Appreciating the Master Resource (Part I: Energy Friends)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 17, 2011

Energy is ubiquitous to modern industrial life. It is the fourth factor of production in addition to the textbook triad of land, labor, and capital. Julian Simon coined the term master resource to describe the resource of resources, energy.

Energy as been recognized as a unique driver of economic activity and human betterment for almost two centuries–about as long as carbon-based energies came to be recognized as a sea change from the inherently dilute, unreliable renewable energies of before. The Industrial Revolution was enabled by coal, the energy required by the new machinery, as W. S. Jevons so brilliantly saw in his day.

The quotations below, some classic, resonate as well or better today than ever before. They are as ‘right” as the peak-oil quotations (compiled here and here) have been wrong.…

Federal Energy Policy for America (Part III: Cato's priorities–and a few more)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 15, 2011

Editor note: This three-part series began with A Free Market Energy Vision (Part I: Worldview) and continued with Energy for a Free Society: The ‘American Energy Act’ (Part II: Real World Reform).

In their essay on energy policy for the 111th Congress, Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of the libertarian Cato Institute offered nine priorities to move the United States from energy statism to free energy markets.

But there are more areas of pro-private pro-market exchange reform on the federal level. I offer four–perhaps readers can add more in comments.

Nine Policy Recommendations (Cato)

Congress should:

Open up public lands currently off limits to the oil and gas industry in the outer continental shelf and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for exploration and drilling,
Repeal Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards along with all other energy conservation mandates,
Repeal subsidies for all energy industries including oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and renewable energies of all kinds,
Repeal fuel consumption mandates for ethanol and resist prospective consumption mandates for other renewable energies,
Eliminate all targeted public energy research and development programs and replace them with a generalized tax credit for private research and development undertakings,
Transfer the maintenance of the nuclear weapons stockpile from the Department of Energy to the Department of Defense and privatize the national laboratories,
Sell the oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and shut the program down,
Eliminate the Department of Energy and all its programs, and
Refuse appeals to impose new taxes and/or regulations on energy producers and manufacturers.

…

The 'Economic Means' vs. the 'Political Means': Franz Oppenheimer Makes a Key Political-Capitalism Distinction

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- June 14, 2011

[Editor Note: With T. Boone Pickens (et al.) trying to get natural gas vehicles off the ground with a $80,000 per vehicle special tax break, it is worth examining the origins of the political means versus the economic means to business (profit/loss) success. All roads lead to Franz Oppenheimer (1864–1943), a German sociologist/political scientist who saw capitalism’s business leaders at work.]

“I propose in the following discussion to call one’s own labor, and the equivalent exchange of one’s own labor for the labor of others, the ‘economic means’ for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the ‘political means’.”

– Franz Oppenheimer, The State. New York: Free Life Editions, 1908 (1975), pp. 24-25 (full quotation at end of blog).

MasterResource sharply distinguishes between enterprise that is motivated by and dependent upon consumer demand in a free market, and profit-seeking that is abetted by special government favor (SGF).…