Editor Note: On December 26, 2008, Robert L. Bradley Jr. launched the free-market energy blog, MasterResource. This inaugural post is reproduced verbatim.

“… our blog name is inspired by the late Julian Simon (1932–1998). He labeled energy the master resource because it is the resource needed to bring other resources from a state of nature to one of human usefulness. Simon also used the term the ultimate resource to describe human ingenuity.”

We are just getting started here, but some of us veterans of the energy debate from a private property, free-market perspective have teamed together to offer our thoughts on late breaking energy items. When I read my newspapers each day, I have some thoughts that I wish I could share with folks from a historical, worldview perspective. I think we all have something to add–and thus the inspiration for this endeavor.…

“To turn the noun ‘resources’ into the verb ‘resourcing,’ to discard entirely the notion of a resource ‘glass’ that is somewhere between full and empty, requires one more analytic step—a step that Zimmermann failed to take.”

In 1972, just two years after the first Earth Day, a team of scholars from MIT published a 200-page book called The Limits to Growth. Using the emerging instrument of computer models, they created a worldwide stir by suggesting that science had now put numbers to a few self-evident truths. Non-renewable resources are fixed; the consumption of such resources must eventually end; any civilization based on such consumption must collapse. New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis called the work “likely to be one of the most important documents of our age” (January 28, 1972).

Of course, the scholars acknowledged that they were dealing with variables.…

Ed. note: The Great Texas Blackout four years ago triggered a social media debate that reconfirmed ‘classical liberal’ Lynne Kiesling as an advocate of centrally planned, highly regulated electricity. It also revealed a cadre of electricity planners who bristled at the argument that government failed, including Eric Schubert and Robert Borlick. The exchanges began a debate that led the author to write a free-market primer, Free Market Electricity, to resurrect the 1960s tradition of such names as Harold Demsetz, George Stigler, Milton Friedman, and Walter Primeaux.

Lynne Kiesling (above) came roaring out the gate on Blackout Day February 16, 2021. But ‘the queen of power markets‘ was wrong. The Electric Reliability Commission of Texas (ERCOT) was government–and at the center of the worst electricity crisis in history.…

On this day in 2008, I launched MasterResource. The inaugural post, A New Energy Blog, read:

We are just getting started here, but some of us veterans of the energy debate from a private property, free-market perspective have teamed together to offer our thoughts on late breaking energy items. When I read my newspapers each day, I have some thoughts that I wish I could share with folks from a historical, worldview perspective. I think we all have something to add–and thus the inspiration for this endeavor.

We have a good core group of principal (and principled) bloggers, as well as a growing list of guest bloggers. We aim to post new material most every day. What we have to provide to the reader is frequent insight so that you visit us regularly.

There will be some trial and error, but this is the time to launch.…