Energy: Release the Market!

 I'm not for or against any particular kind of energy. We need it all.

I do, however, oppose any subsidies or penalties for any kind of energy.

Petroleum, for instance, gets a gigantic "gunboat subsidy" -- American warships and troops protecting the Suez Canal, and so on. Our ring of bases along the borders of Russia, Iran, and China is likewise a subsidy -- intended to secure oil supplies to us and our "allies". On the other hand, petrol also has numerous penalties. For instance, auto emissions are now so insane that what comes out of a new car's tailpipe is cleaner than the average sample of ambient air. That's just dumb. Petrol supplies in the US are increasingly at risk because it's now almost impossible to build or expand refining or storage capacity, due to ever-tightening zoning and environmental laws . Refineries are aging and locked into footprints they can't grow out of; ensuring more maintenance failures into the future.

Wind energy likewise gets both subsidies and penalties.  At the same time energy companies are heavily subsidized to bring more wind energy online, turbines don't last forever and the increasing number of decommissioned turbines fills up gigantic landfills fast. American laws have virtually shut down mining for the precious metals wind energy needs, so we're shipping vast amounts of wealth to China to supply our expanding demand for those materials.

Nuclear has the same dynamic going on. The Price-Anderson act is a massive subsidy to nuclear energy. There are no insurance companies that are currently willing to cover the damages nuclear plants can cause -- witness the inability of even the Japanese government to be able to fully pay for the damage caused by just ONE Fukashima. Plus, the cost of burying (or storing) spent nuclear waste is huge -- and energy companies are largely excused from paying for it. Instead, governments do.

Get rid of all of the subsidies and penalties for all forms of energy, and allow the market to sort out which one is the safest and most efficient.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, April 2021.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Laws Cause Police Killings

Leftists pretend to be concerned about the aggressive actions of police officers, which leads to outcomes like we saw recently in Minnesota and Colorado. Just this week, Paige Pierce Schmidt was shot and killed by police in Delta CO, as was Duante Wright in Brooklyn Center MN.

Police kill roughly 1,400 Americans every year, or 26 per week on average.

A disproportionate number -- about a third -- are black; the rest are mostly white.

At core, it is the plethora of useless and countless laws, like the prohibitions on drugs, prostitution, gambling, and, increasingly, guns -- laws that were either written or are supported by the left within the past century -- that led to Wright's and Schmidt's tragic and unnecessary deaths.

It is understood that Leftists wish to promote systemic problems that they can later riot over. It's called "job security" for progs.

"Good laws" and bad laws, both, are GOING to be enforced with force, no matter what you demand. At some level, everyone is aware of that. Anywhere you have an intersection between two positions you favor, when those positions are at odds, you have the potential -- and in fact, the high probability -- of those laws being upheld through the use of force. Up to, and including, death.

Mr. Wright, for example -- was in violation of gun control laws -- which almost all Leftists profess to favor (I say "profess" because the Left has never been shy about arming other Leftists and shooting the opposition -- as has been happening in Venezuela for the past decade). The traffic stop of Wright also was made under some dubious pretexts; and then the escalation of force was initiated because of a warrant relating to said gun laws.

Wright was within his Constitutionally-guaranteed right to carry a firearm.

You can't have the gun control you love, without the deadly force by police that you don't love.

Only Libertarians have a consistent position: We are opposed to police violence that was brought to bear against Mr. Wright -- but we are also absolutely opposed to the gun laws that were being enforced against him in the first place.

You simply cannot demand that the police treat black people with dignity and respect or hell, but then also support right-violating laws that we then expect the police to enforce. It simply won't work the way you think it will.

Libertarians acknowledge there will be some level of laws for the foreseeable future -- at least until a lot more people choose to reject the initiation of force and become Libertarians. But in the meantime, we demand that laws be kept to a minimum and that they will be enforced only when there is an actual human victim. These two steps would go far towards a rational, more peaceful approach to reducing harm caused by police.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, April 2021.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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