Wind power: Renewable resource, or another corporate scam?
A fascinating new film about one small-town political fight takes on the pseudo-green wind industry
http://www.salon.com/2012/02/01/wind_power_renewable_resource_or_another_corporate_scam/singleton/
I did a lot of research into wind energy a decade or so ago and it has some very serious drawbacks that, in my mind, make it rather impractical for any large-scale source of energy. I have yet to come across anyone who lives near one (I am talking the huge commercial-scale devices) and things they are good things and according to my economic analysis, without government subsidies they can’t make any money competing with current sources of energy (something I see as true for all alternatives, see here if you want more of my analysis). Like so many situations where there is no real competition in the market place, either because there is no profit absent subsidies or because of the nature of the beast (such as electric transmission lines), ‘success’ of the business depends a great deal on having inside information and close contacts with decision makers. Thus, I see the ‘corporate scam’ as the leading issue in situations like this. Scammers, like all confidence men, by their very nature do not have the greatest good for the greatest number in their consideration. Just like power attracts the corruptible, government subsidies attract corporate scammers who are happy to leverage their existing connections to make a profit at tax payer expense (think Citibank, BofA, Goldman Sachs, etc. for recent examples). In my mind, subsidies only make sense when there is a chance of realizing economies of scale (meaning that below a certain point profit is all but impossible, so creating ‘artificial’ demand helps achieve the profit making scale)) or if, as I alluded to in a previous post, it is an industry that is important to the country and/or society in general (on that note, I think that in order for the subsidy to be successful it has to be available to anyone and everyone, so someone like me who gets an idea can take advantage of it (and once again, that is fantasy talking since our oligarchy is all about the transfer of our tax dollars into the pockets of the already wealthy)).
So, to try to wind up a morass of digressions, based on my research the ‘corporate scam’ alluded to in the article is the ‘real deal’ as there is no way for honest, legitimate entrepreneurs to make a buck in the ‘biz.
