“With Texas wind power capacity at more than double the state’s RPS minimum, repeal is unlikely to do much to change the profile of renewable energy in Texas. But repeal is still important, because it sends a clear signal that markets, not politics, should decide what kinds of energy Texans use.”

Texas has always been big on energy. The state’s long history of oil and gas production is well known. And on the electric generation side, Texas ranks first in the nation nuclear power and has the most installed wind capacity of any state.

While the willingness to develop our energy potential is unrivaled, the means has not always been the best. Like in other states, and the U.S. as a whole, Texas has periodically tried to prop up or hold back different forms of energy via special protections, subsidies, or mandates, rather than letting markets and the price system decide the best energy mix.…

“While political capitalism as an economic system has barely been recognized, the building blocks that form a theoretical foundation for political capitalism are firmly in place and well-accepted. In political science and sociology, the ideas of elite domination and biased pluralism are mainstream concepts that are a fundamental part of political capitalism.”

Political capitalism is an economic and political system in which the economic and political elite cooperate for their mutual benefit. While the essential idea of political capitalism has a long history, it has not been recognized as a distinct economic system.

In part, this is due to the 20th-century vision of economic systems as capitalist, as socialist, or a mixed economy that contains elements of both capitalism and socialism. It has also been due to the frequent vision of government as an institution that acts in the public interest, corrects market failures, and controls the activities of business.…

“Epstein explains in philosophical terms how the public has been duped by the likes of Paul Ehrlich, John Holdren, Amory Lovins, and Bill McKibben for decades. Their real agenda has never been to save the world but instead to promote an idyllic view of nature untrammeled by humans. They have fooled the public into fearing fossil fuels, by focusing only on the risks of fossil fuel usage to mankind and nature, while ignoring all the benefits.”

In his new book, The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, Alex Epstein makes one of the most compelling arguments for the moral value of fossil fuels and the need to increase their use that we have ever read. Although virtually everyone battling the anthropogenic global warming delusion takes a defensive position with regard to the world’s use of coal, natural gas, and oil, our so-called fossil fuels, Epstein recognizes that, as in sports, the best defense is a good offense.…

“[This legislation] will prevent federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing, facilitate the expansion of domestic refining capacity, improve processes to develop energy infrastructure, stop EPA overreach and its war on coal, force Congress and the President to approve any new EPA regulations that kill jobs, broaden energy development on federal land, open offshore exploration, expand U.S. energy exports, and dedicate additional revenues to debt reduction.”

“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change,” wrote Milton Friedman in the 40th anniversary edition of his classic Capitalism & Freedom (1962, 2002). The revered free-market economist continued:

When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable” (p.