So let me use electricity deregulation, concurrently calamitous in California, Alberta, New York and, imminently, Ontario, as a study in the peril of ideology. You used to find lots of ideology on the left. Now there's a surplus on the right.

Here's exactly what I mean by ideology. It's from a New York Times article on the deregulation disaster there. All italics are mine. "Power generators, the thinking went" -- whoops, stop there. The policy was based entirely on theories. Okay, so these companies "would build plants, and electricity marketing companies would spring up to give consumers a choice. . . . The new competitors would have to be more efficient . . . because they could not count on recovering their costs from taxpayers. As the cost of producing power dropped, rates would follow . . ." Would, could, should. Eliminate those terms and you probably have the key to human happiness. It all happens not in reality but in the ideal world of some thinker.

The piece continues, "But in New York, as in California, theory has not become reality." If you think -- just because theory was proved false by reality -- that the experiment ended, you're wrong. This is where the deep biography of an ideology begins. It resists and overcomes reality. In the 17th century, a Jewish messiah named Shabtai Zevi was proclaimed. Many Jews dropped everything to follow him. Then the Sultan offered him a choice: Convert to Islam or die. He converted. Did his followers abandon him? Many did not; they invented theories to explain his conversion and kept faith, some for generations.

Now take Ralph Klein. Under his deregulation, says Andrew Nikiforuk in ROB Magazine, Alberta has gone from "one of the cheapest and most reliable systems in North America" to third from the top in industrial rates. But Ralph, who claims he's no intellectual, is a first-class ideologue. "The simple premise" of deregulation, he says, "is that the more power and the more competition we have, the lower prices are going to be." When reality contradicts that, and businesses consider moving to B.C., he doesn't doubt his premise, he pours in public money in subsidies and bailouts. In Ontario, we are about to take this to another level. The energy minister says prices are "poised to rise" as the "countdown to a competitive power market" begins. In this case, you don't wait to justify whatever results ideology brings; you hail them in advance. In Ontario, we are getting deregulation in order to raise prices.

For some reason, I picture John Robson, formerly of the Fraser Institute and now an editorial writer at the Citizen, rushing into meetings saying things like, We know what makes an economy grow. That kind of certainty leaves most of us slack-jawed. As I say, the major ideology left in the world may be free-marketism, which could also be described as total deregulation. It's hard to say what the real world would look like if the free-market deregulators ever got a chance to fully implement their ideas, unless you look at Russia. They have been allowed to use Russia to test their theories and the results are awful. Life expectancy is down by 10 years, in just 10 years. The simple fact of government has largely disappeared, which is not so much an outcome as the goal of the program. Many Russians say they preferred Brezhnev.

I was casting about yesterday for a final example of ideological free-market madness and God sent me Terence Corcoran's editorial in the Financial Post: "Why profits come before people." It's on a court case in South Africa brought by big drug companies against the government, which has been buying affordable generic anti-HIV drugs to deal with the AIDS epidemic. "Slogans" such as People Before Profits and Lives Before Profits are "a facile bit of ideological poop," says the editorial. "I didn't know," said a friend, "that putting a priority on human life meant I was taking sides." The editorial goes on to explain that "Profits are the people's friend," since they eventually lead to new drugs, which should be comforting to the people who died in Africa yesterday. But what's most interesting is what the Corcoran skepticism is reserved for: "If the AIDS epidemic is as bad as they say . . ." There are no similar riders about theories such as the inevitable virtue of profits. All reservations are reserved for reality.

Let me end with a word on behalf of ideas, as opposed to ideology. Having ideas is fun. It's one of the more attractive options that comes with a human life. But I confess that changing my mind, or having new ideas, is one of the best parts. It keeps life interesting, and means there is a future, not just endless repetition. So I don't really understand the ideologue's fixation on his views, especially when the ideology is free-market laissez faire. These are advocates of ceaseless economic and technological change. Can't they even change their minds?

Copyright © 2001 Globe Interactive

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