A Free-Market Energy Blog

Adam Smith’s Insight for Independence Day 2025 (Part I)

By Richard Ebeling -- July 3, 2025

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.…

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The First Solar Power Plant: 1916

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 2, 2025

“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.

  • On August 20, 1897, Shuman invented a solar engine that worked by reflecting solar energy onto one-foot square boxes filled with ether, which has a lower boiling point than water, and containing black pipes on the inside, which in turn powered a toy steam engine. The tiny steam engine operated continuously for over two years on sunny days next to a pond at the Shuman house.
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Competitive Solar? A Perennial Deceit (Enron/NYT in 1994)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- July 1, 2025

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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Solar Tax Credits: 1978–2025 (never enough)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 30, 2025
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Thomas R. DeGregori: Last Knight of Institutionalist Resourceship (two tributes)

By Administrator -- June 27, 2025
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Climate Exchange with Jean Boissinot: For the Record

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 26, 2025
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IRA Cronies: American Clean Power Association, et al.

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 25, 2025
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Heartland UK/Europe: More Progress! (DeSmog confirms again)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 24, 2025
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Energy & Environmental Review: June 23, 2025

By -- June 23, 2025
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Turning 70: Some Public Policy Notes

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 20, 2025
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