Sadly, so-called "free-marketers" are often so busy smacking down bad arguments from greens that they fail to note, much less acknowledge, that they're fairly frequently making bad arguments themselves or ignoring gaping inconsistencies in their own positions. Of course it IS awfully easy to get caught up in partisan conflict, which provides a nice rush of self-righteousness, but it probably also helps if you're being paid to post by fossil fuel interests, like the folks over at the supposedly "free-market" MasterResource energy blog, of Rob Bradley's Institute for Energy Research. In any case, it's disappointing, not solely because it comes from "free-marketers", but because it offers no hope of engaging productively with those with whom they disagree. In other words, more of Culture Wars "R" Us.
I've already commented quite a number of times here about Rob Bradley and his co-bloggers at MasterResource, but I continue to be astonished by the inability of the bloggers (and some commenters) to notice when they are being inconsistent or are taking anti-market/anti-lbertarian positions. A recent post by Rob Bradley on the limitations of wind power, with follow-on comments by others, is a case in point. In his post, Rob trots out some very old literature to make some perfectly fine - if rather obvious and well-known - points about the limitations of wind power; I observed that of course one can make similar observations about the short-comings of other energy sources, such as the social costs of coal.
While Rob fails to respond, a visitor and one of his guest bloggers, Tom Stanton, senior energy fellow at the Pacific Research Institute (which bills itself as a "champion [of] freedom,
opportunity, and personal responsibility for all individuals by
advancing free-market policy solutions") ride to his rescue, with strawmen and astonishingly non-libertarian (indeed, utilitarian) commentary. Why can't the right do better than this?
For the interested, I excerpt the relevant comments below (emphasis added):