“[There is] a general economic maxim: public [government] resources are really private, owned and exploited by a political elite, while private resources are really public, owned and managed by a multitude. Government-owned resources do not ‘belong to all of the people’ and allow ‘self determination;’ they belong to none or a very few.”
– R. Bradley, Foreword to G. Yeatts, Subsurface Wealth: The Struggle for Privatization in Argentina (Foundation for Economic Education, 1997), pp. xv–xvi.
The recent reform of Mexico’s Constitution to allow private investment (up to $20 billion in production-sharing agreements) still leaves state-owned PEMEX with a legal monopoly for oil and gas development inside the country. But it is a start at reform that may turn into a deregulatory, privatization dynamic.
More, indeed, awaits to open the energy sector internal and external competition and to foreign investment in any amounts:
1) Competition to PEMEX in all oil and gas areas should be legalized;
2) PEMEX shares be allocated to the country’s private citizens;
3) Subsoil mineral rights should be assigned–with deed of title–to the (private) surface owners of land.…
“When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road. Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about ‘extreme weather’.”
– Matt Ridley, “Nobody Even Calls the Weather Average,” July 9, 2013.
Last summer, global warming was blamed for firefighter deaths, more thunderstorms, and poor lobster catches.
Last fall and so far this winter, the list has grown to include:
…Upon a Congressional declaration of “the public interest” and to “promote the general welfare,” the Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 centralized the federal government’s energy functions. The new agency was premised on five beliefs:
DOE’s rationale of market failure and government success has flipped. Today, it is government failure and market success. Oil and gas are more abundant now than 37 years ago; oil imports are decreasing to levels thought impossible just a decade ago; politically correct renewable energy remains uneconomic (note the wind industry’s dogged pursuit of the production tax credit); and mandated conservation has present costs and speculative future benefits (hence the coercion).…