Tag Archives: government intervention

Solar Power, Not Ready for Prime Time

Solar Panel HumbugBack in December I wrote about an article that appeared in the local paper touting how small power generation facilities, primarily solar, had increased 58% in the last year or so.  Today’s Caledonian Record contains an article that further concretizes some of the issues I raised in that initial post.

The trustees of the Lyndonville Electric Department (LED) were recently briefed by the Manager, Ken Mason, on the prospect of several large, 500kW, solar farms being built in the area read more

Health Insurance: Suggestions Toward a Free Market

What solution to the “problem” of health insurance would an advocate of the the principles of individual rights, look like? First, we should probably be clear on what exactly we mean by insurance.

Insurance: Act of insuring, or assuring, against loss or damage by a contingent event.
Insure: to secure against a loss by a contingent event, on certain stipulated conditions, or at a given rate or premium.
Contingent: liable, but not certain, to occur

So taken together we get the fact that read more

Income Inequality is a Fact of Reality

In a recent email from the Politix website there was asked the question of whether income inequality concerned me. The first paragraph of this post was my answer, which I expand on.

In and of itself, income inequality is not a problem and is simply a fact of reality. Everyone has different levels of skills, different interests, different levels of ambition to actually make a larger income and different things are more or less in demand than others – to name just a few factors that can go read more

Spiraling Out of Control – Quote of the Day

I find it very interesting to read the views of people from many years ago about the dangers of certain types of government action and seeing how those dangers are coming to pass now, or have already come to pass.

Ayn Rand is a great source of this type of thing and I am finding Andrew Mellon is as well.  In his Taxation: The People’s Business, written in 1924, he pointed out the dangers of the government subsidizing business or giving bonuses to certain classes of consumers.

A bonus or subsidy read more

Doomed to Repeat It – Quote of the Day

I am still mixing things up between Objective Communication and, among other things, Taxation: The People’s Business.  Today’s quote from the latter is one that could just as easily have been written  today rather than in a book written nearly 90 years ago.

Subsidies have been granted to some industries to encourage production until demand should become normal and bonuses have been granted to relieve certain classes of consumers burdened by the high prices of necessaries.  Such efforts read more

Quote of the Day – When Government Tries to “Save” Us From “Greedy” Businessmen

I am reading, among other things, “The Myth of the Robber Barons,” which is a fascinating book about  19th and early 20th century big business.  This particular quote deals with the government’s decision to build its own munitions factories so they would no longer “be at the mercy of identical bids from the “greedy and hoggish” steel companies.”

The identical bids were the result of the government’s policy of, after seeking bids from the three companies read more

Quote of the Day – End of Government Monopoly

I am taking a break from reading Ayn Rand’s “Captialism: The Unknown Ideal” and have started in on “The Myth of the Robber Barons” by Burt Folsom.  I have not read a great deal as yet, just the first couple of chapters, but it is fascinating reading.  The author gives a pretty complete picture of the big businessmen read more

Quote of the Day – Ayn Rand on Big Business Stifling Innovation

On my return flight from vacation, I had time to read more in Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” and I was amazed how much of my Kindle copy I ended up highlighting in the chapters I read, so expect a fair number of quotes to come.

This first is from the essay “Notes on the History of American Free Enterprise” by Ayn Rand, and references something I see a lot of among my conspiracy theory loving friends on Facebook, especially in regards to oil companies and read more

Government Regulation, the Gift that Keeps on Giving

In the essay “Antitrust,” which is contained in Ayn Rand’s “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal,” Alan Greenspan, long before he became chairman of the Federal Reserve, discussed the emergence of antitrust legislation at the end of the 19th century.

In the early 19th century, railroads developed in the East among stiff competition, between different railroads as well as with older forms of transportation.  By the 1860’s a political movement developed demanding that read more

Government Intervention…What Could go Wrong?

So what can happen when the government interferes with the economy?  Let’s take a peek at what happened in the case of health insurance, specifically employer provided insurance.

In 1942, in an effort to control costs and prevent disruptions in the labor market, the government passed the Stabilization Act which essentially froze prices, wages and salaries at the level they were at in September, 1942.  Exempted from this was insurance read more