Despair: Another Day before a State Public Utility Commission
By Jim Clarkson -- December 2, 2013“Truth is, we don’t need utility regulation at all…. Rather than solving problems utility regulation creates competing interest groups that lobby to gain advantage and handicap competitors. The whole monopoly-regulatory system, root and branch, needs to be abolished.”
It was another day of hearings at the Georgia Public Service Commission for Georgia Power’s 2013 rate case. The various representatives for the fifteen or so parties to the case are filing into the hearing room. Usually I just endure. But today I take mental notes; this is worth penning to share.
The Players (and me)
There’s some camaraderie among the familiar but antagonistic players from previous cases. There’s long tall Alan, who will be representing big retail power users. There’s Terri with a smile and a ready joke. Woe be the man that blushes, she will tease him unmercifully.…
Continue ReadingThankfully Wrong: World Agriculture Booms in Face of Dire Predictions
By Steve Goreham -- November 29, 2013“One must wonder when the climate-damaging effects on agriculture will appear. Maybe rising agricultural production is like rising polar bear populations—the decline begins tomorrow.”
The year 2013 has been a great year for global agriculture. Record world production of rice and healthy production of wheat and corn produced strong harvests across the world. These gains were achieved despite continuing predictions that world agricultural output is headed for a decline.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that world rice harvests for 2012/2013 were a record 469 million metric tons. Corn and wheat harvests were also strong, following record harvests for both grains during the 2011/2012 season. The USDA is now projecting world record harvests for corn, wheat, and rice for 2013/2014.
These numbers cap a 50-year trend of remarkable growth in world grain production.…
Continue ReadingThanksgiving: The Birth of American Free Enterprise
By Richard Ebeling -- November 28, 2013“In the wilderness of the New World, the Plymouth Pilgrims had progressed from the false dream of communism to the sound realism of capitalism. At a time of economic uncertainty and growing political paternalism, it is worthwhile recalling this beginning of the American experiment and experience with freedom.”
The English Puritans, who left Great Britain and sailed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower in 1620, were not only escaping from religious persecution in their homeland. They also wanted to turn their back on what they viewed as the materialistic and greedy corruption of the Old World.
Plymouth Colony Planned as Collectivist Utopia
In the New World, they wanted to erect a New Jerusalem that would not only be religiously devout, but be built on a new foundation of communal sharing and social altruism.…
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