Early each semester in political-economics classes, I try to show students all the forms of pernicious statism, i.e. forced collectivism, and one of the most important is fascism.
I focus on fascism because pop media and leftist “anti-capitalists” use the term to apply to any “unwoke” set of ideals or political views that they, the self-depicted “enlightened,” find angering, triggering, or a barrier to their goals of greater collectivism.
Thus, in the ugly tradition of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx, they often use the term to attack private property, and deride capitalism, even going so far as to mistake crony-capitalism for capitalism.
But, these facets of the free market – principles such as respect for private property, freedom of choice, and freedom of association – aren’t just the economic bulwarks that have allowed humans to flourish even in the harshest environments, they are the moral foundations of peace and ethics.
What collectivists usually criticize and mislabel as “capitalism” really is what Adam Smith in 1776 called “mercantilism,” or, as stated earlier, crony-capitalism, known by people familiar with the real definition of fascism as precisely that:
FASCISM, the mixing of government interests and power with business, steering businesses to work the way politicians, not peaceful market participants, desire.
Which, essentially, is what any observant American can see in this breaking story.
Juan Salinas II writes for The Texas Tribune that another US coal-based electric power plant has taken Biden government candy at our expense and is going to close… in order to switch to federally-subsidized “green” energy.
“A South Texas coal-fired power plant will receive more than $1 billion in funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to convert into a solar and battery facility, according to the agency.
The switch by San Miguel Electric Cooperative, located in Christine in Atascosa County, to a solar and battery plant will be funded by more than $1.4 billion of a $4.37 billion federal grant to support clean energy while maintaining rural jobs. With the co-op’s transition to a renewable energy plant, only 14 coal-fired power plants will be left in the state.”
That’s not good. It’s not good morally, because the feds are taking our money to engage in this act of fascistic corporate seduction, it’s not good for the residents of Texas, who already suffered when the central-planners of the wider Texas-multi-state power grid saw their push for “green” energy utterly fail in the face of cold weather and ice circa February, 2021, and it’s not good for those who appreciate logic and the ability of consumers to drive down prices and drive up performance by being free to get the best bang for their buck.
Salinas writes:
“In September, the CEO of San Miguel Electric Cooperative, Craig Courter, told a local newspaper that with federal funding, the co-op can ‘virtually eliminate our greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to provide affordable and reliable power to rural Texans.’
‘We take pride in our attention to detail in safety, environmental compliance, community service and mined land reclamation,’ Courter told the Pleasanton Express.
According to the USDA’s Thursday announcement, the transformation will reduce climate pollution by more than 1.8 million tons yearly and support as many as 600 jobs.”
Note that last line, blithely repeated by Mr. Salinas as if it’s real – that term “climate pollution.”
As much as politically-hungry demonologists would like to place certain outputs from our productive lives into the category of “evil” and “unclean,” as much as they thirst to list sins that require exorcism by their climate priests, as much as they preach at the altar of government for these terrible things to be purged from our unbalanced souls, there are no such things as anthropogenic “climate pollutants.”
As I often have noted for MRCTV, no serious scientist has proven that mankind’s burning of coal, natural gas, kerosine, oil, gasoline, wood, or any other carbon-based fuel, or mankind’s raising of cattle or use of fertilizer, are causing a dangerous increase in world temperatures. In fact, the most concrete evidence in this decades-long climate charade indicates a long train of data manipulation, disproven claims, and frustration among real scientists that their associates who might be closely tied to government (i.e. fascistic) are steering their work to come to predetermined conclusions.
Related: New Study Reveals Solar Panel Farms Cause Massive 'Heat Island' Effect
Then there is the problematic assumption that this federal redistribution of wealth and debt-based pork is going to “support” as many as 600 jobs.
The principles of ethics and economics tell us that for jobs to support THEMSELVES, they have to offer customers something that customers are willing to buy, voluntarily, and this federal manipulation is anything but voluntary.
Projects need to prove themselves in the market, and they only can do that by catering to consumers, not politicians who use the force of the government to make people pay for products or services.
If the solar power option were financially feasible, the San Miguel Electric Cooperative would not need to get a government subsidy and force people to pay for it. People would willingly invest in it.
By engaging in this fascism, the Biden Administration steers valuable resources away from where we, the consumers all over the nation (and even future consumers, because the US government is in so much debt, multiple generations will be paying for it in taxes) would not have sent those resources.
Meaning that we will never know the positive, productive endeavors our resources could have helped inspire and sustain.
Have no doubt, this is fascism, plain and simple. It is the mixing of government and business to produce a result that we, who should be free, would not have chosen.
There are other factors at play within Texas and without. For example, Salinas writes that some neighbors and environmental groups have claimed that the cooperative represents a danger to ground water, but the head of San Miguel notes that they are in compliance with vaunted EPA regulations.
Then there is the fact that the solar farms cause a “heat island effect” that, itself, is an environmental concern, along with the tricky problem of panel upkeep, safe disposal when they degrade, and other factors.
Some even note that the least expensive panels come from China (something about which Mr. Biden recently showed his disdain by imposing a tariff on them), where they are made at lower cost… because of the proliferation of COAL-BASED power plants there, and the cheap energy they provide.
And still others will note that, in fact, the San Miguel Cooperative is not exactly a private concern. It is embedded within an already government-cartelized system of energy provision that, as noted earlier, sees Texas politicians and federal “authorities” dictate who can and cannot enter the market for electricity provision.
If environmentalists want to see safer water, and if the climate cult want a system of human interaction that lends itself to better addressability and respect for other people’s rights, they need to respect property rights and the free market, not steer money through government manipulation to dictate the dreamworld that they want.
Respect for property rights means that potential energy providers freely enter the market without getting subsidized, that they are held accountable for any damages they cause to the lives or property of others, and that the high lords of the Climate Cult who think they know better should peacefully enter the market and convince willing customers to buy what they sell.
Without these basic ethical precepts, the train of unconstitutional fascism continues to hurdle down the tracks, and it never takes society to a good destination.