“Despite his folky style and positioning to the contrary, [Kevin] Martis is a highly polished, fossil fuel operative with aggressive tactics. The taxpayers of Seneca County and all of Ohio deserve a more honest broker than Kevon Martis.”

– Scott Peterson, Checks and Balances Project, October 25, 2018.

“When is an environmentalist not an environmentalist? … When it comes to wind power.

– an eco-joke

In “Coal-Backed Anti-Wind Guru Barrels into Ohio’s Seneca County to Attack Wind Energy,” Scott Peterson, executive director of Checks and Balances Project, “an investigative blog that seeks to hold government officials, lobbyists and corporate management accountable to the public,” goes after one regular citizen, Kevon Martis.

Citizen Martis is very well respected here at MasterResource, as evidenced by these posts:

• Enough! Martis Responds to Sinclair re Industrial Wind (March 5, 2018)
• Wind Siting Rules: Kevon Martis Testimony to the Ohio Power Siting Board (June 9, 2016)
• Citizen Martis to Ohio Lawmakers: Repeal the Renewable-Energy Mandate (January 27, 2014)
• Testimony Against Industrial Wind Power: Martis before the Ohio Senate and House PUCs (January 8, 2014)

And recall his 2013 post “Dear Michigan: Why Wind?…

Editor 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.

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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.…

“Beyond rent-seeking, a corporation can engage in other behaviors long decried by classical liberals, behaviors that might be characterized as contra-capitalism.”

Cronyism … Rent-seeking … Regulatory capture … Special-interest politics … Strategic uses of government intervention … Many terms have described business lobbying within the up-for-grabs socioeconomic system of political capitalism where the political means replaces the economic means. [1] It results in what classical-liberal entrepreneur Charles Koch calls bad profit. [2]

But beyond rent-seeking, a corporation can engage in other behaviors long decried by classical liberals, behaviors that might be characterized as contra-capitalism. Importantly, the corporation might not recognize these behaviors as an explicit strategy (Enron did not; Tesla does not). These separable behaviors are complementary.  And now, with a term, what was implicit can become explicit for the public policy and corporate-governance debate.…

“Nationalization. Price controls. Shortages. Forced allocation. Currency inflation. More seizure. Punishment. Mass shortages. Hyperinflation…. All to stamp out private property and profit/loss exchange.”

The Progressive intellectual class does not quite know what to think about the carnage in Venezuela. They see the results and speak only of bad government–and even in this case lower oil prices for a government dependent on oil revenue.

The latest example comes from the New York Times (December 18, 2017). Yesterday, the so-called “newspaper of record” published a 12-page Special Report, “As Venezuela Collapses, Children Die of Hunger,” vividly detailing the total chaos and mass misery (outside of the government class) of a country that should be one of the most prosperous in the world.

This article’s pictures of malnutrition and death are followed by three titles:

‘Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world.…