John Stossel :: The Idiocy of Energy Independence

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2008/08/20/the_idiocy_of_energy_independence?page=full&comments=true

Barack Obama, promising to "set America on path to energy independence," is upset that we send millions to other countries. "They get our money because we need their oil".

His concern that "they get our money" is echoed in commercials funded by Republican businessman T. Boone Pickens, who wants government subsidies for alternative energy. He tries to scare us by saying, "$700 billion are leaving this country to foreign nations every year -- the largest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind."

Don't Obama and Pickens realize that we get something useful for that money? It's not a "transfer"; it's a win-win transaction, like all voluntary trade. Who cares if the sellers live in a foreign country? When two parties trade, each is better off -- or the exchange would never have been made. We want the oil more than the money. They want the money more than the oil. They need us as much as we need them.

And Obama is wrong when he implies that America imports most of its oil from the Mideast. Most of it comes fromCanada and Mexico.

I agree with Stossel's main point that free-trade is a much better solution than government planning in almost all cases, but Stossel leaves out the strategic security issue.  It's perfectly rational to decide that we have to sacrifice some of our wealth in order to improve our security or better yet, to defeat our enemies.  I acknowledge that it will cost us something to switch to flex-fuel cars, but that's a price I'm willing to pay because I think it will improve our security and ultimately increase our access to energy.  We'll still need imported oil, but there will be healthy competition among other types of automotive fuel.