I once baited my father into an argument – our principal arena of communication – by suggesting his generation went out and fought the good fight in World War II, came home, started families, got jobs and pretty much coasted after that, living off the accomplishments of an earlier generation and leaving the sticky problems of building a bigger and better society to my generation.
I knew it was both untrue and incendiary; that was the point. But it got us into a heated debated over what his generation had accomplished, and left undone, and what my generation had wrought. By the end of the discussion I had to admit the Interstate highway system, communications satellites, a polio cure, nuclear power and disc brakes looked pretty good compared to rock ’n’ roll, the personal computer and Donkey Kong.
When the power went down last week in Toronto and New York, the debate over who’s been building and who’s been coasting began to surface again in an oblique way. It was overshadowed by arguments over the role of government and the role of the private sector. Of course, the overwhelming question for millions of Torontonians and New Yorkers was more immediate – when can we turn the damn air conditioners back on and eat hot food?
In the United States, Democrats and Republicans are once more locked in their philosophical wrestling match over whether government should take the lead in modernizing the power grid or whether it’s something best left to the private sector. The Dems want to go for the quick fix – get the power up and running, focus on reliability of supply, impose operational standards and leave the Big Picture for another day – while the Republicans want to play every possible angle to ensure the ultimate outcome of any power renaissance will enrich the rich, be paid for by everyone else, allow oil exploration in the Arctic and quite possibly bring Jesse Helms back from the dead.
In Canada, the Liberal Party and Liberal MPs, there being no opposition worth mentioning, are locked in philosophical debate over whether homosexuals should be allowed to marry or... some other word that means the same thing but doesn’t scare straight, religious people. Given the Supreme Court’s rulings, it’s a pointless debate which should, but never will, be shifted to whether the government should invoke the Charter’s Notwithstanding Clause. But in the final Days of Chrétien, little of substance is likely to float to the surface on any issue. Ditto the Days of Martin to come.
So the question arises, just what is the role of government? Okay, perhaps that’s too broad. But what’s the role of government in providing infrastructure? Okay, perhaps that’s too boring.
But then, that just may be the problem. Government isn’t nearly as interesting as, say, Donkey Kong. Or making a pile of dough without a pile of work. Or swapping energy futures as opposed to building a distribution network or, perish the thought, conserving energy in the first place.
And I’ve just about resigned myself to forever losing the argument I started with my father. All signs point to my generation as being the real generation of swine. The generation who coasted downhill on the accomplishments that came before us and thought we’d never reach the bottom. The generation who turned on, tuned in and powered up. The super-sized generation.
Our ultimate accomplishment, even bigger than Donkey Kong, may be the perfection of indifference and the pursuit of greed.
But the question of sorting out government and market roles in the provision of something as basic as electric power is a good place to scratch the philosophical itch. Particularly here in Lotus Land where rumours persist about whether the unimaginative government of Gordon Campbell is or isn’t going to sell B.C. Hydro.
Private enterprise is good at making money – or at least the illusion of making money – and particularly good at making widgets, or Donkey Kong. But markets are abysmal at making decisions that benefit the many as opposed to the few. That’s why, a century ago, after busting the oil and rail trusts, governments decided some industries were simply too vital to the common good to be left entirely to the whims of the people who owned them. Thus was born the notion of regulated industries.
Regulation ensured a healthy but not spectacular profit, a modicum of efficiency counterbalanced by a modicum of inefficiency, and mostly ensured no one was left without what everyone considered basic services.
Generating stations and dams were built. Lines were strung, networks cobbled together. As hard as it is to believe, rural electrification projects were still hooking communities up to the grid a few short decades ago.
Water and sewer plants were built as were the lines that carried each. Everyone got telephones. Roads connected communities formerly connected only by rail. Bridges spanned rivers.
As refrigerators became common, more generating capacity was built. Refrigerators begot washing machines which begot televisions which begot dryers which begot air conditioners which begot microwave ovens which begot computers which begot Donkey Kong. And through the whole experiment, regulated industries chugged along like the Little Engine That Could.
The infrastructure of Canada and the US was built on industries that made spectacular gains in social equality while making unspectacular, highly-regulated, widows and orphans profits. Few got rich but everyone got pretty good service.
Then the free marketeers reared their ugly heads.
Regulated industries were inefficient. Regulated industries were incapable of coming up with the Next Big Thing. Regulated industries couldn’t attract capital. And most importantly, it wasn’t the role of governments to regulate The Market. The role of governments was to remove the barriers to the efficient operation of Free Markets.
In their defense, the early free marketeers weren’t envisioning a giant Ponzi game. They weren’t confusing free markets with Las Vegas craps tables. Philosophically conservative and genuinely profit motivated, they believed free markets not only could but would operate to the eventual benefit of all.
Their naiveté, in retrospect, was touching. Maybe because they came from another generation, the generation that had been building the countries and had been accustomed to regulated profits and had forgotten the lessons of the trust busters. Maybe they couldn’t foresee the Era of Greed coming. Maybe they really thought the profit motive was the most powerful force for good the world had ever seen.
They just hadn’t met My Generation.
