Cool Capitalism

The Bombay summer is kicking in. Though I have the comfort of an occasional cup of tea in an Air Conditioned room, most of my day is spent trying to get an often reluctant table fan to throw enough humid air my way.

The development of Air Conditioning is a Capitalist story, and Ed Hudgens of the Objectivist Centre tells it and more...

(Willis) Carrier's achievement was that of a capitalist at his best. He made scientific-engineering discoveries and applied them to create equipment to manage temperature and humidity in a controlled, uniform manner. He and his company then went further, doing what only private entrepreneurs can do: They commercialized their products, making them widely available first for manufacturers, then for retail establishments and finally for our homes, cutting prices and increasing quality. Carrier's initial $35,000 investment resulted in a company with sales of $9.2 billion in 2003.

Of course, air conditioning not only keeps us comfortable, as important as that is; it literally can keep us alive. A recent Centers for Disease Control publication found about 4,780 heat-related deaths in the U.S. between 1979 and 2002, about 200 per year. In light of omnipresent AC in America, we suspect most of those tragedies occurred outdoors. By contrast, during the heat wave in Europe in 2003 some 15,000 French, most of them elderly and in non-air conditioned dwellings, died; throughout Europe as many of 35,000 might have succumbed to the heat. With fewer regulation to drive up their costs, many of those lives could have been saved with a $150 AC window unit.

But don't air conditioners mean more energy consumption? Absolutely! It's great that the human mind and entrepreneurs in the free market can figure out how to dig for coal, drill for oil and discover the quantum secrets of the atom, all in order to produce power so that we can all live in comfort. In distant centuries, when we actually run out of oil - a different problem from government prohibitions on drilling in politically correct locations - entrepreneurs will figure out commercially viable ways to employ the energy from wind, ocean waves and even solar power -- not only here on Earth but from giant orbiting solar collectors. That will give us cheap, clean power. (Hyperlinks added)

Hudgens has a sweet tooth for science-fiction and is a future-optimist. He isn't a crisis-guy who gets caught up in short-term, often fabricated dillemmas. He looks back at history, and sees the grit and determination of individuals who have looked beyond the pale of the possible, and created the wonders of the modern world. This lightens up his view of the future, driven by creative individual actions.

Hudgens is a Rand devotee, and it shows in his writing, or if you have met him even in his stark sartorial style. I am not as devout a Randian, but I do see the creative capacities of people who put their mind to small problems, and change the world in big ways. A few weeks ago I discovered Stan Ovshinky and Isaac Berzin. Their personal missions seem to indicate that part of the long-term thinking about energy that Hudgens alludes to has already started picking up pace.

For Hudgen's take on the implications of Friedrich Hayek and Isaac Asimov on space policy and the human condition, look here.