WeblogBahamas.com

A cleaner, renewable Bahamas for sure. But it’s not going to happen overnight

Michael Reiach

I am about to graduate with a degree in electrical engineering and am planning to specialize in sustainable and renewable sources of energy. Admittedly, I haven’t quite got to the professional engineer status yet but most days I try and relate my studies to The Bahamas. I must give BEC and the Bahamian government credit. Running a power generation and distribution system is not easy. It is even more difficult when you consider the geographic make up of The Bahamas.

I would rather make a comparison of our electrical grid to that in North America, specifically Canada, since we derive our electrical code from them and not the UK or Europe. The grids are based on a 100-year-old mindset. The old idea was that there would be a few large generation stations to power a distribution network for a region. Now the industry is trying to evolve that idea into multiple, smaller generation sites that can alleviate the dependency and demand on central power generators and possibly even feed excess energy into the grid. The Bahamas has taken the old grid approach by developing an independent power system on each island rather than trying to share resources. This has resulted in 29 power stations on over 25 islands.

It’s easier said than done. A large portion - 55% - of the energy in Ontario is generated by nuclear power. Nuclear power plants cannot be turned off in an instant – look at what happened in Japan. Nuclear gets a bad rap, which is too bad. It is very efficient and keeps the fuel surcharge low. Unfortunately, nuclear plants generate far more than the population of The Bahamas could ever demand so I will not be saying anymore about them.

Now onto what Mr Humes was talking about in The Nassau Guardian recently. He said:

“I know the high cost of energy is a major factor when doing business in the country. We have to look at ways of reducing energy costs. We need to introduce renewable energy sources like solar, hydro and wind that all can be used to bring down the cost of doing business,”

You cannot just say that so simply since there are other costs to consider than just generation, but I’ll go with the flow.

So Mr Humes could suggest that we throw lots of money into wind power and then we should have really cheap rates? Some of the highest energy prices are in Europe. Denmark is known as the wind power capital of the world. They cannot cope with the demand and their average price for energy is ~$0.40 per kWh [1] with the majority of energy being supplied by fossil fuels. Last time I checked, BEC was at $0.15 per kWh with a fluctuating fuel surcharge that was below $0.40 per kWh.

Continuing

Lessons in Freedom: A Small Pleasure of Book Production

Tibor R. Machan

One of my books is a collection of prominent essays by mostly contemporary libertarian political-economic thinkers.  Its title, The Libertarian Reader (1982), was so well chosen that years later someone quite prominent, David Boaz of the Cato Institute, also used it for a collection of essays he put together, The Libertarian Reader (1998). (Just in case you didn’t know, in the publishing world it is acceptable to make us of the titles of already published books.)

One of the hopes of authors and editors of books is of course that these will be bought and read, not to mention in huge numbers.  But unless one is a famous author or so dedicated to learning of the fate of one’s works, it is rare that one learns whether they have made the rounds. (In the academic world, of course, professors often assign books they have written or edited in their classes, although such self-dealing is widely frowned upon.)

I do know that another book of mine was at least considered for display in a movie or TV program because some years ago I received a form letter asking that I give permission for a producer to do just that with my The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner, originally published by Arlington House of New Rochelle, NY (later reprinted by the University Press of America) and once reviewed very favorably in by Robert W. Proctor and Daniel J. Weeks in The American Journal Of Psychology (Summer 1990).  But I never learned if this ever came to pass.

Some sensible talk on economic inequality

Rick Lowe

Hope you enjoy the following video from Economic Freedom and Professor Robert Lawson.

Poke around their web site for a bit. I bet you'll enjoy it.

Milton Friedman's Century - Free or Equal Documentary preview

Rick Lowe

There are only a couple spots left to watch the new documentary on Dr. Milton Friedman by Johan Norberg.

Click here… to sign up for this Nassau Institute event scheduled for Thursday, January 26, 2012.

Lessons in Freedom: BBC’s Biased Coverage of Capitalism

Tibor R. Machan

On the BBC website an interview was featured recently with the famous orthodox Marxist, Eric Hobsbawm, who promptly denounced capitalism as if he had established definitively its inferiority as a political economic system. Is the BBC such an irresponsible news organization that it will feature Mr. Hobsbawm’s characterization of capitalism with no one who champions that system featured responding to him?  (If you search, no such balanced presentation can be found on the BBC website.) Or is this happening because, after all, BBC is a state broadcast endeavor and has a big stake in discrediting a system that relies on private initiative?

