Pickens’s Slim Economics

by Bob Weeks on August 14, 2008

An article from the Foundation for Economic Education warns us to be cautious when considering the plans of oilman T. Boone Pickens:

Pickens’s commercial no doubt causes FEE readers’ classical-liberal antennae to stand at attention. The word “plan” alone rightly provokes worries of coercive schemes. The notion of being independent of energy or any other commodity from foreign countries goes against the teachings of Smith, Bastiat, and others who recognize the gains from specialization and division of labor. Nor will readers knowledgeable about rent-seeking be surprised that media reports describe Pickens as “heavily invested in natural gas and wind power.” And when Pickens states in his commercials that “this plan will work but it needs your help,” readers familiar with Public Choice rightly suspect that the sort of help Pickens has in mind is tax dollars.

The full article is Pickens’s Slim Economics.

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