[Editor Note: This five-part series by Mr. Epstein, originally published in The Objective Standard, revisits the Standard Oil Trust controversy on this the 100th anniversary of the breakup of the Trust. Part I reviewed the flawed textbook interpretation of Rockefeller’s accomplishment; Part II sketched the rise of Standard Oil and defended the free-market practice of rebating.

The 1870s was a decade of gigantic growth for the Standard Oil Company. In 1870, it was refining fifteen hundred barrels per day—a huge amount for the time. By January 1871, it had achieved a 10 percent market share, making it the largest player in the industry. By 1873, it had one-third of the market share, was refining ten thousand barrels a day and had acquired twenty-one of the twenty-six other firms in Cleveland.…

[Editor note: Austrian-School economics is at the forefront of today’s pivotal debate over the limits of government, a debate that certainly includes public policy toward the master resource of energy.

Yesterday’s introduction of Rothbard is joined today by a tribute to “Mr. Libertarian” by  Roger Garrison, currently professor of economics at Auburn University, upon Rothbard’s death. Subtitles have been added to Roger’s tribute of 16 years ago, and he has graciously added a postscript for this republication. Enjoy on a hammock this hot summer with a glass of lemonade if you can!]

                        Murray Rothbard (1926-1995)

In the late 1960s, my interests were far removed from Austrian economics—and from any other brand of economics, for that matter. I hadn’t yet heard of Murray Rothbard and thus couldn’t even have imagined that I would be catapulted by him into the midst of what would later be termed the “Austrian Revival.”…

[This factual rebuttal against peak-shale by Chris Tucker and Jeff Eshelman of Energy In Depth (a project of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, or IPAA) is a serious moment in the energy debate. MasterResource reproduces their rebuttal in total and invites comments, particularly from the ‘peak oil’ community that received the front page article of their dreams (or nightmares, depending on the ultimate outcome of this fact-versus-fact debate).]

“What [the New York Times] isn’t entitled to, at least in our view, is to represent its piece as an original investigation; not when the story was essentially outsourced to a well-known critic of the industry whose predictions on shale’s imminent collapse grow less defensible (and more difficult to find on his website) by the day. Nor do we believe The Times is entitled to mislead its readers on the expertise of those whose “leaked” emails — many written in 2008 and 2009 – are used to form the basis of the story, especially when real-world production numbers from 2010 and 2011 directly contradict those speculative accounts.”

[Editor note: The other posts in this series are The Great Energy Resource Debate (Part I: Peak Oil was … is here!) and The Great Energy Resource Debate (Part III: Pessimists Turn Optimistic!). Part IV will look at the theoretical case for resource expansionism in light of the preceding posts.]

[Editor note: Part I

http://www.masterresource.org/2011/06/great-resource-debate-iii-new-optimists/

“All oil and gas resources should be carefully husbanded—i.e. extracted as late and as slowly as possible. Our descendents will be grateful. We, too, shall need a long bridge to the future.”

– Amory Lovins, World Energy Strategies: Facts, Issues, and Options (New York: Friends of the Earth International, 1975), p. 127.

Yesterday’s post provided quotations from a variety of sources espousing a pessimistic, closed view of the mineral resource world as it pertains to oil, gas, and even coal.…