“Nationalization. Price controls. Shortages. Forced allocation. Currency inflation. More seizure. Punishment. Mass shortages. Hyperinflation…. All to stamp out private property and profit/loss exchange.”
The Progressive intellectual class does not quite know what to think about the carnage in Venezuela. They see the results and speak only of bad government–and even in this case lower oil prices for a government dependent on oil revenue.
The latest example comes from the New York Times (December 18, 2017). Yesterday, the so-called “newspaper of record” published a 12-page Special Report, “As Venezuela Collapses, Children Die of Hunger,” vividly detailing the total chaos and mass misery (outside of the government class) of a country that should be one of the most prosperous in the world.
This article’s pictures of malnutrition and death are followed by three titles:
‘Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world.…
“We in the petroleum industry are not dismissing the global climate change issue. But I don’t believe anyone should have the moral authority to deny people the opportunity to improve their way in life by arbitrarily depriving them of the means…. I hope that the governments of this region will work with us to resist policies that could strangle economic growth.”
– Lee Raymond, CEO, ExxonMobil (2010) [1]
Think Progress (the successor to the Joe Romm-founded Climate Progress at the Center for American Progress) published a recent piece by Mark Hand, “Industry Opposition Leads ALEC to Withdraw Anti-Climate Resolution,” subtitled “Right-wing lobbying group fails to pass resolution targeting EPA finding.”
Some excerpts from Hand’s piece follow:
…A secretive right-wing lobbying group failed to pass a resolution this week that called upon the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to withdraw its 2009 finding that greenhouse gases are endangering the planet.
“Dense mineral energies can be considered more environmentally benign than dilute, intermittent renewables. Peter Huber has written that ‘the greenest fuels are the ones that contain the most energy per pound of material that must be mined, trucked, pumped, piped, and burnt.’ He notes that ‘extracting comparable amounts of energy from the surface would entail truly monstrous environmental disruption’.”
Letters-to-the-editor are an effective way to communicate ideas. They are brief and to the point, appealing to the shortened attention spans that most readers have experienced.
Letter writing can be the best return on a policy writer’s investment. The King of the practice is Donald Boudreaux, Professor of Economics at George Mason University (see his many titles and affiliations here).
Through the years, I have published several letters in the Wall Street Journal.…