[F]rom the evidence of alternative energy development, it seems far more plausible that the key problem has been government failure not market failure. Indeed, the market failure assumption has been typically based on the following premise: there is demand for alternative energy technologies but the market does not provide them. That is, market participants devote few or no resources to alternatives and create innovations with only limited application. Therefore government has to step in to induce the technological development the market fails to create. But the historical record shows that government has spent literally billions of dollars and has achieved almost no obvious benefits as a result. If indeed the market spends little or nothing to create nothing, while the government spends large social resources for the same result, then it would seem government failure, not market failure is a greater concern.
The History of U.S. Alternative Energy Development Programs: A Study of Government Failure (pdf)
Via.
Government is only good at smoke and mirrors and wasting taxpayers dollars. Billions going into creating bureaucracies and corrupt schemes on a non-existent sky is falling scam.
What would Noah have done…create a bureaucracy?
And it raises the question of why the markets are not providing the alternative technologies. The answer is they are far more expensive to build and maintain and yield far less consistent and usable energy than their cheaper counterparts.
This, of course, is why capitalism is evil. 🙂
Don’t you just hate it when some progressive market guru (The “market” being a machination of free market capitalism and demand economics) pontificates about market forces (AKA your demand incentive to buy)not running as expected. Then they give methods to correct market forces that come right out of the Communist economics play book – command economics, mandated demand, government market intervention,protectionism, crony-capitalism etc.
Once again proving “progressives” are just as materialistic as the vulgar capitalists they condemn. It’s just that they don’t like open competition or the free will of the consumer driving demand. The interventionist solutions these progressives propose are almost always monopolist or oligopolist more so than capitalist and certainly not free market or laissez-faire capitalism.
The Green tech revolution is the economic overthrow of North American free market demand economy – red dawn on the market place kids. Put your tax money down on a sure winner, the only horse in the race allowed to win.
One wonders if “progressives” go out of their way to pay more for an item or buy things for which they have no use. I believe the old saying “a fool and his money are soon parted” was coined with these people in mind.
“they are far more expensive to build and maintain.” I don’t think thats entirely true.
Governments are more like “do as we say, and not as we do.” Just try to get a permit to put a windmill in your back yard, it will wont happen. In Calgary its illegal to put a solar panel on your roof, but yet the government rams wind power down our throat. There was even a new bill passed stopping local governments from interfering with the new wind farms.I know of a kids camp that’s being forced to bring in power/water costing them over 150,000. They use it, two weeks out of the year, they run solar (its a camp)
Oh ya just read an article that said there is this company that has developed a genetically modified ecol i virus that uses water, salt or fresh, Carbon dioxide and creates oil, and not just bio fuel real oil that can be refined. They say it cost’s around 30$ a barrel. Guess what happed next the US government bought them out, put it all under national security.
One wonders if “progressives” go out of their way to pay more for an item…
Wonder no more…
Exhibit ‘A’:
The Organic produce section of your local supermarket.
peter wrote:
“Oh ya just read an article that said there is this company that has developed a genetically modified ecol i virus that uses water, salt or fresh, Carbon dioxide and creates oil, and not just bio fuel real oil that can be refined. They say it cost’s around 30$ a barrel. Guess what happed next the US government bought them out, put it all under national security”.
Did you read that article before or after you polished your tinfoil hat?
They say it cost’s around 30$ a barrel. Guess what happed next the US government bought them out, put it all under national security”.
So what happens when an independent company with parallel research, say in Germany, makes the same breakthrough and begins to market this breakthrough technology?
Yeah, I’ve heard tons of those “they’re suppressing technology” BS conspiracies, but the twits that buy into them never consider how many other international R&D parallel projects are always in the pipeline for everything done in the U.S. or Canada.
“In Calgary its illegal to put a solar panel on your roof, but yet the government rams wind power down our throat.”
It isn’t that solar panels are illegal, there are plenty of solar panels in Calgary. There are building codes that deal with structural problems with solar panels.
And, I don’t know about you, but I’m not really comfortable with massive quantities of Ecoli lying around in refineries.
I you disbelieve Oz,Alexander Graham Bell was granted the patent on the telephone mere hours before a competitor.The Wright Bros refused to patent their discoveries for fear that others would profit from their discoveries,but the French discovered them on their own and led the field of aviation till well after the first world war.
More insanity when McGuinty and Ontario Hydro shut down the Niagara cheap hydro power at 2.5 kwh so his mandated wind power that must be used first, of course costing 13.5 kwh, because of lack of demand during the holidays.
Government never does it more efficiently than the private sector.
peter: right beside the plans for running a car with water…also bought out by nefarious ______(fill in your choice of “bogeyman”)
Heard that one in Windsor, ON where I grew up. Apparently, there’s some Saudi Arabian individual who has it locked up in a safe some where. LOL
How ironic — as I sit here reading this President Obama is on the TV at an alternative energy factory preaching that we need to get behind this type of manufacturing!
no no no, it doesn’t start with a F, its spelled like this: T-H-E-F-T.
