Utopia, you are standing in it!

Banking on the wind for your daily power needs is prone to disappoint. From the moment human beings harnessed thermal energy the path of industrial and modern civilisation was set. No more begging for beneficial breezes to spin that mill. Power could be had as and when we needed it, not when mother nature felt inclined to provide it.

Then came self-serving, rent-seeking crony capitalists – backed by an ideologically driven cult – who hijacked energy policy, returning us to an age of superstition and wishful thinking.

What stands out in the first piece by Bill Peacock is not the perfectly predictable collapses in wind and solar output, it’s the argument put forward by a Reuter’s columnist that Texas’ troubles will soon be overcome by “greater wind speeds” which, he reckons, will provide a “major boost” to Texan power supplies and avert any further power scares during hot weather.

Now…

The federal government screws up some big things (Social Security, health care, higher education, etc).

This video shows it also screws up on targeted issues.

The clear message is that the federal government has very bad policies that are hurting Native Americans.

It’s almost as if the system is designed to benefit bureaucrats rather than recipients (a very common problem with federal programs, unfortunately).

But not every problem is caused by Washington.

Here’s a chart from some new research by Thomas Stratmann of George Mason University. He created an index measuring the extent to which various reservations promote or hinder economic liberty.

As you can see, more economic liberty is correlated with higher levels of household income.

And here are some brief excerpts from his study.

This paper proposes a Reservation Economic Freedom Index for over 80 Indian reservations. …I document a positive association between reservations…

Patrick J. Michaels reports at Real Clear Policy Nobel Prize Awarded for the Worst Climate Model.Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Given the persistent headlines about climate change over the years, it’s surprising how long it took the Nobel Committee to award the Physics prize to a climate modeler, which finally occurred earlier this month.

Indeed, Syukuro Manabe has been a pioneer in the development of so-called general circulation climate models (GCMs) and more comprehensive Earth System Models (ESMs). According to the Committee, Manabe was awarded the prize “For the physical modelling of the earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming.”

What Manabe did was to modify early global weather forecasting models, adapting them to long-term increases in human emissions of carbon dioxide that alter the atmosphere’s internal energy balance, resulting in a general warming of surface temperatures, along with a much

Why Did IMF Disinvite Nobel Laureate?

CO2 Coalition explains.  Nobel Laureate (Physics 2022) Dr. John Clauser was to present a seminar on climate models to the IMF on Thursday and now his talk has been summarily cancelled. According to an email he received last evening, the Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the International Monetary Fund, Pablo Moreno, had read the flyer for John’s July 25 zoom talk and summarily and immediately canceled the talk. Technically, it was “postponed.”

Dr. Clauser had previously criticized the awarding of the 2021 Nobel Prize for work in the development of computer models predicting global warming and told President Biden that he disagreed with his climate policies. Dr. Clauser has developed a climate model that adds a new significant dominant process to existing models. The process involves the visible light reflected by cumulus clouds that cover, on average, half of the Earth. Existing…

I fully agree with my leftist friends who say that corporations want to extract every penny they can from consumers. I also (mostly) agree with them when they say corporations are soulless entities that don’t care about people.

But after they’re done venting, I then try to educate them by pointing out that the only way corporations can separate consumers their money is by vigorously competing to provide desirable goods and services at attractive prices.

Moreover, their “soulless” pursuit of those profits (as explained by Walter Williams) will lead them to be efficient and innovative, which boosts overall economic output.

Moreover, in a competitive market, it’s not consumers vs. corporations, it’s corporations vs. corporations with consumers automatically winning.

Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute makes a very valuable point about what happens in a free economy.

Comparing the 1955 Fortune 500 companies to the 2017 Fortune 500, there…

In addition to discussing politicians and insider trading, I also was asked about antitrust laws during my recent CNBC appearance.

As you might imagine, I expressed skepticism about Biden’s plan for a more interventionist approach.

My view is that mergers should be governed by the market, not by politicians.

