“How is any American going to feel good about reforming Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security when … businessmen are making off with so many tax dollars?”
– Richard Fink (Koch Industries), quoted in Bill Wilson and Roy Wenzl, “The Kochs’ Quest to Save America,” Wichita Eagle, October 13, 2012.
A major political-economy theme at MasterResource is how government intervention stifles value-creating entrepreneurship, or, in the case of mineral resources, resourceship.
MasterResource has chronicled the sorry history of government trying to turn energy losers into winners. Last year alone, this site published 60 blog-posts on the history, operation, and current politics of (government-enabled) industrial wind power. And who can forget Solyndra on the solar side, a name that might enter the textbooks as the Teapot Dome of our time.…
“If we really want a sustainable future for all of humanity and our planet, we shouldn’t plunge ourselves back into darkness. Tackling climate change by turning off the lights and eating dinner by candlelight smacks of the “let them eat cake” approach to the world’s problems that appeals only to well-electrified, comfortable elites.”
– Bjørn Lomborg, “Earth Hour Is a Colossal Waste of Time—and Energy,” Slate, March 17, 2013.
For many years, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has deftly combined scholarship with activism–and a dash of humor–in the pursuit of liberty. Many of their scholars, such as Marlo Lewis at this site, are leaders in their respective fields.
Several years ago, they responded to turn-out-the-lights Earth Hour with turn-on-the-lights Human Achievement Hour. And now comes 2013. “On March 23, some people will be sitting in the dark to express their ‘vote’ for action on global climate change,” CEI states.…
“Industrial development would have been greatly retarded if sixty or eighty years ago the warning of the [coal]conservationists had been heeded. . . . [T]he internal combustion engine would never have revolutionized transport if its use had been limited to the then known supplies of oil. . . . Though it is important that on all these matters the opinion of the experts about the physical facts should be heard, the result in most instances would have been very detrimental if they had had the power to enforce their views on policy.”
– F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 369-70.
Government energy planning is a long tried, long failed exercise. The inner Obama in his Argonne speech last week surely channeled Jimmy Carter; and Carter circa 1977 foreshadowed the 44th president of the United States.…