On December 26, 2008, the free-market energy blog MasterResource began. Some 1,440 posts (from 150 authors) later, we are nearing two million views.
The original idea of MasterResource was to bring a distinguished group of energy experts together to attract a wider audience. The thinking was that a movement website would provide the critical mass to be heard in an increasingly crowded blogosphere.
Here was the original concept as explained in our first blog five years ago today:
…We are just getting started here, but some of us veterans of the energy debate from a private property, free-market perspective have teamed together to offer our thoughts on late breaking energy items. When I read my newspapers each day, I have some thoughts that I wish I could share with folks from a historical, worldview perspective.
“It is precisely the fact that the market does not respect vested interests that makes the people concerned ask for government interference.”
– Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (1940), p. 334 [4th Edition, 1966, p. 337].
Government goes to those who show up. The wind industry got there first (concentrated benefits, diffused costs). But the pro-consumer, pro-taxpayer, pro-freedom movement has staged an impressive counter attack against government-dependent cronyism. Energy politics dates from the mid-nineteenth century in the United States–but never has more than one hundred pro-liberty groups spoken with one voice before.
Will the wind Production Tax Credit expire as scheduled at the end of this year? The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) hopes not. Why? Because continued expansion depends on the timing of this huge subsidy (see this graph by the editors of Real Clear Energy).…
[Ed. note: This post reprints Mr. Bradley’s recent Houston Chronicle editorial, Textbooks Fail to Teach Real-World Government, with documentation and slight elaboration. His intellectual-diversity project at the high school he graduated from and taught at is www.freekinkaid.org.]
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, in a much-debated column (“Sorry, kids. We ate it all” – October 16, 2013), made a surprising argument: A Vietnam War–type uprising by today’s youth could result from the federal government’s growing indebtedness and unsustainable social programs. He pointed to signs that the exploited will rise up against this intergenerational injustice in a way not seen since the 1960s. [1]
Having taught high school here in Houston, I know that today’s youth are eager to debate ideologically opposed viewpoints on major intellectual and political issues.…