Let us all praise the planners

Apparently we should all be installing heat pumps real quick and right now. Germany’s Greens seem to have a problem with doing so:

Germany’s Greens are facing ridicule over reports that they have failed to install a heat pump in their party HQ, despite pushing for a nationwide switch to the technology.

A project to install the device at the eco-party’s headquarters in central Berlin has taken three and a half years because of a variety of problems that include difficulties finding qualified tradesmen and a two-year wait for a drilling permit, Der Spiegel magazine reported.

OK, so that’s just a ha ha, gurgle sort of observation. Even though it has obvious implications for the current insistence that everyone in this country must have one immediately. But those planners are not done yet:

Households have been saddled with three million faulty smart meters in a botched roll-out that is ballooning over budget, a report reveals today.

It had to be done quickly, you see? But that’s OK, it was really important and ministered by those planners so nothing could go wrong, could it? Rolls Royce minds and all that?

But of course these are mere trivia. Except, well, no. Those first generation biofuels not only starved the poor they had higher emissions than fossil fuels. The idea that Drax burning North American woodchips is CO2 neutral is laughable. Although for a real bellyacher try the Germans again, who actually have torn down a wind farm to get at the cheap brown coal, the lignite, underneath.

The connecting point here is that the planners aren’t very good at planning. Therefore we shall have to stop using planners.

This is entirely different from the logical points usually made about planning - that it’s impossible to have the information, all that Hayek and Nobel Lecture stuff. Instead it’s just the simple observation that our society has put the dullards into the planning offices. Best to keep them safe there and us out here safe from them by not using planning.