“The PTC was created in 1992 to get the wind industry off the ground. Yet 20 years later, we have little to show for it.”
When it comes to rent-seeking by business, Concentrated Benefits + Diffused Costs = Government Growth.
In “Regulatory Failure by the Numbers,” a simple hypothetical was given:
“While the benefits of a regulation may be enjoyed by a relative few, the costs are often spread out among many. If the per person cost of a regulation is only a dollar or two, no one has a financial incentive to travel to Washington to lobby against it.”
Economists in the 19th century understood the problem created by this incentive asymmetry, and Michael Giberson found this in a 1935 book explaining the passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff:
… Continue Reading“Although .
“Soviet-style central planning may have died with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But what has not yet had that demise is that other variation on the collectivist theme: ‘democratic socialism’ (European-style) and the redistributive welfare state.”
“But what is required, what is asked of all of us who care about liberty, is not to allow the everyday ‘trends’ and outcomes of electoral politics to make us so despondent that we ‘give up the good fight.’ Only if we do so will the institutions of the paternalistic welfare state remain intact — even as the money dries up!”
It is worth recalling the state of the world when Ludwig von Mises wrote “Trends Can Change” 61 years ago (see Part I in this series).…
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What energy issues would you like to bring up that are atop your mind? What issues should MasterResource be including that our contributers may not have covered? Or what energy market developments are existing or potential policy drivers for the next years?
Tomorrow will resume our regular fare with Trends Can Change: Part II, authored by noted economist and historian Richard Ebeling. The broader topic of social change is important at this juncture given the ascendancy of neo-Malthusian and neo-Keynesian politics. Comments on political strategy are invited too.…
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