“Government” is stupid and wasteful, while “the market” is nothing but efficient.
I love it when wingnuts get all scientificky with the technical terms and such.
Everything the “Progressive touch” turns into a failed socialist’s experiment on taxpayer’s dime. They blather and slather on and on but their policies are pure poison, and we can’t afford to enact their demented policies anymore. They’ve cost us billions, and in the end we’ll end up with rusted metal littering and poisoning our landscape.
No progressives don’t go out of their way to pay more for a product, they demand the taxpayer buy it or fund it for them and their favorite shopping mall is called Academia.
“Government” is stupid and wasteful, while “the market” is nothing but efficient.
~Nathan
In a free market, bad business models which don’t offer up what consumers are willing to buy are eliminated from competition on their own dime while succesful business models offering a product, on their own dime that consumers are willing to buy, thrive and profit.
I take it that you are a student of Darwin?
Why is it that taxpayers should be forced to subsidize failed business models simply because those business models are able to ape an accepted politically orthodox justification for their existence without their product/services being in demand in the free market?
Bottom line: the Market is efficient, the government’s place in the market should be restricted to ensuring that consumers are not defrauded by players promising more/other than which they actually deliver.
and now the Euros start to bail on the eco greenie jihad they have inflicted upon themselves.
http://tinyurl.com/4q2dwt6
Too funny.
The Ontario example is riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiich.
“In Ontario last year, the average price for power was 3.7 cents per kilowatt hour. The feed-in tariff for solar installations ranged from 44 cents to 80 cents, that is, up to 20 times the market rate. (Ontario revised that higher end of the range downward to 64.2 cents last summer.) Watch the next Ontario government drain the renewable energy slush fund.”
Stupid is as stupid does.
Its the Sun, Son.
Just say no to solar warming denial.
———————-
The IPCC is investigating the Sun as a driver of global warming
I don’t blame government or the bureaucrats for all these failed social experiments. I blame us. If we were not so apathetic about what our government did they would not go off on these tangential social experiments. How many of us have written our MPs when we see government leaning towards something stupid? How many of us ban together and force ideas such as recall votes for MPs who do not listen to us into reality by political activism? The “Progressives” are way ahead of us “conservatives” because through unions and progressive groups such as PETA, Greenpeace (just to name a couple) they are organized while we rant on conservative blogs. We need to take a page out “their” book and counter them with the same tactics and strategies.
A recurring theme from the moon-bats is that alternative energy requires a “Manhatten Project”.
This is based upon ignorance and the assumption that the Manhatten project was a blind research project into unknown territory.
The Manhatten Project was the mobilization of resources to exploit a known technology. The technology had been more or less proven by Fermi, Einstein, Bohr….
The technology was known but the infrastructure to produce the components was massive. The bottom line was both Japan and Germany were working on this as well….their problem was they couldn’t pull off a champaign project on a beer budget….the USA simply had the resources to get there first.
The truth is the Soviet’s in the post war period finally had the spare resources and actually very little was contributed by espionage.
Indeed Pakistan was given the material for 2-3 bombs directly by the Chinese….without that Pakistan would have needed at least a decade or two to get enough stuff. That is currently Iran’s restraint….producing and refinning is a massive, costly endeaver.
Basically the problem of “Alternative Energy” is that currently it is in the realm of science fiction not a known technology.
Then there is the problem that the basic technology must arise in academia….which is permeated by Ehrlich’s notion that cheap reliable energy is like giving a machine gun to an idiot child.
“The “Progressives” are way ahead of us “conservatives” because through unions and progressive groups such as PETA, Greenpeace (just to name a couple) they are organized while we rant on conservative blogs. We need to take a page out “their” book and counter them with the same tactics and strategies.”
Now THAT’s funny. The post links to a paper from the Searle Centre, one of many, many, many schools and think tanks that exist for the sole purpose of making radical free market orthodoxy seem like mainstream commons sense (‘why shouldn’t businesses get to do whatever they want? they never screw up, and never harm the public, and only ever act in the best interests of everyone!’), and have been very successful in doing so. Honestly: congrats. As a soft leftie, I can only look on in envy at the massive propaganda and lobbying machine the right has built up to make sure rich people get richer. It is impressive. My hat is off to you all.
And yet, somehow, you think the Left is winning. I mean, we are winning, in a sense (progress favours progressives), but you fuckers are still in charge of everything worth being in charge of. Or is running every Western govt on behalf of our corporate masters not enough?
Please, leave the victim-status to us whiny lefties.
Nathan: Interesting how you can name only one institution that champions free-enterprise. However, as most posters on this blog are aware, every single post-secondary institution in Canada and the US (with the exception of the military academies/colleges) lean to the left and actively brainwashes and blackmails their students (at the risk of failing the course) to embrace the Progressive ideology. And the brainwashing begins in grade school and continues through to high school (all of these teachers tend to be part of the teachers’ union). Now talk about a conspiracy theory.