Electricity: Have I ‘Tarnished’ my Reputation and ‘Marginalized’ Myself? (Giberson’s huff)

“But messages [against] … Lynne [Kiesling] … just serve to marginalize you. …. I’d encourage you to divert your efforts to re-establishing the reputation you have had, because your existing approach has tarnished and is tarnishing it.” (Michael Giberson, below)

“Lynne and Mike’s modus operandi is tweak, tweak and continue down the road of climate alarmism – forced energy transformation – centrally planned electricity.”

Keep your eye on the ball. In recent days, I have noted the irony of the “Queen of Power Markets” Lynne Kiesling presiding over a Public Choice conference where her central planning electricity model (Independent System Operators/Regional Transmission Organizations) is not teed up for some serious Public Choice application. That’s the situation going into the conference, judging from the scheduled panels and talks.

Such was my Friday post, “Public Choice and Electricity: Kiesling Ducks Again (Plano, Tx. meeting next week).” I sent this post out to dozens of classical liberals who I have known over the years/decades, as well as those associated with the conference that I have not ever met, with the note:

I write in hopes that you will share this communication with others and try to get (President) Lynne Kiesling to address the central topic of the Plano conference next week in regard to electricity, her area of specialty. She is simply ‘in denial’ about applying free market economics and public choice to her governmental central planning model of electricity. 

A free market in electricity would avoid both the ‘knowledge problem’ of ISO/RTOs and the politics of governmental organization. And with electric reliability now a wild card (yes, government intervention did this), it is time for serious open debate (something Lynne has a studiously avoided).

Classical liberals of all stripes need to understand and debate the ‘virtual power plant’, which is open-ended wind/solar displacement of reliable generation with battery backup and ‘smart meters’ in the home that will surge-price to rescue the wounded supply side. And all (per Lynne) in the name of Hayek, Coase, Ostrom, etc.

No complaints, either. A lot of folks are suspicious of her techno-eco analysis but do not want to get into the intricacies of electricity. I am trying to change that, one step at a time.

Some Background

Classical liberalism has been hijacked by Lynne Kiesling and her faithful follower, Michael Giberson. Both purposefully bypassed a long tradition in free-market electricity thought in their writings, with Lynne substituting “my synthetic theory of regulation and technological change.”[1] They have resisted pushback (from me and others) against the theoretical and operational flaws of such a contrived market. Lynne and Mike’s modus operandi is tweak, tweak and continue down the road of climate alarmism – forced energy transformation – centrally planned electricity.

I have been following Lynne for decades and attended two of her electricity conferences as a last minute addition at the request of one of her major funders. I was told at one meeting that the conference premise of climate alarmism (thus forced energy transformation) was not to be debated. At the other, with a room of mostly left-of-center electricity specialists debating how to regulate/price power inside the home, I commented, “I want to just leave the temperature at 72 degrees and pretty much be done with it.” My point–which the large majority of Americans would have also uttered at the experts–was curtly dismissed by Lynne: “You can already do that.” (Transaction costs, anyone?)

I put up with Lynne’s peculiar technocratic approach to electricity until the Texas Blackout of February 2021, which she and Giberson blamed on record cold as an Act of God, a force majeure event. Except that wind and solar predictably disappeared. Except it happened despite on-the-shelf weatherization technology for thermal generation (yes, ruined margins and crowding out from $60 billion in wind/solar forcing was causal). Except that is happened within a government system (PUCT/ERCOT) with major planner error. Except ….

Giberson’s Complaint

My efforts on social media to get Lynne to frontally challenge her central planning (ISO/RTO) model with Public Choice resulted in this email to me yesterday from Michael Giberson:

I was asked about your email regarding Lynne Kiesling. My reply was to say I don’t know why you can’t see this is an unprofessional manner of engagement. 

Keep writing your blog (but focus on the issues rather than attacking people you disagree with). Write a op-ed. Write a scholarly paper. Present at an academic conference. Write a policy paper, you have written for Cato in the past and the folks at TPPF share some of your concerns. Try them. These are reasonable ways to advance your concerns.

