{"id":266891,"date":"2023-07-12T11:59:49","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T09:59:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=266891"},"modified":"2023-07-12T11:59:52","modified_gmt":"2023-07-12T09:59:52","slug":"woman-of-system-lynne-kiesling-as-electricity-planner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=266891","title":{"rendered":"Woman of System? Lynne Kiesling as Electricity Planner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Master Resource<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Bradley Jr.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe idea that the \u2018man of system\u2019 would be so enamored of his own system that he would impose it on others without much regard for their preferences or, to use the phrase of one of the participants, for their moral autonomy, continues to be a power criticism of interventionist approaches to government. To put it in my girl-next-door vernacular, how arrogant are you to think that you should impose your system on me?\u201d \u2013 Lynne Kiesling on Adam Smith<\/a> (and herself?)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Oh how the author of the above quotation needs to look in the mirror with an impartial observer at hand. Oh how this person has fallen into the collectivist\/planner trap so well recognized by Adam Smith. Stage one was her embrace of mandatory open access for electricity \u2026 Stage two was remaining quiet on climate alarmism\/forced energy transformation \u2026 Stage three was silence on the wind\/solar takeover in Texas \u2026 Stage four was blaming natural gas for the Texas debacle \u2026 Stage 5 is pushing for a \u2018virtual powerplant\u2019 approach of more wind, more solar, more batteries, and demand-side control.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you were hoping for some mid-course correction from an alleged free market, classical liberal electricity specialist (see\u00a0yesterday\u2019s post<\/a>), it did not happen. And until she gets back to the basics, and takes classical liberalism to heart and mind, shows some spine against electricity\u2019s road to serfdom, expect more of the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her story is the intellectual version of the Mises interventionist thesis where the embrace of one intervention has led to \u2018another and yet another\u2019. Alfred Kahn in the Economics of Regulation<\/em> noted:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

One interference with competition necessitates another and yet another, and an industry of \u2018rugged individualists\u2019 becomes more and more tightly enmeshed with the government to which they originally turned in hope of protecting themselves from competition.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In our subject\u2019s (intellectual) case, this could read:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

One recommendation of interference with the electricity market necessitates another and yet another, and a classical liberal becomes more and more tightly enmeshed with the government to which they originally turned in hope of promoting economic efficiency.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is how a recent exchange unfolded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/strong>: This sounds like central planning to me\u2013the experts advising the wholesale electricity monopolist on how to \u2018engineer\u2019 supply\/demand solutions to the politicized grid. Private property rights and a free market in electricity, anyone?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kiesling<\/strong>: Rob, if you listen to the podcast and ask specific questions based on the conversation, I\u2019d be happy to hear them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bradley<\/strong>: I just read the transcript. The whole conversation ignores that a free market person would say is the elephant in the room: Wind and solar wounding the grid (with more and more coming).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The whole demand-side exercise of which you are engaged is trying to centrally plan for consumers to cope with high prices and supply deficits. If your \u2018architecture\u2019 was done within a for-profit private company in a free market, that is one thing. But in the government ISO\/RTO, you are in central planning mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tell me, if a person gets a \u2018smart meter\u201d that can be controlled by a central government agency, is big brother in the home? How can further intrusion (such as CO2 rationing schemes) be prevented?And she disappears (per usual)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I now turn to\u00a0her<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0post<\/a>\u00a0at Knowledge Problem back in August 2005 on on Adam Smith. The question is:\u00a0Is Lynne Kiesling a Woman of System when it comes to electricity?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adam Smith And The \u201cMan Of System\u201d<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I spent last week attending Liberty Fund\u2019s<\/a> annual Adam Smith conference, as one of the two discussion leaders. It was a total blast\u2026. One of the most interesting threads that ran throughout the discussion was the dimensions of Smith\u2019s reference to the \u201cman of system\u201d in Theory of Moral Sentiments<\/a> (paragraph VI.II.42):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Smith captures a lot of very nice ideas in this passage. The idea that the \u201cman of system\u201d would be so enamored of his own system that he would impose it on others without much regard for their preferences or, to use the phrase of one of the participants, for their moral autonomy, continues to be a power criticism of interventionist approaches