A host of 20th and 21st Century movies, (like the Terminator movies,) depict future worlds where intelligent machines outwit and destroy human beings.   Although science fiction has a basis in reality, it is often reality, which outperforms science fiction. At one time in the history of mankind events of momentous change did occur based upon the development and prevalence of machines.

The Founders who created the documents that define our nation lived in one of the most significant periods in human history. It was a period that increased productivity so much, using but a fraction of the physical labor previously required, that not only did our numbers increase but so did our per capita prosperity. It was the opposite of the perfect storm. It represented the perfect combination of law, capitalism, free markets, the development of innovative machines and the abundant availability of the cheap energy used to power them.

What would our world look like if it were not for the Industrial Revolution and the machines that defined it? For as much as the period was a product of social contracts, the freedom to pursue happiness and the development of those machines it would never have occurred had it not been for the coal that powered the machines to produce the steam than operated the pistons to do the work that formerly required multitudes of human beings to accomplish. We have gone far beyond those days in a relatively short period of time considering our very long history and we have done so because nature has provided us with coal, oil and natural gas. It was almost as those an intelligent benefactor left them available so that we could one day discover and use them. It probably was.

The belief in an intelligent design of our World seems quite reasonable when you consider just how difficult it would have been to evolve into the 20th Century had there been an absence of coal and oil. There could never be enough waterpower, and trees that produce wood to give us the quantity of energy to provide the lifestyles that we today enjoy.

Coal and oil are so essential to what we have become and how we live that if they were abruptly removed we would virtually cease to exist within a very short period of time. Substitutes exist, but wind and sun, at best, even if they were affordable, could never compete with the densely packed amount of energy provided within these substances.

Early in the 20th Century, John Rockefeller helped contribute to the availability of the oil that powers the combustion engines that represented the next level of our industrial advancement. In as much as he made such a wonderful product available, his attempts to control the price failed (only government can do that). Competition made it cheaper and cheaper. As with all free market enterprises price is related to availability and competition and ultimately more is generally provided for less. The availability is a function of innumerable factors but the most significant factor, today, is government hindrance. Speculation is based upon perception of availability. The more effort that we put into subsidizing wind and power and the more we wait before we permit energy companies to do what the American people need and want the longer the cost of energy will remain internationally artificially high.

Someday we will look back upon the use of water, coal, oil, gas and even nuclear energy as power sources, the way we look back on horses and carriages as a means of transportation. Fusion, anti-matter, thermal conversion, wireless transmission of space solar power and methods not even yet dreamed about will become the norm. However, we can never forget that without coal and oil we would have never gotten to the point where anything else would ever have become possible. And as for this moment in time, we need coal, oil, gas and nuclear more so than we ever have. The day we don’t will be the day competition, free markets and capitalism once again come together to give us the future choices yet to be dreamed about. Dreamt by unborn people in towns far distant from Washington D.C. where bureaucrats with a political agenda, tell the rest of us how, in a manner reminiscent of despots, they think we should live and die totally ignorant of the fact that we are a free people designed by the Laws of God and Nature to determine, for ourselves, what is ultimately best for our happiness and survival.

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