Especially when politicians have created a Catch-22 situation with antitrust laws.

Companies can be accused of improper behavior regardless of what they do.

• If they charge more than their competitors, that’s supposedly evidence of monopoly power.
• If they charge the same as their competitors, that’s supposedly evidence of collusion.
• If they charge less than their competitors, that’s supposedly evidence of predatory pricing.

Just like the poem from The Incredible Bread Machine.

For today, let’s focus on the specific issue of “consumer welfare,” which has limited the folly of antitrust policy by creating a presumption that mergers are…

Germans have worked out that relying on the weather for your power has one major problem: “The Weather”. They’ve even coined a term for gloomy, windless weather – ‘dunkelflaute’ – periods of days or weeks when their more than 30,000 wind turbines and millions of solar panels produce next to nothing or nothing at all.

Having foolishly trashed their (once enviable) nuclear power generation capacity, the Germans have been forced to re-embrace coal-fired power, like their lives depend upon it – notwithstanding howls of outrage from their lunatic green fringe.

German power prices are the highest in Europe and large-scale power rationing is now routine.

The result for the German economy is, of course, catastrophic, as Claire Lehmann outline below.

Why Germany’s energy blunders offer us a stark economic warning
The Australian
Claire Lehmann
21 July 2023

Since the 19th century, the phrase “Made in Germany” has denoted quality…

Economists assume that poor countries should grow faster than rich countries over time, a process known as convergence.

It’s a reasonable theory, but only if poor countries and rich countries have similar levels of economic liberty.

But that’s often not the case, which is why I put together an anti-convergence club. I have dozens of examples of richer countries growing faster than poorer countries.

And not just for one or two years. Every example in the anti-convergence club is based upon multiple decades of data.

Even more important, every example shows that you get faster growth in nations with free markets and limited government.

Now we have a new member of the anti-convergence club. Here’s a chart that Mike Bird of the U.K.-based Economist shared on Twitter. It shows that Japan has been steadily losing ground compared to the United States over the past three decades.

So…

Europe’s wind and solar ‘transition’ is like watching a train wreck on constant repeat. Germany led the charge and is suffering the inevitable and entirely predictable consequences, with crushing power prices and routine power rationing.

Some of Germany’s neighbours had the wit and temerity to not play follow the leader, or were in a position to backtrack before it was too late. The French sit within the former category, the Swedes in the latter, recently ditching self-destructive plans to rely on wind and solar, plumping for new nuclear power, instead.

The French were, and remain, Europe’s biggest nuclear power generator, delivering reliable and affordable electricity to the German and British neighbours, among others – which is the reason the French are demanding that their dependents start building their own nuclear power generation capacity, instead of sponging off the French every time the sun sets or calm weather sets in.

Voters in Spain have voted in a snap general election today. Polls suggest the support for both of the large national parties, PSOE on the left and PP on the right, has been growing late in the campaign. However, no one expects either major party to be close to a majority on its own, as the PP is leading on only around 33–35% the vote per final polls. The farther left formerly represented by Podemos is running in a new alliance called Sumar, while the far-right Vox may finish in third place. A key question for the election is whether PP+Vox will be a majority and if so, will they govern together (either in coalition or in confidence-and-supply)?

One thing I always watch in Spanish elections is the inevitable differential treatment of parties by the electoral system, which can be consequential for seat shares and thus who can govern. There…

I did a three-part series (here, here, and here) to explain why socialism is a miserable economic system.

As Winston Churchill sagely observed, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”

But it is good for a few laughs.

For today’s column, let’s add to our collection of socialism satire.

We’ll start by noting that East Germany was the most successful part of the Soviet Empire, but even it was an utter failure.

Next, some of my lefty friends make a big thing about belonging to the “party of science,” but I have a hard time taking them seriously given their infantile views on economics.

For our third item, I wonder if our left-leaning friends ever wonder why people try to escape from places such as Cuba and Venezuela so they can be “exploited” in…