Palmer Luckey

What are the ideas that people aren't even discussing right now?

Because I don't want to be too pessimistic on present, but if you look through a lot of the academic literature and government literature today on energy solutions for the United States, they're really, really narrow-minded.

They are really, really politically driven.

It's all about what is aligned with the current debates going on between political parties.

The people in these agencies are largely tied to the things that have already been deemed important.

And if you go back, on the other hand, to let's say post-World War II America, where we were really thinking from first principles, what do we want the world to look like?

What do we want the United States to look like?

And what are all of the ways we could get there?

They were thinking very expansively.

And so this idea of extremely cheap, synthetically manufactured biofuels that would get rid of strategic dependence on limited oil supply or allow us to sell off our oil supply to make money in the near term while still having a robust renewable base of energy to power our industrial machine, our war machine, you name it.

That was an idea that was of interest to people in the 40s, the 50s, the 60s.

I think mostly all of this fell apart when it became clear that we were not going to be a nuclear economy, mostly, again, for political reasons, not practical or technological reasons.

So this was a case where I didn't actually have to be a big thinker.

I just had to go say, what were people thinking when they were allowed to think whatever they wanted and when they could think really, really big things?

And it's not even just on fuel.

There's other interesting things they were thinking about back then, like today.

If you say, what's the best way to help the environment in the United States?

It's actually very calcified.

There's very little consideration for things that are better than what currently exists.

Preserving the status quo is the ultimate good.