“In DOE’s ostensible energy efficiency zealousness, it assumes ‘command and control’ of a portion of the economy. Such political markets inevitably displace free markets, as vested interests organize and mobilize resources to protect and enlarge their abilities, against less powerful stakeholders, to determine regulatory outcomes.”
In 1999, “Is DOE Leading Us Astray?” was published in a business trade journal. That journal no longer exists, but my article’s message can be revisited to assess how the current situation.
The original is indented and in red, followed by my responses: [1]
… Continue ReadingWhen you do the math, properly accounting for the delivered efficiency of the two energy forms, one sees that electricity is delivered at an overall efficiency of 27% and natural gas is delivered at an overall efficiency of 91% (using the above illustrative EFs).
Editor Note: This completes a two-part interview of Professor Jack High, profiled yesterday. His interest in business scholarship in the classical-liberal tradition relates to important topics at MasterResource: political capitalism, contra-capitalism, and corporate cronyism.
“There is so much about business practice that is ripe for study by Austrian economics, but it is not a main focus of our present generation of scholars….. I suspect that the study of business practice is an opportunity for enterprising Austrian scholars to make a mark.” (Jack High, below)
Part III: Austrian Economics and Business History
Q. Let’s step back and talk about business history. How did Austrian (or market process) economics overlap with the study of business?
A. Austrian economics from the beginning has realized that market activity is characterized by desire for improvement, and that change is initiated and carried out by the vital few, to use Jonathon Hughes’ term.…
Continue ReadingEditor Note: Jack High, retired from a professorship in economics at George Mason University, came to specialize in political economy, particularly business lobbying (rent-seeking) for special government favor. In this regard, he edited Regulation: Economic Theory and History (University of Michigan Press: 1991) and wrote (with Clayton Coppin) The Politics of Purity (University of Michigan Press: 1999). This interview discusses this interest given the resurgence of themes relating to political capitalism , contra-capitalism, and corporate cronyism, important themes at MasterResource.
————
Part I: Discovering, Teaching Market-Process Economics
Q. Jack, just to (re)introduce you to readers, tell us a bit about how you became an academic economist and came to embrace Austrian School’ or ‘market process’ economics.
A. In the late 1960s I read two books, Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and Capitalism the Unknown Ideal by Ayn Rand, that piqued my interest in economics.…
Continue Reading