Leif Smith
Energy, Markets
"The lesson that we should've learned from the 1970s is that when it comes to deciding how much energy gets used, what types of energy get used, and where, how and by whom energy gets used -- that job is too important not to be left to markets."
Keith O. Rattie, in a speech at Utah Valley University, April 2, 2009, "Energy Myths and Realities" — excellent!
Global Warming: The Skeptic's Handbook
Explorers Foundation likes good argument, contention among points of view, presentation of conflicting evidence.
This handbook is extremely well done. And, if it's not correct, it deserves a careful and civil response. It should not be necessary to point out that vilifying the author will not answer her arguments. The Heartland Institute, is distributing 150,000 copies of this to elected officials, educators, journalists, civic and business leaders, and other 'influential' people.
http://joannenova.com.au/globalwarming/skeptics_handbook_2-1.pdf (550KB)
The above is part of:
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/
A few hours after posting this, Pyotr Patrushev suggested this fascinating video presentation by Dr. Ian Plimer: http://tinyurl.com/ccakd8
The history of our own road to serfdom
Ten Thousand Commandments, by Harold Fleming, 1951
A fascinating and still important book about government relations with business, focusing on the history of anti-trust legislation, administrative, and judicial practices. If we seek to build a world fit for explorers we must understand the path that has led us astray.
In Chapter 2, "Everybody out of step but government lawyers," Fleming writes:
It is hard to believe that all this industrial power, available both for peace and for war, has been built on error and by criminals. When a young man shows great power in athletics or an old man holds together toward the century mark, people think there must have been something good in the makings of such a man. Not so, however, with American industry in the eyes of the federal courts and the government lawyers. It is full of original sin and needs to be taken apart and put together properly.
...
The trouble isn't simply that almost every businessman in the United States could now, by the new rules, be haled into court by government officials and be fined, branded a criminal for the most commonplace and accepted practices, and subjected to treble-damage suits by competitors and customers. It is that the policies and practices by which American business has grown so phenomenally productive have one and all in recent years been damned, discouraged, and suppressed.
The book is available online, without charge, at http://mises.org/books/fleming.pdf