Ludwig von Mises once told us, ?Every socialist is a disguised dictator.? (You?ll have to scroll down to find the reference in this chapter of Human Action.
One of TIME?s resident left-leaning columnists offers proof of Mises’ assertion with his latest column, an attack on the air conditioner:
I will confess a bias here. I love warm weather, even when it slouches toward humidity. I detest the harsh, slightly metallic quality of the air forced through even the fanciest AC systems. The only air conditioner I own sits, unused, in my car; my home is happily unrefrigerated. But given the energy mess we’re in, I can now gild my personal preference with a patina of high-mindedness: air-conditioning is bad for the planet, and for national security, and for our balance-of-payments deficit.
Rather than accept that other people have different preferences, Klein rails against the Bush administration?s ?policy of malignant neglect,? a policy that did not force people to live without air conditioning:
Actually, George W. Bush’s failure to call for sacrifice ? and fuel conservation would have been a great one ? after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been one of the great failures of his presidency.
Klein assumes that a government empowered to make more decisions about our thermostats would make choices conforming to his preferences. In other words, he?d like to dictate our energy use.
For more examples of Mises? prescient observations, click here, here, here, and here.
