The argument for minarchy is watching what governments do

We’ve said often enough that if we assume that what is said about climate change is entirely true then the policies to deal with it are still wrong. We’re confident in that because the Stern Review, the Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus and the vast, vast, majority of other economists all tell us that the policy decisions are wrong. Don’t try and be clever and plan everything, make the one single change to the price system and leave the market be to work it out from there. The carbon tax that is - not what all governments are actually doing instead.

One example of which is Drax:

Mike Childs, head of research at Friends of the Earth, said: “For over a decade the Government has known that in some circumstances burning biomass to make electricity can be worse than burning gas or coal.

“Yet they failed to set strict enough standards on what can be burnt and where it comes from.

"Instead, Drax has received billions of pounds worth of public subsidies."

Commissioned by the Department of Energy, the 2014 report looked at the carbon intensity of burning wood for power.

It found that using forest “residues” for fuel was less carbon-intensive than burning gas and coal over a period of 100 years, but that using whole trees was worse than burning coal when measured over 40 years and 100 years.

Add in the emissions from transport from North America and it’s a complete failure as a policy. But it’s subsidised to the tune of near a billion a year. Which is, even at the interface of government and the energy business, real money.

From which we derive our more general case. The argument for having less government, for minarchy, is watching what governments do. That also means that we’ve a corollary to Occam’s Razor - Adam’s Shaving Brush perhaps. The solution which involves less government is less likely to be counterproductive.