But messages like the email and your frequent Facebook “challenges” to Lynne in response to unrelated posts just serve to marginalize you. They make you seem like a tiresome and impotent outsider rather than an independent free-market scholar, long-time liberty proponent, and well-known energy expert.

I’d encourage you to divert your efforts to re-establishing the reputation you have had, because your existing approach has tarnished and is tarnishing it. 

I answered Giberson as follows:

Keep your eye on the ball, Mike. The obvious opportunity here is to get a very reluctant Lynne to frontally address the obvious issue of politicized electricity markets via Public Choice analysis. Lynne, the ‘expert’ in both, should be challenged to address the obvious. And with a lot of folks in the audience eager to hear just this, tell Lynne to do so!

Second, I find it peculiar that you are more interested in my “reputation” than I am. I am about to enter my seventieth summer. For nearly a half-century, I have stated my views with a lot of history and theory–and nary considered what others (often the political majority or “establishment”) think. I am not a second hander. “Speaking truth to power” is an old refrain of classical liberalism, and Lynne is certainly at the throne of power.

I do realize, however, that there is a new generation that may be taken aback by my frontal challenges to a person they consider as a real classical liberal in the complex field of electricity. Problem is that she misinterprets (or, to be charitable, selectively interprets) different classical liberal literatures to justify central planning for electricity. It does not work.

If you were really concerned about my reputation, why didn’t you chime in to tell the audience (such as on a particular Facebook post) that I have expertise and represent the free market tradition in electricity? Why write an email to me rather than intervene at the point of engagement, if it concerns you?

Regarding your point about scholarly output, yes, I am building up to a major article–probably for The Review of Austrian Economics–on a praxeological, classical liberal view of electricity in theory and practice. But this is the article that you should write (should have written years ago)! You once thought for yourself without the hubris of defending political electricity. Instead, you have gone the other way.

Lynne Kiesling (and to a lesser extent you) have purposefully “raised rival’s costs” in my (and others) effort to understand synthetic regulation and political power. Lynne says she “hates monopoly.” Yet not unlike a political monopolist, she tries to protect her “synthetic theory of regulation” and pronunciation of the “grid [as] a common pool resource in which it is literally—literally—impossible to define and enforce property rights.” A real free market? She refuses to even define it and arrogantly dismisses her rivals.

But …. I have created a long, point-by-point evidentiary record to get to my future article. And other position papers are on their way. Stay tuned ….

Final Comment

The floor belongs to Lynne Kiesling starting this Thursday in Plano, Texas at 61st annual conference of the Public Choice Society. May the conference be great! And surely it would be greater if President Kiesling would share her expertise on the theory and practice of the second most regulated sector of the American economy next to money and banking. Go for it, Lynne!

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[1] Of the approximately 300 references in Kiesling’s major book, Deregulation, Innovation and Market Liberalization: Electricity Regulation in a Continually Evolving Environment (2009), there is a glaring absence of those in the free-market electricity tradition, including

Stigler, George, and Claire Friedland. “What Can Regulators Regulate? The Case of Electricity.” Journal of Law and Economics 5: 1-16, 1962

Demsetz, Harold. “Why Regulate Utilities?” The Journal of Law and Economics. Vol. 11, No. 1 (April 1968), p. 56.

Poole, Robert W. Jr. Unnatural Monopolies: The Case for Deregulating Public Utilities. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1985.

Primeaux, Jr., Walter J. Direct Electric Utility Competition: The Natural Monopoly Myth. New York: Praeger, 1986.

Moorhouse, John, ed. Electric Power: Deregulation and the Public Interest (San Francisco, CA: Pacific Research Institute, 1986.

Bradley, Robert L., Jr. “The Origins of Political Electricity: Market Failure or Political Opportunism?” Energy Law Journal. Vol. 17, no. 1 (1996), pp. 59–102.

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