Oren Cass, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, has a wonderful essay in the spring edition of National Affairs. Titled “The New Central Planners,” the piece points out how the federal government’s attempt to fix alleged “market failures” in the realm of climate change assumes away all the traditional problems of socialism. In other words, if we could trust officials at the EPA to tell us the “social cost of carbon” and to levy subsidies and mandates to move us to an efficient energy mix, then we could likewise have those officials plan the rest of the economy too. (Remember, EPA’s highest-paid official felt it was his duty to “modify the DNA of the capitalist system.”) But if you don’t trust EPA officials to pick the proper mix of restaurants and movie theaters in your town, then you shouldn’t let them dictate the proportion of solar and natural gas either.
