#467953
Postby Albert90 » December 22nd, 2021, 5:58 am
The renewable sector has pushed relentlessly for mandates requiring utilities to buy renewable power - wind and solar - at prices far above market rates. With renewable costs plunging all the time (solar by over 40 percent in some markets just last year), renewable incentives have become unnecessary, even counterproductive. But renewable developers cling stubbornly to them because of one problem: subsidies are their only hope of competing with conventional energy sources like coal and natural gas. Corporations justify these government handouts as "investments," while critics liken them to bribery. But in either case, renewable energy would not exist in a free market.
The banking sector is another area where socialism pervades. For years, the government has protected banks and other financial institutions with regulations that make it difficult for new entrants to compete. This has led to a concentration of banking assets in the hands of a few large institutions. These banks then use their political clout to get taxpayers to bail them out when they make risky investments and subsequently fail. Socialism enables these banks to gamble with impunity, knowing that they will be bailed out if things go wrong.
In both the renewable energy and banking sectors, government intervention distorts the market and allows less efficient companies to survive at the expense of more efficient ones. This is not the way a free market works. In a free market, renewable energy would have to compete on price and performance with other forms of energy, and banks would have to compete for deposits by offering the best interest rates. But in our current system, renewable energy companies and banks can rely on government subsidies and regulations to give them an unfair advantage.
We should all be concerned about the increasing influence of socialism in our economy. It stifles innovation and leads to less efficiency and higher costs. We need to return to a free market where businesses must compete on their merits, and the government plays a minimal role in the economy. Only then will we see the true potential of renewable energy realized.