Editor note: Adam Smith (1723–1790) is considered the father of modern free market thought, although economics and political economy have advanced significantly since the 18th century. Many of Smith’s insights have proved prescient about today’s follies. The Green New Deal illustrates the folly that Smith warned against; another folly is committed by a free market ‘woman of system‘ in electricity who otherwise sings Smith’s praises.
The Wealth of Nations was published in March 1776, just a few months before the signing of the American Declaration of Independence in July of 1776. If the American Founding Fathers articulated in The Declaration of Independence the political case for individual freedom, Adam Smith presented the complementary argument for economic freedom and free enterprise.
A “System of Natural Liberty”
A primary motive for writing the book was to refute the then existing regime of pervasive government controls and regulations known as Mercantilism.…
Continue Reading“We have proved the commercial profit of sun power in the tropics and have more particularly proved that after our stores of oil and coal are exhausted the human race can receive unlimited power from the rays of the sun.” – Frank Shuman, quoted in “American Inventor Uses Egypt’s Sun for Power,” New York Times, July 2, 1916.
Solar electricity is not an infant industry. The following Wiki information (verbatim) on the inventor Frank Shuman tells an important part of the story.
Ed Note: The solar industry is in “a fight for our lives,” in the words of the head of the Solar Energy Industries Association. (Fifteen extensions of the Investment Tax Credit are not enough.) But the narrative has long been that solar is “competitive,” or almost so. The news story posted below, from 1994, is part of this false narrative.
“Federal officials, aware that solar power breakthroughs have shined and faded almost as often as the sun, say the Enron project could introduce commercially competitive technology without expensive Government aid.” (- Allen Myerson, New York Times, November 15, 1994)
Thirty-one years ago, the ‘newspaper of record’ excitedly reported atop the business section that a breakthrough with solar energy had occurred with the business genius of the upstart energy company Enron.…
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