There's planning and then there's planning

This story rather perks up the ears of those of us raised on the hard scifi of the past:

China has accelerated its ambitious plans to build the world’s first solar power plant in space, aiming to launch two years ahead of schedule in 2028.

A trial satellite will be sent out to orbit at an altitude of 250 miles which should absorb and beam solar energy back to specific locations on Earth, or to moving satellites.

That energy will have to first be converted into microwaves or lasers, before being sent on to a new destination.

There’s no particular reason why this shouldn’t work. There’s definitely more than a modicum of tricky engineering in it but the real barriers are economic. Cost to orbit - something coming down rapidly - will be the major determinant of the cost of power at the end of the entire process.

There’s also a modicum of planning here. Yes, Chinese govt etc, someone’s got to plan how many 3/8th left hand screws there are and so on. But the planning is within the operation to make the operation happen. Once built the thing will have to compete with all of the other methods of energy generation out there. The ship will have to sail upon the sea of the markets.

Contrast this with activities closer to home. Gas boilers should be banned because that will “provide certainty for investors in greener alternatives”. No, we don’t see that. If alternatives are better then they can pay their own way - if they’re not then we don’t want to use them. Or “ The EU has paved the way for all smartphones to be legally required to use a USB-C port for charging” By settling on that one standard of course the EU is preventing any new or other standard from emerging. Technological advance is prevented by no one being able to set sail on that market sea. And for the daily trifecta, boards must be 40% female: “We also know that more diversity in boardrooms contributes to better decision-making and results. This quota can be a push in the right direction for more equality and diversity in companies.” If this is true then we don’t need quotas. Because those companies with the better results from their diversity will outcompete the worse and so the market will take care of the issue. Quotas are only required if it’s not in the corporate self-interest that is.

We most certainly wouldn’t try to recommend the Chinese system in its entirety but that one part of the world still understands what markets are for - to allow the experimentation to see what works - and another seems to have forgotten is interesting we feel. Possibly even why one part of the world has been growing at 8 and 10% annually while the other struggles to manage 2% in a good year.

Markets allow experiments. Planning stops them. Which really brings us back to Bernie Cornfeld’s question - “Do you sincerely want to be rich?” If so then we require a market based economic system don’t we?