“I will urge Congress to create an energy mobilization board which, like the War Production Board in World War II, will have the responsibility and authority to cut through the red tape, the delays, and the endless roadblocks to completing key energy projects.”

“So, the solution of our energy crisis can also help us to conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country. It can rekindle our sense of unity, our confidence in the future, and give our nation and all of us individually a new sense of purpose.”

“We have the world’s highest level of technology. We have the most skilled work force, with innovative genius, and I firmly believe that we have the national will to win this [energy] war.”

“I do not promise you that this struggle for [energy] freedom will be easy.…

[E]nergy is not life, but a prerequisite for it, and life is insatiable for it.

– Bernd Heinrich, American zoologist, professor, and author

Civilization and profit go hand in hand.

– Calvin Coolidge, American President

In his book Economics on Trial, American economist Mark Skousen defined Economics as, “the study of how individuals transform natural resources into final products and services that people can use.”

Skousen’s definition is problematic for the purposes of this book [Caveman Economics, in process], which proposes to illustrate economic principles by imagining a prehistoric world at the dawn of our species.  For in such a world, natural resources do not yet exist.  Natural materials exist, but they do not become natural resources until they are combined with knowledge.  Such knowledge came only after thousands of years of trial and error—trial and error in a world in which error often resulted in death.…

“Milton Friedman’s timeless energy insights should be appreciated for all time.”

Born on this day 106 years ago, free-market economist Milton Friedman (1912–2006) was one of a kind. Even the dyspeptic Paul Krugman called his rival “the economist’s economist…a very great man indeed—a man of intellectual courage who was one of the most important economic thinkers of all time and possibly the most brilliant communicator of economic ideas to the general public that ever lived.” The Economist (November 23, 2006) called him “the most influential economist of the second half of the twentieth century… and possibly all of it.”

Milton Friedman’s major professional mark was in monetary economics. But as a public intellectual, writing popular books and a biweekly Newsweek column, he became conversant in different fields, including energy.

Friedman understood how, for much of US history, major energy regulation was sponsored by some segment of the industry.…

[Note: This will be Niskanen Week with forthcoming posts on his views on climate-change science, economics, and public policy. This is particularly relevant with the contradictory policies of the Niskanen Center under its founder and head, Jerry Taylor.]