Against Alternative Energy -- Sort Of

After watching the Pickens plan a few times, and reading this excellent post by Mark Newgent over at Red Maryland, and giving it some serious thought, I am pretty much coming out against the chattering class' clamor for alternative energy sources.

Why?

Because there is way too much rent seeking going on here.  For those of you not in the know, rent seeking is the process of private businesses using government subsidies to generate revenue -- and profit -- to build a business.  Publicly financed professional sports arenas are a grand example of rent seeking, but the alternative enery push -- which has been declared in some quarters as a "moral equivalent of war" -- has all the earmarks of smart people raping taxpayers.

Do you remember the Oliver Stone movie "Wall Street"?  Remember the scene where Gordon Gecko is at the Teldar Paper stockholders meeting, and gives us the money quote for the movie "Greed is Good"?  Well, the rest of the speech is actually better.  The part where he rails against corporate bosses running companies who are not risking their own money is a proper indictment.  It's not all that different today. 

T. Boone Pickens and Al Gore -- heck, even O'Guvnah as Mark points out -- are backing a scheme where the government picks winners and losers, and puts taxpayer money -- our money -- at risk.  If windpower, or solar, were such a great investment deal with such a huge upside, why isn't capital racing into it?  Right now, with the dollar falling faster than a fat man off a hot air balloon, there are billions of dollars in foreign investment looking for a home (and it is being parked in oil).  If alternative energy sources were such a boon option, why isn't the capital pursuing it?

Of course, the natural criticism will come from questions like "what about the continental railroad"?  Well, with the continental railroad, the government didn't pay until sections were completed.  Railroads still had to seek independent investors, and pay returns on those investments.  They still had to buy land, build facilities, buy rolling stock, and operate.  The Central Pacific alone went through four ownership groups before reaching Promontory Point, and they didn't get the vast part of the government investment until that point.

If Al Gore and Boone Pickens think this all such a great idea... why are the waiting for substantial government subsidy payments?  Why not form their own companies and progress without it?  Instead, they are using the power of state utility commissions to provide the capital for things like transmission lines, increasing ratepayer bills by three to four dollars a month.  As if the ratepayers had a choice.

Which isn't much different than the nonsense going on in Maryland, where, as a BGE "customer", I am forced to subsidize the sale of fluorescent bulbs at stores I don't shop in -- because the bulbs are cheaper in Pennsylvania, where no subsidy exists.

Which means the "subsidy" is just another tax here in the Unfree State.  A tax to protect the interests of energy fat cats like Mayo Shattuck and the board of Constellation Energy, as they risk money that is not their own.

Which is I cannot support our current approach on alternative energy.