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Stuart Hayward is right - most people should obtain a copy of the Sustainable Development Implementation Plan and read it. I have done so and I am horrified, not only by huge number of economic fallacies (I counted 37) but because it has little to do with the environment.

Like most people, I cannot think of anyone who would be against the idea of sustainable development because it means that society should try to maximise human welfare.

Sustainable development also conjures up the necessity and desirability of maintaining our physical environment - open spaces, little trash, cleanliness, beautiful buildings, and so on. But these are just the sort of things that government has trashed over the past 10 years by having bigger cars, bigger cycles, more traffic, and more parking spaces especially for those with GP cars and the proposal to build a new hospital on the open space of the Botanical Gardens.

The Sustainable Development Project, alas, is not about the environment - it is all about social engineering or its twin, economic planning.

It is thought prudent by government to scrupulously avoid these terms, and create a more favourable public image by calling the exercise sustainable development. This is done to head off opponents from drawing attention to the many and widespread geographic failures of economic planning, and to associate the exercise with something that is beyond criticism such as the environment. It is a tribute to the faith of its supporters that it continues to be impervious to the lessons of history and experience.

Social engineering means commissions, committees, officials, rules, bureaucratic direction, regulations, orders and increased numbers of civil servants and more taxation. And, less freedom for the individual and more power to government bureaucrats.

The problem is that social engineering does not work, never has worked, and never can work for two main reasons:

The intellectual case against social engineering has been argued persuasively by F.A. Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist in an article entitled "The Use of Knowledge in Society". This was published in 1945 and was the basis of his winning the Nobel Prize in economics in 1974. He stated that no group of people, no matter how intelligent can ever master the knowledge, either current or future, needed to run society. It is simply impossible, it is a pretence of knowledge. There are few professional economists who disagree with Professor Hayek.

The practical case against social engineering is that it has been tried in country after country, at different times, and with different titles but it has always failed. The biggest failure was in Russia, but other classic failures were in China, France, India, Argentina and a host of other countries. Why should Bermuda be any different?

If I give the impression of being too optimistic about its success, there is a third reason for the project to be a failure. The Bermuda Government cannot keep drugs out of Westgate; fails to educate about 40 per cent of children at public school (even after 10-12 years of intensive education); cannot prevent civil servants from stealing the public's money and there are a host of other failures too numerous to mention like cost overruns. Does that inspire confidence in its ability to manage every facet of our lives? The answer is obvious.

Social engineering advocates are brimming over with all sorts of plans to make the world better, more moral, richer, safer, more rational, or whatever. They are convinced their pie-in-the-sky schemes will work, if only they are given greater authority over everyone else to make our lives better. They believe that if individuals - that is you and me - are left to their own devices we are too stupid and too ill-informed to make correct decisions. In their opinion, the major decisions about our lives should be made by those in authority, for example, those like themselves.

The planners believe that they have both knowledge and power to create a better social order, and hence redesign society by using the police powers of government. They do not believe in the experience of human trial and error, but on the power of rational thinkers to direct people - if necessary by compulsion - in a way that is for their own good. This is one of the oldest ideas in political history, and one of the worst.

To support social engineering is to wear a badge of historical and economic ignorance on your sleeve because economic laws, realities and individual freedom will always prevail. Too often Government thinks it can disregard the lessons of history and bring about the results it desires. That is simply not possible and ultimately they have to deceive the people and take away their freedoms. Economic principles operate regardless and independent of the good intentions of those in authority.

In conclusion, I will again make my five assertions about the Sustainable Development Project:

- It is likely to be wrong - dead wrong - in its major assumptions;

- Its errors will do the maximum damage because they will be imposed on all of us;

- It will be persisted in, long after its errors have been revealed because government is the slowest of all creature to admit mistakes;

- The people will be lied to about the success (or otherwise) of the Project - think education and the construction of Berkeley Institute;

- Our individual freedoms will be diminished which means government control over our daily lives will increase.

Sustainable development is a dangerous exercise in futility - and it has very little to do with the environment. It is all about government controlling the lives of ordinary Bermudians.

Bob Stewart is an economist and author.[[In-content Ad]]

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