Dialogue
[See LaRouche's Jan. 16, 2009 webcast address, and PDF version of that address plus the following dialogue]
Freeman: This is a question from the [Obama] Transition on the question of jobs and infrastructure, and this one is likely to cause some excitement. The questioner says: "Mr. LaRouche, one of the biggest problems you're going to face as you try to rescue this economy, will be finding enough job-creation projects that can be started quickly. Traditional WPA-type programs, spending on roads, government buildings like schools, ports, and other kinds of hard infrastructure are without question our most effective tool for creating employment and for creating wealth. But, America probably has less than $150 billion worth of such projects that are 'shovel ready' right now. And what I mean by that, is projects that we could actually start in six months or less."So, one of the things we are faced with is, we have to be creative. We have to find lots of other ways to push funds into this economy. Yes, as much as possible, we want to spend on things of lasting value, things like roads and bridges; they make us a richer and a better nation. But there are other things that we are looking at: upgrading the infrastructure behind the Internet; upgrading the electrical grid from the standpoint of computerization; improving information technology in the health-care sector, which is a crucial part of any health-care reform; as well as providing aid to state and local governments to prevent them from cutting investment spending at precisely the wrong moment.
"It seems to us that as we do this, all of this spending will do double duty. It serves the future, but it also helps the present by providing jobs and income to offset the slump. Obviously, some of the jobs that we're referring to, are in areas that are not traditionally defined as hard infrastructure, but they are, nevertheless, necessary and beneficial. In the past, you seem to have been very skeptical about the benefit of job creation in this area. Would you please comment on this?"
Get Serious: We Need Nuclear Power!
LaRouche: The problem is, when you start talking about these concerns in monetary terms, rather than physical scientific terms, you come up with mistakes, serious mistakes. The kind of jobs I have deprecated in the past are worthless jobs. They create nothing, no net benefit to the economy in terms of growth. Now, if you want to get serious, then get serious. How many fourth-generation nuclear power plants are you willing to commit yourself to build? Now, you're going to do that by obvious methods of the type we used for production in World War II. Fourth-generation nuclear is it. If you're going to use a lower energy-flux-density source of power, cut it out; you're wasting your time, you're babbling. The so-called "green" sources of power—crap! Solar energy as power—crap! You want to benefit from solar energy? Give it to the plants!
I mean, how idiotic people are, who accept this "green revolution" nonsense. Take chlorophyll: Now, to describe it in simplistic terms, what does chlorophyll do? Chlorophyll is a molecule, which looks like a polliwog. It has a long tail, which is really a kind of antenna, and it has a head with a magnesium atom in the center of this head. Now what this thing does is, it takes sunlight—solar radiation—which is captured by tuning by this tail, and it's not actually an individual molecule, but it's a plaque of a whole group of these things, working together. It's not sexual, but they work together. And what happens is, this power comes in at a low energy flux-density, because when the sunlight hits the surface of the Earth is it's poor crap. You get a sunburn out of it, you can get sick, you can destroy the environment and create deserts, but it's lousy.
If you want anything good out of sunlight, grow a green plant. If you want to have a good effect, it's good to have grown grasses, it's good to have bushes—not George Bushes, but real bushes. It's very good to have advanced forms of tree life, because what happens is, when the green of the chlorophyll transforms the solar power, which is captured by the antenna and transforms it to an increase in energy flux-density; the equivalent of a higher temperature. It is this increase in energy flux-density which results in the normal process of cooling the environment, providing the conditions of life for growing vegetables and animal life, and so forth.
So, therefore, your measure of performance is not calories! Calories are things you wear, especially when you've gotten very fat. What you want is, you want higher energy flux-density. You want to go to a higher order of organization of living things. With solar energy, you produce deserts. With green, with trees, through chlorophyll, which transforms sunlight from a low energy flux-density, to a higher energy flux-density, the whole life cycle of the planet is generated.
Now, the problem is, that most of this so-called stuff that I have deprecated, I've deprecated for that reason. Do you want a desert? Then create a nation covered with solar reflectors. You will produce a desert. You will starve people to death. Stop this solar collector nonsense; it's insane! There are no green alternatives to nuclear power. None! If you don't want nuclear power, then get out and commit suicide now. Get it over with! You want to kill your neighbor? Kill nuclear power. It's the best way to do it; you don't even have to get your hands dirty. That's all it takes.
The Science of Creativity
So the point is, is, it's the issue of creativity. And the problem with most economists and most economic institutions, they don't know what creativity is. They've never understood the science of creativity, from a physical science standpoint. And therefore, the secret of power, is called energy flux-density. The equivalent of higher temperatures. And you're talking about thousands of times greater power in nuclear power than in any other form of power, such as petroleum or natural gas, and so forth. And that's what you need.
Now, if you are increasing the productive powers of labor in this way, that's the way to go. And if you want to get this effect, give me the auto industry. Let me reorganize it. Let's produce a national rail maglev system. Get people off the highways and move them more efficiently. Cut out these short-haul flights, which are a waste of time, and dangerous. Build nuclear power plants, lots of them! And see how soon you've made a capital investment which will transform this economy. Think of ways of increasing green, and we have knowledge of how to do that. Improve the environment, improve water systems—desalination—improve water systems. Take the Western Desert, these large projects, take the American Desert in the West, and save it; as in northern Mexico, too. You're going to change the environment, you're going to increase the productive powers of labor, the output per capita.
And it's creativity which is specific to human beings, as opposed to monkeys. How do you think a human being, who looks like a gorilla, or looks like a chimpanzee, and sometimes acts like one—how do you get a population in a few million individuals, in the case of these higher anthropoids, and how do you get a human population of six and a half billion people? Through creativity. The creative powers of the human mind—which most economists don't admit to exist—these applied to development of society, increase the power of man per capita, per square kilometer, as expressed in growing things and these other things. All of this involves scientific and related progress, and it's capital intensity, in terms of science intensity, which is the secret of productivity.
If you want to get people occupied, and assume that they do some good, because you employed them, that's nonsense. You have to think in terms of creativity. And you're going to find all these civilizations in the world, which were against technological and scientific progress, and look at them: We call them the undeveloped people, undeveloped nations, undeveloped territories. The advantage of European civilization, and particularly in its development since Westphalia, has been that, when we didn't have wars caused by the British Empire and similar things, human civilization—the power and quality of life of the human individual—has increased more greatly than ever before in all human existence. And every problem we've had has been something that distracted from that objective, or suppressing it.
And there's nothing more deadly, anything to humanity than this green anti-nuclear, etc. technology. This is the most inhuman thing currently existing on the planet. Because it's the thing that stands in the way of the kind of investments we need and we could make, which would save humanity from the terrible crisis it faces today.
