Category Archives: Energy Policy

The Amish– Behind Ahead Of Their Time

Economics, Energy Policy, Humor, Technology

From the AP, sure to be an environmentalist’s wet dream:

High gas prices have driven a Warren County farmer and his sons to hitch a tractor rake to a pair of mules to gather hay from their fields. T.R. Raymond bought Dolly and Molly at the Dixon mule sale last year. Son Danny Raymond trained them and also modified the tractor rake so the mules could pull it.

T.R. Raymond says the mules are slower than a petroleum-powered tractor, but there are benefits.

“This fuel’s so high, you can’t afford it,” he said. “We can feed these mules cheaper than we can buy fuel. That’s the truth.”

And Danny Raymond says he just likes using the mules around the farm.

“We’ve been using them quite a bit,” he said.

Brother Robert Raymond added, “It’s the way of the future.”

Way of the future? Does this mean we should all switch from petroleum to alternative mules? Just make sure you understand the mule industry’s “planned obsolescence” strategy. You need to replace the mules every time they stop fogging a mirror.

I guess the Amish would be laughing their heads off over this… They’ve been using alternative mules for generations. But since they’re not typically connected to the internet (oh, the electricity they save!), I don’t think we need to worry about their reaction.

Hat Tip: Billy Beck

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Farmers Struggling Despite High Corn Prices

Economics, Energy Policy, Environment

With record-high corn prices, and plenty of subsidy money floating around, an interesting thing is happening. Less farmers are growing corn!

Why? Because the inputs used in growing corn are rising in price even more quickly:

The amount of corn planted in the U.S. is expected to dip this year. Rice acreage in California, which sells as much as half its crop overseas, is predicted to increase by only a small amount. Instead, farmers are planting cheaper-to-grow wheat and soy.

They say the reason is simple. The cost of planting some crops is rising as fast as their prices, and sometimes faster, leaving little incentive to increase production of some foods that remain in high demand around the world.

Farmers typically plant their crops once a year and not all of them cost the same to produce. Both corn and rice, for example, require more fertilizer to grow and fuel for farmers to tend than other crops. As the prices of those supplies rise faster than the prices of some commodities, farmers are shying away from some expensive crops.

This, of course, came as a bit of a shock to me. I never realized that corn was so resource-intensive to grow. So much so that the cost of growing corn makes it barely sustainable, even with the subsidies and record prices caused by high demand.

But that raises another question. If corn is a very resource-intensive crop for us to grow, why in hell would we want to use it as a fuel source?!

Brad Warbiany
https://thelibertypapers.org/

Why Energy Independence Is a Futile Way to End Middle-East Terrorism

Energy Policy, Free Trade, War on Terror

In an earlier post, I discussed the economic damage that “energy independence” would cause to U.S. consumers. In a recent conversation in meatspace, I ran into someone who acknowledged this problem, but argued that the price is “worth it” because when we trade with people who make oil, those people use the wealth to do all sort of bad things, like funding Al Queda. This argument has some merit; I certainly wouldn’t buy bread from a guy who would use the money to fund attacks on his neighbors.

Let’s examine this problem using the infamous Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland California as an example. This bakery is the cash cow for a gang that is involved in all sorts of criminal activity, ranging from auto-theft to destroying the stocks of alcohol stores since the bakers religiously disapprove of drinking.

If we take the proponents of energy independence’s approach to this matter, we would be calling for the city of Oakland, through a web of subsidies and taxes, to encourage the development of industries providing alternatives to bread. We would demand that they subsidize spaghetti shops, encourage people to bake their own bread, and tax bread use. We would seek to make bread more expensive for all so that people will consume less bread and stop buying bread from the bakery.

Instead of focusing on this particular bakery, instead of calling for a boycott of that particular bakery, we would seek to deprive all bakers of their livelihoods, make food more expensive for all including those who are desperately poor and have difficulty affording food. This is taking a sledgehammer to swat a fly and very immoral to boot!

But by trying to use violence to change the behavior of their countrymen, especially in a manner so ineffective to achieving their stated goals, the politicians calling for energy independence are crossing the line. People would rightly laugh if the Mayor of Oakland tried to eliminate bread from the city of Oakland as a means of ending the Your Black Muslim Bakery’s rein of terror. People should do the same to politicians calling for “energy independence” as a means of depriving Al Queda of its operating funds.

tarran
I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.
https://thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/

Hey, At Least They’re Honest!

Dumbasses and Authoritarians, Economics, Education, Election '08, Energy Policy, General, Government Regulation, Human Rights, Politics, Property Rights, Socialism, The Nanny State, The Welfare State, Theory and Ideas

I found this little gem on reason.tv. On April 16, 2008 a group called Ad Hoc National Network to Stop Evictions and Foreclosures held a protest in Washington D.C.

What were they protesting? As the name of the organization suggests, Ad Hoc was advocating a freeze on all evictions in the U.S. Many of the Ad Hoc supporters wanted to go well beyond this, however. Some called for cancelling of all student loan debt, others called for “free” electricity, “free” healthcare, and “free” education. Still others ranted and raved about every real and imagined sin of the U.S. government (I half expected to see Rev. Wright in the video somewhere).

