The extent to which the government should be involved in the provision of goods and services generates a lot of debate. Most of that debate is unhelpful, since it involves small-government, market-fundamentalist types arguing against anti-market socialist types. It’s all ideological, and there’s a pretty good chance that neither of the sides in that argument…
Should the government operate petrol stations?
Should the government operate petrol stations?
17 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, comparative institutional analysis, economics of regulation, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, privatisation, property rights
Plain packaging for infant formula is nuts
02 Aug 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, health economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand Tags: nanny state
Farmers Weekly reports: The Minister of Food Safety is set to take on his counterparts from all Australian states and the Federal Government on Thursday to try to save New Zealand infant formula exports to Australia and potentially to China. Andrew Hoggard’s aim will be to amend proposed rules that would limit New Zealand producers’ […]
Plain packaging for infant formula is nuts
Fantasies of Clever Climate Policies
29 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: climate activists, climate alarmism
Chris Kenny writes at The Australian Facts at a premium in blustery climate debate. Excerpts in italics from text provided by John Ray at his blog, Greenie Watch. My bolds and added images. Collective Idiocy From Intellectual Vanity We think we are so clever. The conceit of contemporary humankind is often unbearable. Yet this modern […]
Fantasies of Clever Climate Policies
Which are the most effective subsidies for green energy?
26 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice, public economics, rentseeking Tags: cap and trade, carbon tax, climate alarmism
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt: A recent study finds that, of all domestic subsidies, the most effective involve replacing the dirty production of electricity with the cleaner production of electricity. In practice, that means subsidies or tax credits for solar and wind power. Those are more than twice as effective as […]
Which are the most effective subsidies for green energy?
Death Can Come from a Thousand Cuts!
20 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia
Federal Labor leader Albanese is battling to stop the bleeding. Following his total demolition when he tied his Flag to the doomed Voice referendum where a total reversal saw his attempt to institute the nonsense New Zealand suffers every day from Native citizens having minimal Maori blood even to the absurdity of none at all […]
Death Can Come from a Thousand Cuts!
Australia’s Incoming Climate Change Authority Chair Lashes Out at “Deniers”
19 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: climate alarmism
So much ignorance in one package.
Australia’s Incoming Climate Change Authority Chair Lashes Out at “Deniers”
Perfectly Justified: Furious Communities Reject Wind & Solar Rollout
10 Jul 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: wind power
The wind and solar industries’ so-called ‘social licence’ evaporated, years ago. Now, rural communities are on the war path. These days, they’re better armed and better equipped to take on rent-seeking carpetbaggers who couldn’t care less about destroying their peaceful and prosperous communities. Thanks to sites like this one, community defenders can spot the lies […]
Perfectly Justified: Furious Communities Reject Wind & Solar Rollout
Totally Risible: Wind Industry Couldn’t Power Australia’s Toasters & Kettles
28 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: wind power
When the wind stops blowing, wind power stops flowing. It’s that simple. If anyone is looking for proof that wind power is always and everywhere entirely dependent on the weather. Here it is. The graphic above comes from the boys over at Aneroid Energy and it depicts the output from every single wind turbine connected […]
Totally Risible: Wind Industry Couldn’t Power Australia’s Toasters & Kettles
Alien pronouns
12 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of education, economics of media and culture, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: Age of Enlightenment, free speech, political correctness, regressive left
Two central banks
18 May 2024 Leave a comment
in economic history, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand Tags: monetary policy
Michael Reddell writes – I got curious yesterday about how the Australia/New Zealand real exchange rate had changed over the last decade, and so dug out the data on the changes in the two countries’ CPIs. Over the 10 years from March 2014 to March 2024, New Zealand’s CPI had risen by 30.3 per cent […]
Two central banks
HENRY ERGAS: Universities offer course in self-serving cowardice
17 May 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, economics of education, law and economics, laws of war, politics - Australia, war and peace Tags: free speech, Gaza Strip, Israel, Middle-East politics, political correctness, regressive left, useful idiots, war against terror
When in Randall Jarrell’s Pictures from an Institution, a college president is accused of being a hypocrite, the novel’s narrator retorts that the description is grossly unfair. After all, the man is still far from the stage of moral development at which the charge could possibly arise: to be a hypocrite one has to know…
HENRY ERGAS: Universities offer course in self-serving cowardice
Occasional Wind & Solar Generation Guarantee Staggering Backup Costs
13 May 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming, politics - Australia, technological progress Tags: wind power
Sunset kills solar output the same way calm weather renders wind turbines utterly useless. Around the world $trillions have been squandered on occasional power generation which is always and everywhere dependent on sunshine and/or the weather. In the beginning, there was a perfectly functional power supply with reliable generators connected by a systematically designed grid […]
Occasional Wind & Solar Generation Guarantee Staggering Backup Costs
Faking It: Why ‘Cheap’ Wind & Solar Power Claims Never Stack Up
12 May 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: solar power, wind power
Like any ideological cult, wind and solar acolytes bury troublesome facts and replace them with oodles of helpful fiction. Start with the supposed cost of the electricity occasionally generated by wind turbines and solar panels. The usual trick is to invent some model said to capture the unique benefits of running on sunshine and breezes. […]
Faking It: Why ‘Cheap’ Wind & Solar Power Claims Never Stack Up
Uncontrollable Surge: Daytime Solar Output Swamps Grid & Wrecks Power Market
04 May 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, politics - Australia Tags: solar power
The chaos that’s wrecking our power supplies is what happens when engineers are replaced by ideologues. Long on cultish mantras about the ‘inevitable transition’ and the wonders of ‘free wind and solar energy’, but short on maths, physics and economics, the clowns in charge of our power supplies would have been charged with treason, not […]
Uncontrollable Surge: Daytime Solar Output Swamps Grid & Wrecks Power Market
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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