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In the shadowy corners of political discourse, where ideologies take root and flourish, two doctrines stand as mirrored sentinels: Net Zero zealotry and free market zealotry. One finds its home on the left, the other on the right, yet their kinship lies not in their ostensible opposition but in their shared fervor, their unyielding conviction that logic and morality bend ineluctably to their cause. Each claims a mantle of ethical superiority, each rests upon canonical texts, and each, in its pursuit of a perfected world, stumbles over the jagged reality of human existence. To understand their failures—and the misery they often beget—we must peel back their seminar room shine and confront the inherent frailties they choose not to see.

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Both Net Zero advocates and free market evangelists present their cases with an air of irrefutable logic. The former, draped in the urgency of ecological salvation, point to a planet teetering on the brink, arguing that only through the drastic reduction of carbon emissions can humanity avert catastrophe. Their moral goodness is framed as a duty to future generations, a selfless act of stewardship over a groaning earth.

The latter, clad in the armor of economic liberty, extol the virtues of unfettered markets, asserting that prosperity flows naturally from the unshackled hand of individual enterprise. Their ethical positioning rests on the promise of freedom—freedom from the stifling grip of bureaucracy, freedom to innovate and thrive. In both, the argument is seductive: a clear path to righteousness, paved with reason and buttressed by principle.

These doctrines do not lack for scripture. For the free marketeers, the pantheon is venerable—Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Ricardo’s theories of comparative advantage, Bastiat’s lucid parables, and Milton Friedman’s unapologetic defense of capitalism form a foundation as solid as granite. For the Net Zero faithful, the canon is more modern but no less revered: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, with its haunting elegy for a poisoned world, joins the authoritative pronouncements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose reports are treated as gospel, their honesty rarely questioned by the devout. These texts are not mere guides; they are totems, wielded to silence dissent and sanctify the cause.

Yet for all their intellectual scaffolding, both ideologies falter when pressed against the error-strewn tapestry of human life. They are, at their core, exercises in Kantian idealism, strivings for a universal perfection where reason reigns supreme, where the crooked timber of humanity might be planed straight. Immanuel Kant, with his categorical imperatives, would have them design a world governed by pure principle, a clockwork utopia ticking toward an inevitable good. Net Zero envisions a globe cleansed of carbon’s and to an extent humaitiy’s, stain, every sacrifice justified by the purity of the goal. Free markets dream of a frictionless economy, every inefficiency swept away by the invisible hand’s deft touch. In both, the blueprint is pristine, the outcome assured, provided humans conform to the script.

But humanity does not conform. David Hume, that canny observer of the human condition, saw what Kant could not: reason is not the master but the servant, a rider astride a horse of passions, guiding only so far as the beast permits. Our choices, our societies, are not forged in the crucible of logic alone but shaped by desire, fear, and folly. “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made,” Kant himself conceded, yet the zealots of Net Zero and free markets press on, undeterred by this truth. They cling to their texts, their ideologies trumping the messy reality of lived experience, and therein lies their undoing.

Consider the free market creed in practice. Its champions herald the efficiencies of deregulation, the wealth unleashed by competition—yet the reality is strewn with wreckage. The 2008 financial crisis, born of unchecked markets and hubris, laid bare the limits of this faith: banks too big to fail, communities hollowed out by speculative excess, and a public left to bear the cost. The theory promised abundance; the outcome delivered disparity. So too with Net Zero. Its proponents demand a radical reordering of industrial life, a chase after the shibboleth of zero emissions—yet the toll is palpable. Jobs flee to nations like China and India, where carbon counts less than cost; businesses groan under soaring energy prices; and households, already strained, sink deeper into penury. The moral clarity of the cause blurs when measured against the impoverishment it breeds.

This is the peril of politics divorced from human weakness. When ideology supplants reason—not the cold reason of the textbook, but the tempered reason that accounts for frailty—the result is policy that grinds against the grain of life. Net Zero’s zeal exports prosperity abroad while saddling the domestic economy with burdens it cannot bear, all in pursuit of a target that may prove more symbol than salvation. Free market absolutism, meanwhile, ignores the monopolies, externalities, and inequalities that flourish in its wake, presuming a perfection in human behavior that never arrives. Both doctrines, in their quest for an ideal, design reality around abstractions rather than the error-laden existence we inhabit. The consequence is not progress but disaster, communities fractured, livelihoods lost, a polity embittered by promises unkept and the concept of the nation undermined.

To govern well is to embrace the imperfect, to craft policy that bends with the crooked timber rather than breaks it. Hume’s horse and rider remind us that passion drives, and reason must steer - not dictate. The Net Zero advocate might temper their crusade with pragmatism, weighing the cost to the living against the debt to the unborn. The free marketeer might concede that liberty thrives best with guardrails, that markets unchecked can devour the very societies they claim to serve. Neither will find perfection, nor should they seek it. Life is not a theorem to be solved but a condition to be navigated, messy, flawed, and stubbornly human.

As we stand in April 2025, with the clamor of these ideologies echoing across the political divide, the lesson is clear. Zealotry, whether clad in green or gold, offers no refuge from the frailties it denies. To build on firmer ground, we must cast aside the textbook’s lure and face the world as it is: a place where straight lines are rare, and the best we can do is stumble forward, mindful of the crookedness that defines us.