But don’t bother labeling these people as Marxists or Socialists; at least a few of the protesters who were interviewed readily embraced these philosophies and described themselves as such.

Why is this important? Isn’t this just a small group of extremists?

I wish that were the case. While most people we run into in our daily lives don’t call themselves Marxists or Socialists (they are probably clueless about these philosophies), many of them are calling for some of these very things. Supporters of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nader (who’s policy proposals are unsafe at any speed), and Mike Gravel (the faux libertarian) each support the Ad Hoc agenda, at least to some extent because their candidates support this agenda to some extent.

John McCain isn’t exactly someone who comes to my mind as a staunch defender of Capitalism either. McCain embraces this so-called “national greatness” philosophy where the individual should be willing to sacrifice himself for the “common good” of the country. McCain also criticized the Bush tax cuts as a tax cut for the rich* and pointed out that Mitt Romney’s background in business “chasing profits” was not as honorable as his lifetime service to his country.

One thing I can say about the Ad Hoc people, as insanely naïve as they are; at least they are honest about who they are. The same cannot be said about the top three candidates running for president.

» Read more

Stephen Littau
http://fpffressminds.blogspot.com/

Thank You, Big Oil

Energy Policy, Environment, Taxation

Glenn Beck on CNN wrote a nice little piece about the hypocrisy of “environmentalists” and why we shouldn’t be demonizing “Big Oil” for working for profit.  Worth a quick read.

UCrawford
I Can’t Think Of A Catchy Title

I suppose the best way to describe myself would be to say that I have a problem with authority. I’ve always disliked when people told me what to do, even as a young child, and I’ve always preferred to find my own path through life and make my own decisions, even if it occasionally went against the conventional wisdom and sometimes worked to my short-term disadvantage. My dad said I inherited it from him, but that I’ve taken it to a whole new level. When I was young I wanted to be a journalist, until I got to college and realized that journalism was less about the search for objective truth than it was about writing the stories that best suited your employer’s interests, whether they were true or not (which didn’t sit well with me at all). So I drifted aimlessly through a couple of years of college as an indifferent (often drunk) student, unsure of what to do with myself until one of my fraternity brothers gave me a copy of “The Fountainhead” and I got hooked on the ideas that success and a refusal to conform to societal standards were not mutally exclusive, and that the greatest evil in the world was society and government’s failure to recognize or accept individuality and individual freedom as a strength, not a weakness. So I threw myself into studying politics and history, worked in a few political campaigns after college, had some success, and thought about doing a career in politics until I realized that most of the people I knew who had never had a career outside of politics had no comprehension of how the real world actually worked and tended to make a lot of bad, self-absorbed decisions that rarely helped the people they claimed to be representing.

That didn’t sit well with me either, so I decided to put any thoughts of going into politics on hold until I’d actually had a life and possibly a real career, and I spent the next couple of years drifting between a series of random yet educational jobs (debt collector, deliveryman, computer salesman, repo man, dairy worker) that taught me the value of hard work, personal responsibility and the financial benefits of dining at Taco John’s on Tuesday nights (2 tacos for a buck) when money got tight.

After awhile, however, the desire to see the world (and the need for a more consistent and slightly larger paycheck) convinced me to join the Army, where I spent ten years traveling around the world on the government dime working as an intelligence analyst. I generally enjoyed my time in the military, despite the aforementioned problem with authority (which wasn’t as much of an issue in the military as many people might think it would be), and I got to see that the decisions our political leaders make were sometimes frivolous, often ill-informed, and always had unforeseen repercussions down the road…especially on the soldiers tasked with implementing those decisions. I was fortunate enough to spend most of my 10 years in the military doing jobs I enjoyed, traveling to countries that I always wanted to see (Scotland is the greatest place in the world to hang out, Afghanistan is very underrated) and working with people I liked and respected, until I finally decided that at 35 it was time to move into a job where I didn’t have the threat of relocation lying over my head every two or three years, where I didn’t have to worry about my friends being blown up, and where I didn’t have to work in any capacity for George W. Bush.

I work now for a financial company in Kansas where I’m responsible for overseeing, pricing and maintaining farms, commercial and residential properties, mineral assets, insurance policies, annuities, etc. In my spare time I like to read books on economics, history, and politics (I’m preparing to tackle Murray Rothbard’s “Man, Economy & State” and Von Mises’ “Human Action”…should take me about a year at the rate I’m currently finishing books), watch movies, and destroy posers on “Halo 3” (where I’m signed in under “UCrawford” for anyone interested in taking a shot at me some time). I used to play rugby until age, inconsistent conditioning, and a string of gradually worsening injuries finally convinced me to quit. I’m a rabid fan of the Kansas Jayhawks in general and their basketball and football programs in particular and I’m also a devoted fan of the Kansas City Chiefs and Royals. I’m also fond of going online and debating/picking fights with people on the merits of the philosophy of individual freedom…sometimes to the point of being an asshole (but hopefully a reasonably well-informed asshole). I’ve been a big fan of The Liberty Papers ever since finding it online, I respect the body of work they’ve put out, and I’m honored that Brad Warbiany invited me to join his jolly band of freedom fighters. So cheers, Brad, and to everyone else I look forward to reaching consensus or locking horns with you in the near future.

http://dangerouslyidealistic.blogspot.com/
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