The Virtue of Admitting Defeat

In an interesting development for energy war watchers, the great and powerful Google admitted today that it can't overturn the laws of economics, physics or thermodynamics, by abandoning grand plans to get into the renewable energy racket. Now if only "clean energy" gurus in Washington has enough humility to admit defeat and invest themselves in more worthwhile pursuits.

That won't happen, of course, and for a very revealing reason. Google, although amazingly profitable, remains a business, subject to the dictates of profit and loss. If it's wasting shareholder money on unprofitable and futile ventures, sooner or later the sinking bottom line will force a course correction, as it did in this case. But no such rules apply to the federal government, which is why it's so reckless, wasteful and dangerous to our pocketbooks. Unlike Google, it has a seemingly-endless supply of money and time to squander in pursuit of energy police panaceas and pipedreams, ala Solyndra. And nothing short of total bankruptcy will apparently change its ways.

Google is doing the smart thing by admitting defeat. But government never admits defeat -- all its failures, in fact, become excuses to spend even more on the fruitless, the forlorn and the phony. How much better off we taxpayers would be if the people in Washington had just a modicum of the smarts and humility Google just showed.