From a Marxist perspective especially this conclusion is quite reasonable, since we are all supposed to be driven by economic motives and here is an instance that might just fit this idea perfectly.  The BBC would be one of the casualties of capitalist inspired privatization!  As a creature of the state it relies on confiscated resources for its operations and capitalism goes against that policy big time.

The question that was put to Mr. Hobsbawm by the BBC’s interviewer, had to do with capitalism and responsibility. That is, whether agents in a free market would be motivated to act responsibly and the answer Mr. Hobsbawm gave is “No.” Yet if people act irresponsibly in genuine free markets, this will soon be known and they would lose trust from fellow market agents.  Only when governments protect market agents from the consequences of their behavior will they be able to persist in acting irresponsibly.

Steven Pinker: The Decline of Violence

Rick Lowe

Dr. Pinker always provides great food for thought.

Watch more videos from Reason.TV here…

The Wisdom of Bastiat and the wonder of the Foundation for Economic Education

Rick Lowe

I was having an e-mail conversation with a friend and went to the bookshelf for some reference material and I came across a great little 24 page publication by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) entitled The Wisdom of Bastiat.

It contains selected writings (What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen. The Broken Window. A Negative Railroad. A Petition. Differential Tarriffs. and Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc.), quotes from his various works and a biological note by Henry Hazlitt.

When we consider Bastiat died in the late 19th Century (1850) he was quite a luminary.

Here's  one of Bastiat's quotes I love:

"The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the  people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish." Sophisms, 141.

Download a copy of The Wisdom of Bastiat (PDF) pamphlet here…

What's so wonderful about FEE you ask? Visit the their web site here… and poke around for a while. You'll be amazed.

You can donate to FEE here…

And what was I looking for on the bookshelf? My copy of Murray Rothbard's book, "What Has Governemnt Done to Our Money". But that's a post for another day.

William Damon: The Death of Honesty

Rick Lowe

William Damon has an interesting essay on honesty over at "Defining Ideas".

Society seems more accepting of the "shading of the truth" &/or "tiefing" as we call stealing here.

But back to the essay.

Here's a very pertinent excerpt.

"Our serious problem today is not simply that many people routinely tell lies. As I have noted, people have departed from the truth for one reason or another all throughout human history. The problem now is that we seem to be reaching a dysfunctional tipping point in which an essential commitment to truthfulness no longer seems to be assumed in our society. If this is indeed the case, the danger is that the bonds of trust important in any society, and essential for a free and democratic one, will dissolve so that the kinds of discourse required to self-govern will become impossible."

Read the entire essay here…

Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure by Randy T. Simmons

Rick Lowe

The Independent Institute first published this work on Public Choice Theory by William Mitchell and Randy T. Simmons back in 1994 (I think I bought it in the late 1990's) and while it remains relevant, Dr. Simmons has Revised and updated it.

The brief introduction says:

"In the updated and revised edition of his ground-breaking work, Randy Simmons challenges the traditional theories surrounding “market failures” and demonstrates that “government failures” are far more common and harmful to society."

Hope you enjoy the brief interview of Dr. Simmons by Dr. William Shughart below.

Order your copy of the book here…

Lessons in Freedom: Ayn Rand & Murray Rothbard: Diverse Champions of Liberty

By Tibor R. Machan*

No one should attempt to treat Ayn Rand and Murray N. Rothbard as uncomplicated and rather similar defenders of the free society although they have more in common than many believe. As just one example, neither was a hawk when it comes to deploying military power abroad. There is evidence, too, that both considered it imprudent for the US government to be entangled in international affairs, such as fighting dictators who were no threat to America. Even their lack of enthusiasm for entering WW II could be seen as quite similar.

And so far as their underlying philosophical positions are concerned, they both can be regarded as Aristotelians. In matters of economics they were unwavering supporters of the fully free market capitalist system, although while Rand didn’t find corporations per se objectionable, arguably Rothbard had some problems with corporate commerce, especially as it manifest itself in the 20th century. One sphere in which they took very different positions, at least at first glance, is whether government is a bona fide feature of a genuinely free country. Rand thought it is, Rothbard thought it wasn’t. Yet the reason Rothbard opposed government was that it depended on taxation, something Rand also opposed, so even here where the difference between them appears to be quite stark, they were closer than one might think.