“Add [to rent-seeking] the company’s rank imprudence and strategic deceit (what I labeled philosophic fraud), and a new term had to be invented to describe that which true capitalist luminaries from Adam Smith forward warned against: the contra-capitalist corporation.”
For many years now, as a poor man’s Robert Caro, I have labored to demonstrate that the worldview-testing event called Enron was Exhibit A of crony capitalism and Progressivism, not free-market capitalism and the classical liberalism.
The Progressive mainstream argued emphatically for their conclusion. Two examples are among my favorites. Paul Krugman in the New York Times: “I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.” Robert Kuttner in BusinessWeek: “Defenders of deregulation are mounting a heroic effort to insist that the [Enron] debacle was merely a business model gone bad, not an impeachment of freer markets”.…
Continue Reading“Air-conditioning demystifies nature’s miracles, and contributes to a culture characterized by disconnection and overconsumption.”
– Neri Oxman (MIT Media Lab), quoted here
“‘I’d rather sweat and stink and drink ice water.'”
– Mark Feeney (Boston Globe), quoted here
My recent blog at the Institute for Energy Research (IER) website documented an ongoing series at the New York Times aimed at getting one and all to lower their carbon footprint.
Grill vegetables, not meat. Use gas, not charcoal or wood. Watch how you wash your car and boil your water. Drink your coffee cold. Avoid dairy. Forgo the flowers. To which I said:
… Continue ReadingIn a free society, personal choices are made for reasons of health, safety, convenience, quality, and affordability. Time is as important as dollars. Quality is valued over lesser substitutes.
“The danger is not a physically changed climate, natural or manmade. The real threat is wealth-destroying climate policies that would leave populations vulnerable to weather and climate from any direction and for whatever reason.”
“Climate alarmists operate like the ‘Borg Collective,’ whereas organizing free-market advocates is like cat herding. We could stand for a little more organization. Perhaps we can start by sharing and fine-tuning our GND energy cost estimates. Any suggestions would be appreciated.”
Various estimates have been made of the sizeable costs of the Green New Deal (GND), a proposal to forcefully move Americans away from the most affordable, reliable energies to so-called “clean” energies.
This post reassesses these costs with a plea to better coordinate economic analyses in order to counter the climate campaigners who demote economics and realism with end-is-near, last-chance alarm.…
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