 My Conservative Mainifesto VI
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May. 1st, 2008 @ 04:52 pm 
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The Economics of ENERGY
Some truths are so fundamental that it amazes me that virtually no politicians mention them. Better to bamboozle an economically illiterate electorate than bother to take the time to explain things and do what's right.
For example, whenever the government uses its power to violate the laws of supply and demand, bad things happen. Like, every time. Oh, a favored few may come out ahead, but the public in general and many people in particular will suffer.
I don't even know where to start with the current ethanol boondoggle, so I'll begin with an anecdote.
In the latter quarter of the 19th century, America (and much of the world) faced an energy crisis of awful proportions: there was a world-wide shortage of oil.
Whale oil.
Those daring lads from Nantucket who provided the world with the means to light their lamps had reached a crisis point: not enough whales were available to meet the demand.
The government immediately sprang into action, providing a special whale depletion allowance, setting up a new department of whale development, spending billions on research to find more efficient means to bring alternative sources to market (the New Hampshire and Maine beeswax farmers especially benefited) and Congressional Committees spent endless hours investigating the whaling industry, resulting in anti-gouging laws and price controls that were upheld by the Supreme Court in Ahab v. U.S.
Not.
Actually, the government did absolutely nothing.
In western Pennsylvania and elsewhere young dreamers realized that distillation of petroleum could now be profitable. Not only did kerosene help light and heat our homes, but miracle fuels led to the development of the internal combustion engine, making horseless carriages practical. Eventually a couple of lads in Dayton, Ohio realized that an internal combustion engine could be attached to a glider.
Meanwhile, in Menlo Park, New Jersey another kid from Ohio found that beeswax and whale oil could be supplanted by a flip of a switch.
Other dreamers found that combustible gas could be released in the coal-burning process, and gasification plants sprang up along the railroads and provided cooking and lighting directly into the households of cities big and small. Then we needed more oil, kept digging, and built pipelines to bring oil and its pal natural gas across the country. We harnessed the power of coal and falling water to make electricity.
The end of the road came, of course, when Edison's Direct Current proved impractical at bringing electricity over distances.
Except that Westinghouse developed Alternating Current, except it couldn't run motors.
Until a Balkan immigrant named Nicola Tesla figured it all out in his head one day.
And on and on. Not one dime of government money. Not one iota of government interference.
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We now know all about nuclear energy, but the government won't let anyone build nuclear plants. We are sitting on billions of barrels of oil in a mosquito-infested small corner of Alaska, and the government prevents it from being drilled. Every promising new technology finds some reason for it to be blocked: wind turbines wreck the view; hydro dams need to be taken down to restore the natural flow of rivers; coal is too dirty, no matter what; shale oil development would doubtless ruin the Marlboro Man.
How about something simple, and fundamentally conservative:
Try FREEDOM.
Let supply and demand encourage the dreamers and risk-takers. Get out of the way and see what happens.
It's always worked before.
Buy my novel The Evil Has Landed
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![[User Picture Icon]](http://p-userpic.livejournal.com/27459829/6191726) |
| From: | ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rgoing |
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May 2nd, 2008 02:47 am (UTC) |
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Yes, the Luddites we will always have with us.
Bring back the good old days when we were all hunter-gatherers facing extinction.
Are you asking the government to stop giving out subsidies and grants to corn growers?
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| From: | rgoing |
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May 2nd, 2008 02:46 am (UTC) |
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Well, YEAH!
And you would like that money to be freed up so someone down the line might be able to think up a new, cost-effective way to provide energy?
| From: | (Anonymous) |
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May 2nd, 2008 02:51 am (UTC) |
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We now know all about nuclear energy, but the government won't let anyone build nuclear plants. We are sitting on billions of barrels of oil in a mosquito-infested small corner of Alaska, and the government prevents it from being drilled. Every promising new technology finds some reason for it to be blocked: wind turbines wreck the view; hydro dams need to be taken down to restore the natural flow of rivers; coal is too dirty, no matter what; shale oil development would doubtless ruin the Marlboro Man.
Most critically: you left out solar. No other technology will scale enough to bail us out, I believe, and nerdy dreamers like the Google guys are indeed fooling around with it, just like you describe with petroleum.
Nuclear plants are expensive to build and maintain, and there's a question of whether there's enough uranium. ANWR, according to the most favorable estimates, only has a year and a half worth of oil (less than 2% of the world's amount; the sheiks would still be sitting pretty). Wind is fine, but limited in scale -- it might help if we farm it in places like North Dakota, but we will need a radically new transmission grid for it.
One of my favorite writers about energy is this guy Robert Rapier (http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/) -- he's worked in the oil business so he's hardly a pinko like me. But I think he also understands the fix we're in.
-- Chris Marcil (harvardclassicsproject.blogspot.com)
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| From: | rgoing |
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May 2nd, 2008 05:21 am (UTC) |
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First, Chris, I am honored by your presence. I am a great admirer of your work.
And yeah, I left out solar for no other reason than it slipped my aging mind. I also apologize to my cousins developing the fuel cell start-up business.
My point is that if you let the market work things out, the solutions will come from places the politicians never thought of.
While the guys in Washington were investing the big bucks in flight, the bicycle shop boys built their own wind tunnel and proved their theories to their satisfaction before they ever set foot on Kill Devil Hills. Tesla was a penniless immigrant who got off the boat, got directions to Edison's office and asked for a job. And so on.
The Marcils may be pinkos, but engaging pinkos one and all.
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| From: | rgoing |
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May 2nd, 2008 05:34 am (UTC) |
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For the rest of you here is the IMDB entry for Chris Marcil.Of course, I personally prefer his earlier funny stuff when he was writing about my brother Sinbad in the National Lampoon.
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