Smash the Golden Idols in the Age of Hydrogen

How much did Rockefeller leave? All of it. The punchline to that old tale is a reminder that wealth is a means, not an idol. Yet every age manufactures its idols and punishes heretics who question them. Yesterday it was political glory and the cult of the strongman; today it’s bureaucratic glory and the cult of ‘saving the planet’—complete with subsidies, mandates and regulatory priesthoods.

Libertarians don’t deny physics, markets, or environmental stewardship. We deny coercion. When governments pick winners, they also pick our pockets. The result is an unholy alliance of corporate beneficiaries and political patrons—what economists call rent‑seeking and what common sense calls cronyism. The ancients had Demetrius the silversmith stirring up a riot in Ephesus when his shrine business was threatened; we have industry lobbyists stirring up panics whenever their subsidy might be trimmed.

Consider the modern idol of ‘green hydrogen’. For half a century, politicians have promised a hydrogen economy just around the corner. The corner keeps moving. Hydrogen is not a primary energy source; it must be manufactured, compressed, stored and transported—each step consuming real resources and real energy. That doesn’t make hydrogen wicked; it makes it a technology that should rise or fall on its merits in a free market, not on taxpayer handouts and political press releases.

When governments pour hundreds of millions into showcase hydrogen hubs and grand targets—only to quietly shutter programs years later—the costs don’t vanish. They’re socialised: higher taxes, higher power bills, and capital misallocated to projects designed to win headlines rather than customers. Meanwhile, regulators erect obstacles for competitors that might actually deliver cheaper, cleaner energy. If you wanted to design a system to entrench incumbents and punish innovation, you’d struggle to do better than this parade of subsidies and mandates.

The lesson is older than government itself: idols demand sacrifice. In our time the sacrifice is consumer sovereignty, fiscal prudence and energy reliability. The political class prefers rituals—announcing roadmaps, releasing action plans, appointing commissioners—over results that emerge from open competition. And when reality intrudes, the response is rarely humility. It’s usually ‘double down and spend more’.

A liberty‑first energy policy would do three simple things. First, end corporate welfare—no more cheques to favoured technologies, whether hydrogen, coal, solar, gas or anything else. Second, strip back prescriptive rules and let technology‑neutral standards and property rights govern trade‑offs, including environmental ones. Third, stop using the tax and planning systems as weapons to punish disfavoured producers and consumers. Price signals work; central planning doesn’t. If a technology is truly better, it should not need a politician’s sword and shield to succeed.

None of this is a plea for inaction. It’s a plea for freedom: to experiment, to invest, to succeed—or fail—without forcing your neighbour to underwrite your bet. Markets measure the only thing that matters in the end: whether real human beings, spending their own money, voluntarily choose a product over the alternative. That is the opposite of idol worship. It’s the honest test of value in a free society.

Prominent Swedish statesman and chancellor Axel Oxenstierna reputedly advised his son to ‘behold with how little wisdom the world is governed’. He could have been talking about our energy policy. The antidote isn’t a smarter committee; it’s a smaller one. Stop canonising technologies. Protect competition. Cut the cord between cabinet rooms and corporate balance sheets.

Smash the golden idols, and you’ll be amazed at what free people can build when they’re left alone to pursue truth over fashion and value over virtue‑signalling. Plus ça change? Not if liberty has anything to say about it.