Looters, Moochers, Parasites: ‘Green’ Energy (Remembering Ayn Rand)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 21, 2021

A free-market energy economy promotes and rewards the creators and producers. Parasites and glad-handers need not apply. (below)

Free-market entrepreneurs and their workforce are creators, providing not only for themselves but for the wider good. They do not bank on government mandates or subsidies but on the needs of consumers, existing and new. They seek good profit, defined as creating real consumer value.

The fossil-fuel industries from top-to-bottom would qualify in the great majority of instances. In fact, most of its members, at present, are overcoming government intervention rather than depending on it.

It is just the reverse with the renewable industries, except for off-the-grid where there is no plug-in power. (David Bergeron, an author at MasterResource, is an example of a remote solar entrepreneur.)

The wind power industry, in particular, is made up of rent-seekers who have put themselves in the business of deceit, exaggeration, and half-truths. They cloak themselves in the false flag of the anti-industrial environmentalists while engaged in unnecessary industrialization. The social wealth is compromised.

Wind and solar generators (on the grid) and electric vehicle promoters are the looters and moochers. Ethanol producers too, outside of oxygenate demand. They are parasites living off of consumer-preferred energies, as well as taxpayers and ratepayers. Solar panels and industrial wind turbines are “liabilities parading as assets,” as M. A. Adelman used to say about crude-oil ‘stripper’ wells living off of special government favor.

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If there were one person I could resurrect to dissect the “green” energy ruse, it would be Ayn Rand. Her penetrating articles during the 1970s energy crisis were some of the best I have read on that subject, or any energy subject in political economy.

Think about energy producers-versus-parasites in today’s energy market when you read these long ago (but timeless) quotations from Ayn Rand.

Creation comes before distribution—or there will be nothing to distribute. The need of the creator comes before the need of any possible beneficiary.

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – You may know that your society is doomed.

Then you will see the rise of the double standard—the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money—the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law, men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims, then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality.

The Creator

Now think of the true market entrepreneur, the seeker of honest profit. Ayn Rand describes these heroes and heroines.

The creator stands on his own judgment. The parasite follows the opinions of others.

The creator thinks, the parasite copies. The creator produces, the parasite loots.

The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature – the parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.

The creator requires independence, he neither serves nor rules. He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice.

Look at history. Everything thing we have, every great achievement has come from the independent work of some independent mind. Every horror and destruction came from attempts to force men into a herd of brainless, soulless robots. Without personal rights, without personal ambition, without will, hope, or dignity. It is an ancient conflict. It has another name: the individual against the collective.

A free-market energy economy promotes and rewards the creators and producers. Parasites and glad-handers need not apply. That is the realistic energy ideal that requires much information and education in which MasterResource plays a part.