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Libertarianism and Energy (Part I: Robert L. Bradley Jr. Interview with Professor Stephen Hicks)

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- January 7, 2011

[Note: Last summer, philosophy professor Stephen Hicks (website here) interviewed MasterResource founder Rob Bradley. “The Robert L. Bradley Jr. Interview, ‘Enron and Political Entrepreneurship'” covers Bradley’s intellectual career and worldview regarding the market order and energy.

This series (in four parts: Part II, Part III, Part IV) is the full interview (with some elaboration), from which an abbreviated version was published in KAIZEN magazine (Issue 13: August 2010)  and a longer version was posted online.]

Introduction

Rob Bradley worked at Enron for 16 years. As director of public policy analysis for his last seven years there, he wrote speeches for the late Ken Lay, Enron’s CEO, who was convicted in 2005 of fraud and conspiracy.

Bradley is also founder and CEO of the Institute for Energy Research of Houston, Texas, and Washington, D.C.…

“Clean Energy Standards”: The Sky is the (Price) Limit

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- December 17, 2010

[Editor note: This post was prepared by Mary Hutzler, Dan Simmons, et al. for the Town Hall blog at the Institute for Energy Research, a free-market ‘all-energy-all-the-time’ think tank.]

“The federal government is ultimately responsible for the long-term … consistent [energy] policy…. A clean energy portfolio standard is one example of a potential policy that the administration and Congress should discuss.… In this time of fiscal austerity I propose such a standard.”

–Secretary Steven Chu

With each passing day, the odds of Congress passing a Renewable Electricity Standard grow more and more dim. But Energy Secretary Chu, Senator Graham, and others are now promoting a similar mandate under a new name. Their old vinegar/new bottle effort should be exposed and rejected as the wrong path for energy policy.

Instead of a renewable electricity mandate, Chu, Graham, et al.

Who is Charles Koch? (A builder of business and critic of political capitalism)

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- December 2, 2010

[Editor note: Robert L. Bradley Jr.’s book review of Charles Koch’s The Science of Success (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007) appeared in the August/September 2008 issue of The New Individualist (Atlas Society). It is reprinted below to better publicize the worldview of the individual who has been behind a number of free-society initiatives across the country for several decades–and is now a target of Al Gore and the anti-free-market Left).

In 1859, the first treatise on “best practices” appeared: Self-Help, With Illustrations of Character, Conduct, and Perseverance, by Samuel Smiles. Motivational self-improvement books were not new, but Smiles’s 400-page opus was persuasive. Profusely illustrated with stories of men-made-good in industry, engineering, the arts, and music, Self-Help combined age-tested wisdom with knowledge of the industrial present.

From Self-Help to Organizational Success

Nearly 150 years later, the most recent addition to the self-help literature is The Science of Success by Charles G.

Tom Pyle (IER) on the Election Results and Energy Policy (beware of ‘all of the above’ Republicans)

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- November 3, 2010

“The Future of Economic Freedom” (A corporate call to principled action)

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- November 2, 2010

“Let’s Try a Free Market in Energy” by Charles Koch (Part II: Planning, Politics, and Power)

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- October 8, 2010

“Let’s Try a Free Market in Energy” (Letter from Charles Koch to FORTUNE Magazine in 1977 in Response to ARCO’s Thornton Bradshaw’s ‘My Case for National Planning’)

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- October 7, 2010

What’s New About Windpower? Erich Zimmermann in 1933

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- September 22, 2010

Remembering When Enron Saved the U.S. Wind Industry (Best of MasterResource)

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- September 4, 2010

DeepWatergate: Administration Modifies Peer-Reviewed Report After it was Reviewed by Scientists

By <a class="post-author" href="/about#r_donway">Roger Donway</a> -- June 12, 2010