that there are a few good, questioning people who can make some good things happen.' Getting them implemented is another story, and that involves getting the word out and the pi:essure back in. And you can be sure there will be problems with suppressing reports, mudslinging, and most every other kind of opposition. • What about government funding for a.t.? What about it? Is it necessary? Probably not. It seems clear that appropriate technologies are being developed and applied rapidly on local and regional levels without government funding-winterization, solar heating, self-help-housing, food production and distribution, community-controlled businesses and services, and neighborhood and community-controlled finance structures to mention a few. People and groups are becoming more aware of the resources they lack, and are getting the business skills, technical advice, tax knowledge, legal understanding, political acumen and cooperation and sharing needed to generate viable new projects. This is increasingly accompanied by a clear and articulate awareness that our problems must'largely be resolved by local responsibility and action, and that government money is not free dollars but only our own local hard work and taxes diluted 5 to 1 with bureaucratic red tape and control. Why does the government want to fund a.t.? Mostly it neither knows nor cares about a.t., nor knows it's · funding it. A few dauntless individuals slipped in a couple of paragraphs among the billions that roll off the congressional typewriter, and pried loose a few peanut shells for the monkeys to fight over. Mostly they were curious as to what would happen. And the government likes to fund anything that .has 'votes or glamour or can get it off the hook. It likes panaceas, too. Paranoid people say the Feds are just trying to give a.t. enough rope to hang itself. June 1978 RAIN Page 5 How much rope are they letting out? So far about $20 million to the AID program, maybe $5 million to NCAT, and about $3 million through DO~. What's happening to it all? Mostly_ the usual-it's making the rounds among the bureaucrats, consultants and academics. A little dribbles out into real projects. What's the score so far with all that money? The $25 million to AID and NCAT is mostly down the tube. The $.5 million spent by DOE so far and some of the NCAT grant .money has a pretty fair chance at producing some good. That's about a 2 percent success rate, if you wondered. That's really no.t much money for the·wbole country. Shouldn't we be putting more money into a.t. things? Maybe. Lee Johnson said, in his review of the DOE/California grants program, that there were a lot more excellent grant proposals than money allocated. But remember, there are always more good ideas for spending our tax money than there _is money. And even if all the outstanding projects should be given priority, it doesn't mean that government money is the right answer. If we dealt with aqy of the real problems, Eke removing subsidies to oil companies, transportation, sewer_ systems and the wealthy, we'd have both the incentives and resources to develop and implement a. t. things locally. We always get the best results with our own money, because we're more careful with it. Local money is second best, and "federal money the most dangerous. Dangerous? What's dangerous about government money? Well, first of all, it isn't theirs-:it's ours. That's the first danger. Secondly., it's addictive-the,experience seems to indicate that projects started with government money have a real hard time getting the self-discipline to get onto a s'elf-supporting basis. It's so much easier to go back for more F$, and it makes the Feds feel they're performing a service and filling a real need. Thirdly, government money is expensive-the time, money and effort spent hustling it, preparing reports and more reports, dealing with delays, and meeting ever greater regul_ations on how, who, what and which side's up could usually do the project-itself if not aimed at the government free lunch. Fourthly, there is no incentive to succeed or produce anything real. Even more important, depe11ding on the governm,ent makes us lose our ability to do things ourselves, and lose a lot of important self-confidence along with it. We sit around and say-"Well, if I had a grant ..." instead of going ahead and doing what we're talking. Well, if the government subsidizes big business and has paid for development ofjet airplanes, nuclear reactors and various other things, shouldn't there be an equal subsidy to a.t. to get it developed and give it a fair chance to compete? A lot of people suggest that, and it may be easier initially. But the easiest path is not necessarily the _right path to take. Subsidies lay false economies around a development, deforming it into unreal forms, while increasing the public confusion as to the real relative merits of things. Solar subsidies mean encouragement of expensive active systems rather than cheapper passive ones. Giving more and more subsidies instead of removing the existing ones only m·oves competition from the field of economics into that of politics-who has the power
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