics of energy sources. The production of thumbtacks is concentrated¾they are not produced in the home as Lovins would have us do with energy. Is the thumbtack industry tied to big government? And if it is, does it have to be?

And even that is old hat. On January 29, his California Public Utilities Commission ruled that the state's largest four utilities must, within 60 days, submit plans for financing the installation of solar heaters in 175,000 homes. The utilities were¾Achtung!¾ordered to provide various kinds of low-interest loans, and nointerest loans, and of course also when necessary (Big Brother will decide when that is), the entire cost of the solar heater.