Milton Friedman once said (1982: xxvii):
“There is an enormous inertia–a tyranny of the status quo–in private and particularly governmental arrangements. Only a crisis-actual or perceived-produces real change. When the crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
I remembered this quotation when Michael Giberson, a classical liberal caught in an interventionist web, stated:
Bradley: I answered your question about what a free market in electricity is. I’m still waiting for yours….
Giberson: I must have missed it. In your comments referencing your econlib posts on Texas you list some laws to be repealed to help get the industry headed more to a free market, but that’s a discussion of means rather than ends. Elsewhere do you directly define a free market? I have not seen it.
Bradley: A separation of government and energy with the standard rules of a classical liberal free market against force or fraud. “Free Market Alternative” in Part II of the EconLib article reads:
“A true free market based on private property rights and voluntary exchange requires repealing or at least amending the above laws, as well as terminating or demoting the above agencies. At the moment of production/transmission/distribution; upstream, midstream, downstream; wholesale or retail, natural gas and electricity would be guided by entrepreneurs, not experts, regulators, and planners.
Giberson: Sorry must have overlooked your reply last week in the general tumult. Sure, this seems like a fine classical liberal definition: “separation of government and energy with the standard rules of a classical liberal free market against force or fraud.”
With this as a general goal, what is your strategy for advancing society towards it?
Bradley: It starts with education, right? You and I are in that business.
Step #1 is to define the end state. What is desired that is realistic (not utopian), even if it is not politically practical (like mandatory open access with electricity before Enron came along)?
Milton Friedman once said to classical liberals: “… our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”
Propping up a statist, politicized system has its own problems, too. At what point do you get off the train where a wholly new approach becomes strategic?
Step #2 (which should really precede #1 in our case) is to marshal the arguments for and against a separation of government and electricity. We are having that debate right now… and there are lots of holes in Lynne’s argument for MOA-ISOs/RTOs that her noncooperation (“raising rival’s costs”) has kept hidden. That needs to stop. Lynne Kiesling, Travis Fisher