“My aim is to finish projects to offer a comprehensive, reliable foundation for future energy scholars to expand and improve upon. Many specific episodes can be studied in greater depth, and future events will require analysis.”
This week is a birthday of note for me. Looking back at a half-century of interest in energy history and public policy, I thank my lucky stars and celebrate a worldview–classical liberalism–that has held up very well over time. It is not how smart you are; it is the ability to discern between a false narrative and objective reality. And with a reliable framework to understand the world, blue-collar research was the wide-open opportunity for me. I have never looked back.
My odyssey began with an Ayn Rand novel in high school on individualism. That got me to free-market economics in college. And the energy crisis of the 1970s got me to energy. But it took a turn of luck in the business world to make energy my specialty, a story told elsewhere.
I am as intellectually active today as ever. I currently have two essays under review, one on the alleged market failure of petroleum production under the ‘rule of capture’ and another on the history of nuclear power in the United States. I also aim to expand and elaborate upon my primer on free-market electricity as a journal article.
With Roger Donway, I am improving the chapters of my 1996 treatise, Oil, Gas, and Government: The U.S. Experience, with small edits, corrections, and on-line documentation. (Completed chapters can be found here.)
I also have a first draft of a primer, Government and Energy: The U.S. Experience, that I will return to in due course. I held a chapter-by-chapter webinar back in 2023 that went well.
In Tribute
History might judge me to be the first thorough-going classical liberal to cover the political economy of U.S. energy. Everyone else was either not necessary a classical liberal or more of a specialist in certain energy areas. For whatever I might contribute, I acknowledge many others whose work enabled me to understand and expand the analysis. I pay my respects to
M. A. Adelman, D. T. Armentano, Jerry Ellig, Indur Goklany, Richard Gordon, Peter Grossman, Douglas Houston, William Johnson, Alfred Kahn, Henrietta Larson, William Leffler, Edward Mason, Stephen McDonald, Walter Mead, Edward J. Mitchell, Joseph Pratt, Walter Primeaux, Colin Robinson, Glenn Schleede, Julian Simon, Vaclav Smil, Arlon Tussing, Richard H. K. Vietor, G. Campbell Watkins, George Wolbert Jr., Guillermo Yeatts, Erich Zimmermann.
The insights offered by Milton Friedman (economics) and Ayn Rand (philosophy) during the 1970s energy crisis continue to illuminate current debates. The economics of Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and the Austrian school has been my touchstone to simplify and comprehend real-world complexity. My mentors Murray Rothbard and Don Lavoie were instrumental in my earlier career.
A list of currently active scholars, colleagues all, are carrying the torch. I would name them at the risk of leaving some out, so I defer until later.
Exciting Times
I am energized by the educational opportunities with energy history and public policy provided by the Trump Administration. On social media, I have engaged in thousands of conversations, most with my intellectual opponents, at least those who have chosen not to ignore or block me. With a following of 11,000 on LinkedIn, I educate and am educated. The “energy transition” is back to the consumer-chosen, taxpayer-neutral energies of oil, natural gas, and coal. I supply the reasons and offer the history to explain this.
MasterResource is my daily fare with several thousand posts to date. It is named for the great Julian Simon, a true inspiration to me and many others today.
The Institute for Energy Research (IER), headed by Tom Pyle, is doing great things in Washington, DC and elsewhere around the country. Founded in 1989 in my residence, IER is a respected classical liberal organization with a bright future. A number of our former and current employees are ‘bringing in the future,’ as Julian Simon liked to put it.
Far from being a PR firm or apologist for any firm or industry, IER is guided by the common-sense mission of trying to find voluntary solutions for human betterment rather than coercive (government) ones. The About section explains more.
Looking Ahead
My aim is to finish projects to offer a comprehensive, reliable foundation for future energy scholars to expand and improve upon. Many specific episodes can be studied in greater depth (many doctoral dissertations are needed!), and future events will require analysis. The past is prologue, as they say.
I plan to publish two books of published essays, one on Political Capitalism and one on Energy. Roger Donway will be spearheading this for 2026 and 2027.
There is still the fourth and final volume of my book series on the rise and fall of Enron, a story that I can bring to the present with all the post-Enron energy developments put into play by that company and its employees.
An autobiography, “My Accomplishments,” would either be the shortest book in the world or thick with blank pages, such as that of Kamala Harris. More seriously, I have in the back of my mind a biography of the notable people I have been close to in my life, titled Interesting People. [1] Not sure if I will ever get around to writing it, but the idea intrigues me.
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[1] Such a book would contain chapters on Kenneth L. Lay, the founder and chairman of Enron; J. Howard Marshall II, the iconic petroleum careerist whose fame in later life came with a female companion; William Lummis, first cousin to Howard Hughes who turned around Hughes’s Summa Corp; and Gordon Cain, whose career in his 60s and 70s in petrochemicals is the stuff of legend. I have a family history of some note with my father and paternal grandfather that would make for a lively chapter; the business success of both allowed me to take the road less traveled with a career in energy scholarship outside of academia.
Congratulations on reaching a milestone.
The energy crises of the ’70s were seminal events for many people (including myself). They served as a “wake-up”call for the affordable, reliable energy that so many took for granted up until that time.
Happy Birthday, Rob. Keep on keepin’ on.