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Back in the '90s, while I was writing a book on property rights, my day job was writing speeches on energy policy for Charlie DiBona, the very bright head of the American Petroleum Institute.
On one occasion, DiBona met with an important White House staffer, who, it was reported (I was not there), lectured him on the intricacies of oil. DiBona, after listening for a time, informed her that her ignorance was boundless. This upset the API government liaison staff no end, not because DiBona's point was incorrect but because one simply does not tell government officials that they are ignorant fools, especially when this is absolutely true. It might make them testy.
My view at the time, and today, is that businesses have a moral duty to inform government officials when they are living in a fantasy world. Indulging their ignorance or mendacity simply furthers the rot. Furthermore, people who hate you cannot be placated, so why try?
Periodically, I would insert in some draft statement a response to the latest diatribe against "big oil" that went something like:
Senator, you are right. We at big oil feel really bad about supplying the world with the energy it needs to create a civilization. So you have persuaded us, and we have all agreed, to shut down tomorrow. I am sure your constituents will know how to thank you. Or, if this is not what you want, tell us exactly what you do want. In other words, get real. The API certainly conceded all the complexities and difficulties of balancing energy, environmental, and national security needs, and I argued that it gained nothing by remaining supine while the poliiticians scapegoated it. And the Senator's thanks from his constituents would have involved a rope and a lamp post.
DiBona, lacking the goad of immediate confrontation, would laugh and cut the paragraph. Perhaps properly so; perhaps the time was not ripe. And given politicians' superior access to the press, DiBona figured that the rope and lamp post would be used for oil executives, not Senators.
But now, a decade plus down the road, the level of political ignorance and mendacity has grown apace, and perhaps he would be forced to rethink the issue.
Any relevance to events in the EU described in recent blogs by Solveig and Noel is strictly intentional.
posted by James DeLong @ 8:45 AM | Antitrust
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