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In response to my article about the government sustainable development project, aka economic planning, a number of people have said, in effect, if you are so smart what would you do. The short answer is very little. Instead of saying "don't sit there, do something." I am inclined to say "sit there, do nothing." Let me explain further.

All the way through the Sustainable Development Strategy and Implementation Plan (I will call it SDP for short), all 155 pages and 6 annexes of it, there is an assumption that economic growth comes at great cost to the environment. Richard Lathan of KBB has also made this assumption in a recent speech to Rotary. That is simply not true. If you want to see environmental degradation go to places like Nicaragua, Pakistan, or Sierra Leone - places where economic growth has not occurred for decades.

To say that economic growth (or human activity) will invariably lead to a degraded environment is, of course, a fallacy of monumental proportions. Everyone should check, or remember, what happened when there was government directed economic activity such as that which occurred in China, Eastern Europe and Russia during most of the 20th century. These places were a mess - environmental disasters of major proportions. It was said that Russians were not conservationists because there was nothing worth conserving - this after 70 years of a sustainable development project.

Let there be no mistake about it. There can be a balance struck between economic growth and the environment, a balance that Bermuda has struck remarkably well for many years - long before the environment became the high profile issue it is today. For example, limited used of cars, preservation of old buildings, and public parks.

Despite the moaning minnies, Bermuda has a resource efficient economy - as evidenced by the fact of our high standard of living, which is one of the highest in the world - not to mention our high quality of our life. We use our resources efficiently that is why we are, compared to almost all other people of the world, prosperous and wealthy. Again, let me explain this further

How is it that a small population of 60,000 people can have one of the highest standards of living in the world, when we have so few natural resources - no oil, no gold, no diamonds? The reason is that we have the greatest resource of all - more important than gold, oil, or diamonds - and that resource is people, all of us, you and me, and our brains and the accumulated knowledge of all the people in the world.

When I say all of us, I really mean all of us - literally all of the people in the world. As individuals, or even a small group of individuals, we have limited knowledge and understanding. The greatest inventor of all time, Thomas Edison, put it best "We do not know a millionth of one per cent about anything. We are just emerging from the chimpanzee state."

At the risk of sounding offensive what he meant was that any small committee of wise men appointed by Government to plan our future by the SDP are really a bunch of monkeys pretending that they understand how to run a complex society such as Bermuda. They probably do not comprehend that free rational people do a better job than a group of government appointed know-it-alls. Compare South Korea which is free with the disaster area of North Korea which has had government planners running its society for decades. In the South, people have freedom and a high standard of living; in the North, people starve to death and are indistinguishable from slaves.

The ultimate resource of any community is skilled, spirited, hopeful, free people who will exert their wills, imagination and their intelligence. We have done that for at least 350 years and I am sure Bermudians will continue to do so. What we have done is to harness the talents, resourcefulness, and ambitions of everyone - not the limited understanding of a small group of people either in government or anointed by government appointment. The anointed know more than ordinary people, but they know far less than all of the ordinary people put together.

That is what makes it possible for a balance to be struck between the economy and the environment. To believe otherwise is to think that Bermudians, human beings, you and me, are no different from ants or rats, and that we are a race of unthinking morons. It is simply not true. I do not think Bermudians are fools - and neither do you.

The only factor that limits Bermuda is the failure of those in authority to appreciate that thousands of ordinary people going about their day to day business in freedom are infinitely more talented and knowledgeable than a small group of planners who pretend that they have a hot-line to God.

From history we learn that there are no limits on human intelligence provided people are free to use their talents and their imaginations. Do not believe those who tell you that you are not sufficiently competent to make decisions about your own life. If you do, you run the risk of ending up like these demented souls in Eastern Europe and North Korea.

Leaving people free to make their own decisions results in what is known as spontaneous order; this was one of the great insights of the 18th century Enlightenment. It is still a poorly understood concept because it is counter-intuitive, but it is one of the main reasons mankind moved from lives of poverty and early death prior to the 18th century to the relative opulence and longevity most people in West now enjoy.

Planners talk of individual freedom as if it is a world of chaos and anarchy in which nobody plans ahead but merely drifts or staggers along. Government planners want to substitute their plans for the plans of everyone else. What this means is a diminution of individual freedom, or what is the same thing, greater government control over our lives. It is not a case of no plan or planning; it is a question of whose plan. A choice between individual freedom or government direction.

In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu (who lived in China in the 4th Century BC) states the ideal way of ruling. The wise ruler says "I take no action and the people of themselves are transformed. I engage in no activity and the people of themselves become prosperous". Too bad the 20th century Chinese followed Chairman Mao's Sustainable Development plan and ended up either starving or dead - except for the members of their SDP and their political leaders.

To place our future well-being in the hands of government planners, is what Professor F.A. Hayek's called the fatal conceit, the fallacious idea that central planners produce a better social outcome than free individuals doing their own thing.

In conclusion, may I answer my critics who ask "what would you do, smarty-pants" by saying let us not pretend or fall for the baloney that a small committee can restructure a complex society like Bermuda by planning its future under the pretence of saving the environment. We should recognise that each of us knows very little - the millionth of one percent that Edison speaks about - and that we rely as we have always done on the good sense of our fellow Bermudians.As Adam Smith said about 230 years ago, during the Enlightenment, "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things."

We have done pretty well up to now without a comprehensive sustainable development project. There is no reason to think that things will be any different if we continue to believe in ourselves, and continue to use our trained intelligence.

Let's stick with the Enlightenment and not return to the dark ages where ordinary people are regarded as idiots to be ordered around by bureaucrats.[[In-content Ad]]

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