“Add [to rent-seeking] the company’s rank imprudence and strategic deceit (what I labeled philosophic fraud), and a new term had to be invented to describe that which true capitalist luminaries from Adam Smith forward warned against: the contra-capitalist corporation.”
For many years now, as a poor man’s Robert Caro, I have labored to demonstrate that the worldview-testing event called Enron was Exhibit A of crony capitalism and Progressivism, not free-market capitalism and the classical liberalism.
The Progressive mainstream argued emphatically for their conclusion. Two examples are among my favorites. Paul Krugman in the New York Times: “I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.” Robert Kuttner in BusinessWeek: “Defenders of deregulation are mounting a heroic effort to insist that the [Enron] debacle was merely a business model gone bad, not an impeachment of freer markets”.…
“Air-conditioning demystifies nature’s miracles, and contributes to a culture characterized by disconnection and overconsumption.”
– Neri Oxman (MIT Media Lab), quoted here
“‘I’d rather sweat and stink and drink ice water.'”
– Mark Feeney (Boston Globe), quoted here
My recent blog at the Institute for Energy Research (IER) website documented an ongoing series at the New York Times aimed at getting one and all to lower their carbon footprint.
Grill vegetables, not meat. Use gas, not charcoal or wood. Watch how you wash your car and boil your water. Drink your coffee cold. Avoid dairy. Forgo the flowers. To which I said:
…In a free society, personal choices are made for reasons of health, safety, convenience, quality, and affordability. Time is as important as dollars. Quality is valued over lesser substitutes.
“I will not stand for [the Green New Deal]. We will defend the environment, but we will also defend American sovereignty, American prosperity, and we will defend American jobs.”
– President Donald Trump, The White House, July 8, 2019.
E&E News headlined its story, “Trump slams Paris deal in remarks about the environment.” Never mind that the major nations of the world are violating, if not decimating, the global climate agreement’s voluntary quotas. And never mind that the President talked about a raft of other environmental issues where the news is all good.
In fact, it was a speech of substance, the major theme of which is mineral energies are compatible with environmental progress. Some highlights from Trump’s speech in regard to energy and climate follow:
Remarks by President Trump on America’s Environmental Leadership