to government. To put it in my girl-next-door vernacular, how arrogant are you to think that you should impose your system on me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the arrogance and conceit, Smith\u2019s passage points to a particular type of knowledge problem (or \u201cepistemological problem\u201d, as one participant referred to it): \u201cin the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it\u201d. Every individual has his\/her own preferences, own view of the good life, own objective function. The \u201cman of system\u201d cannot know, cannot experience the wants, the needs, the social context in which each individual makes choices (individual and collective choices). To the extent that the imposed system creates an environment that does not honor the knowledge problem, it makes both the individual and society worse off. The \u201cman of system\u201d approach to institutional choice is not consistent with that epistemological constraint. Is this an argument for representative government, even with they \u201ctyranny of the majority\u201d problem?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chess-board metaphor raises the fallacy that our social institutions are so directed and so instrumentalist that they can point us to a specific, shared goal. In chess the objective is shared (and is zero-sum, actually, which points to another interesting aspect of Smith\u2019s writing \u2026), but in human life with the variety and individuality of human action and human knowledge, can we really be said to have a shared social objective? The best shared goal I can imagine toward which we can strive is to be free and responsible people living together in civil society, but that\u2019s an objective at an abstract and meta level, not a directed objective as is implied in the chess metaphor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One very interesting conversation we had throughout the week relating to this passage revolved around this concept of \u201csystem\u201d. In some way, Smith was himself a man of system;\u00a0Theory of Moral Sentiments<\/em>\u00a0laid out a framework for a moral system,\u00a0Wealth of Nations<\/em>\u00a0laid out a framework for an economic system, his essay on astronomy and his essay on the formation of languages both highlight and rely on the importance of system, and systematic analysis. But I think this is a different understanding of the word \u201csystem\u201d, and I think a lot hinges on what kind of obligations the system imposes on others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note in particular the following part of the passage:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This \u201cman of system\u201d can enact his system over the objections of others. In the moral system\/economic system\/scientific system of Smith\u2019s analyses, though, one cannot compel participation unless it\u2019s mutually agreeable. In other words, in these systems there is no force, no compulsion, no obligation on an individual to follow against his\/her will. An interesting twist on this comes in the account of scientific analysis, because you are not obligated to agree, but as research advances and evidence mounts for a particular theory, it becomes the predominant theory (until disproven and replaced by a better theory, that is).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps it\u2019s instructive to compare this \u201cman of system\u201d to the man of humanity and benevolence, as Smith did (paragraph VI.II.41):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by humanity and benevolence, will respect the established powers and privileges even of individuals, and still more those of the great orders and societies, into which the state is divided. Though he should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will content himself with moderating, what he often cannot annihilate without great violence. When he cannot conquer the rooted prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not attempt to subdue them by force; but will religiously observe what, by Cicero, is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, never to use violence to his country no more than to his parents. He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will remedy as well as he can, the inconveniencies which may flow from the want of those regulations which the people are averse to submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish the best that the people can bear.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh how the author of the above quotation needs to look in the mirror with an impartial observer at hand. Oh how this person has fallen into the collectivist\/planner trap so well recognized by Adam Smith.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":266898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691821003,691819134,691818076,691818656,691819231,691818154],"class_list":{"0":"post-266891","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-central-planning","9":"tag-climate-alarmism","10":"tag-co2","11":"tag-electricity","12":"tag-energy-transformation","13":"tag-net-zero","15":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/image-331.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-17qH","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":208507,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=208507","url_meta":{"origin":266891,"position":0},"title":"Federalism Is the Key to Demonstrating the Disaster of Green Central Planning","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"14\/07\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"From the MANHATTAN CONTRARIAN Francis Menton Central planning always fails, but the utopian visionaries implementing the plans cannot admit that they are at fault. 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