“To those who voted for this Administration … ask yourself if this is really what you voted for. I’m willing to bet that, for many of you, the answer is no.” ( Emily Rossi, former DOE employee, below)

Milton Friedman often warned that good intentions are not enough. It is results that matter. Thus, the right worldview is crucial.

I was reminded of this upon reading this farewell post by Emily Rossi, (former) Senior Advisor to the U.S. Dept. of Energy. [Note: these links do not work for me–I might have been blocked. Or she went underground.]

Yesterday was my last day as a federal employee with the U.S. Dept. of Energy [after almost three years]. I’ll have news to share soon about what comes next, but for today, I’d like to reflect on my time at the DOE under Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Deputy Secretary Dave Turk, and join the growing chorus of people lifting up the contributions of federal workers.

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.…

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.…

“Rob’s snide reference to my ‘chess pieces’ is a reference to my unwillingness to agree with his Utopian dismissal of ISO/RTO organized wholesale markets.” (Lynne Kiesling to Vernon Smith, below)

“Yes, playing with government chess pieces (on-grid solar, wind, batteries, ‘smart’ meters) and a centrally planned wholesale market is Statism writ large.” (Robert Bradley to Kiesling, below)

Electricity specialist Lynne Kiesling champions herself as a classical liberal, free-market advocate. But she is just the opposite and relies on obfuscation and charm to advocate and sell

1) government central planning of wholesale electricity and

2) government-enabled wind, solar, and batteries in place of least-cost (central-station) electricity.

It is her “synthetic regulation” or the highway, premised on a belief that there cannot be private property rights to grid electricity.

This woman of system will not forthrightly define what a free market is with electricity.…