[Editor note: Julian Simon (February 12, 1932 – February 8, 1998) is remembered each year at MasterResource.]
“The world’s problem is not too many people, but a lack of political and economic freedom.”
– Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource 2 (Princeton, N.Y.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 11.
“The ultimate resource is people—especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefits, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.”
– Julian Simon, “Introduction,” in Simon, ed., The State of Humanity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), p. 27.
Julian Simon would have turned 84 last week. MasterResource, which is named in his honor, applies Simon’s ultimate resource insight to the master resource of energy and to related environmental issues.…
“Price controls cause shortages, and government allocation exacerbates it. This was learned the hard way during the 1970s, particularly with oil, thanks to Republican President Richard Nixon.”
George Melloan’s review of Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2016) criticized her foray into energy and energy policy:
Ms. Mayer might herself benefit from an economics course. She writes that Richard Nixon imposed economic controls on oil and gas in 1971 to “address the energy crisis.” The Nixon price controls helped to cause the energy crisis.
Intrigued, I bought Dark Money to see exactly what she said. Here is the passage from Mayer (p. 91) referenced by Melloan:
…The fossil fuel industry’s fondest wishes were also fulfilled.
“Successful demonstration of the [Ovonic NiMH] battery’s capabilities have resulted in numerous commercial developments: … General Motors has entered into a joint venture with Ovonic…. Honda and Toyota have announced that their new electric vehicles will be introduced with NiMH batteries….”
– Business Council for Sustainable Energy (1996)
The new US/global reality of supply-over-demand oil economics spells big trouble for electric vehicles, which were not economic at formerly high gasoline and diesel prices at the pump. The latest setback will, once again, reveal government subsides and related crony business as an economic fail.
Batteries are a big problem, just as they were in a few years ago when competing petro prices were higher — and back in Thomas Edison’s day despite the best efforts of Henry Ford.
I recently ran across this study from November 1996 from the Business Council for Sustainable Energy, “Changing Tide: Tomorrow’s Clean Energy–Today.”…