Last week's column on boom and bust produced a single e-mail, from Bob Stewart. You have to love this guy. He doesn't just think differently from most people; he's loud and proud, as they say. Here's what he wrote:"I thought I might point out that I thought your statement that 'Dr Brown's (job) is to find ways to manage the growth monster' is incorrect. Economies can grow at nine percent — witness Japan in the '50s, or Vietnam today — although I do not think we are growing at that rate. Government statistics are notoriously inaccurate.

"Be that as it may, politicians cannot manage growth any more than they can manage an educational system. The reason is because they cannot calculate — that was the reason for the ultimate downfall of the Communist bloc. This is a complex argument and I won't try to argue it here. I admit that we are able to grow at an artificially high rate because our small size allows us to import high productivity labour, something that would be impossible in large economies such as UK or US. That is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact it is a good thing given our scandalous educational (or should it be mis-educational?) system. But why should growth lead to bust, unless we kill the goose or, like Nevada, silver goes out of style?"

Mr. Stewart raises a number of points. We'll start with "why should growth lead to bust?"

A book I haven't read, but fully intend to, called "Collapse" (I have at least read several reviews) takes the view that, throughout history, the most successful civilisations have all collapsed. The reasons are not uniform, but the fact of collapse apparently is.

In Bermuda — and here Mr. Stewart would applaud, I suspect — the likeliest cause for collapse is the government. Not just the present Government, but any government.

I recall sitting at an insurance conference at the Fairmont Princess, being addressed by then-Premier Jennifer Smith. This was a year or two after her first election victory. With great pride, she told the audience that her government had broken the record for the number of days it had conducted business and for the amount of new laws it had put on the books. Her sub-text was that her government would never stop making new laws until everything was perfect (I'm paraphrasing).

The fact is that Bermuda already has thousands of laws it doesn't need. Please keep your applause down, Mr. Stewart, the rest of us can't hear. More laws are on the way, and if world history is any judge, they will bring, net, worse economic performance and a reduction in freedom. Not because they're PLP policies, but because they're government policies. Economies that are not broken rarely improve because of governments; they only ever improve when government gets out of the way and lets things rip.

The exception to this rule is in matters of social legislation. Without a caring government, the challenged would never have anything. Those who can't must be supported by those who can; we all agree on that. Government's job is to ensure that the greed and mean-spiritedness that are part of human nature (I write this from New York City, where that's more evident) don't keep those with challenges from belonging to society.

Government's job is not to handicap the successful, although socialists throughout time have taken such activity as their mantra. The argument that if one of us can't climb Mount Everest, none of us should be allowed to, is not just arrant nonsense, it is dangerous arrant nonsense. Please, Mr. Stewart, sit down.

The Bermuda Government, drawn from any party, has a very narrow field in which to perform. It controls education, for instance, but it can do very little about how educated people are.

Parents are the backbone of education. Bermuda has some of the best-equipped schools in the world, but look at the state of education. Since a Bermudian government cannot do the other thing that might help, importing the finest teachers in the world, that's about it for the kiddies. All the reviews and goodwill in the world won't change a thing unless schoolchildren learn to suffer at home when they fail to learn at school.

The least bad governments are the ones that stand back and let people do what they do best, making sure to care for those who need care. The standing-back part is avowedly not the philosophy of the PLP or any other party that might be able to form a Bermuda Government. Politicians of every stripe have always believed that they, and they alone, can make things better, but, on the whole, they make things worse.

We can't all be rich and successful. Societies are pyramidal, with the best few at the top and the rest of us in the middle or near or at the bottom. Thus it always has been and no amount of governing will ever change that.

I disagree with Mr. Stewart about the sustainability of growth at the nine percent level, but the current example of China will show us who's right. Talk to the Irish about what a few years of rapid growth did to them.

Bermuda's current rapid growth rate, whatever the precise figure is, is destroying what Bermuda was and replacing it with a new Bermuda. Inflation is already up, and it's only going to get upper, under present conditions. Dr. Brown isn't trying to slow growth; on the contrary, he is hoping to grow tourism as fast as insurance is growing here. That's going to mean more of what many consider evils — traffic, the loss of open space and gentility, stress and more stress. There is a name for this condition. It's called progress. Too much of it too fast — and here Mr. Stewart and I diverge — and the game is over.

I stand by my view that Bermuda is on a precipice and by my view that Dr. Brown, as our leader, must find a way to continue to allow the Island to grow without pushing it over the brink.