Mark A. Monoscalco

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. -- Albert Camus

[Peter Clack @PeterDClack]

Wind and solar may succeed at a smaller, localised scale. But scaling them to power an entire modern civilisation is a fundamentally different challenge.

It was never going to work. They don't provide crucial baseload power, and traditional industrial grids were not built to accommodate their erratic delivery.

Decades of government incentives, feed-in tariffs and tax credits have heavily subsidised their rollout across wealthy Western nations. But it's an exercise resembling hopeless love. These desperate initiatives have ignored the fundamental mismatch between intermittent generation and existing grid architecture.

A complete rebuild of the global grid carries an estimated price tag of $21 trillion — a task made harder by decades of underinvestment in basic transmission infrastructure and heavy-duty storage.

Traditional power grids rely on synchronous generation — massive spinning turbines in coal, gas, nuclear or hydro plants. This physical rotating mass provides natural mechanical inertia, keeping grid frequency locked at a stable 50 or 60 Hz.

In sharp contrast, wind and solar just can't plug in. They rely on inverter-based technology, which gives zero inherent inertia. While engineers try to patch this stability gap with complex synthetic controls and giant spinning flywheels, it adds layer upon layer of extra cost and friction.

Meanwhile, the colossal scale of battery storage required to bridge multi-day lulls in wind and sunlight — the dreaded Dunkelflaute — runs into an immediate brick wall. It creates yawning bottlenecks in copper, lithium and cobalt mining, compounded by soaring production costs.

Crucially, the system can't even build itself. It just hasn't got the muscle. Mining the quartz, smelting the silicon, forging the structural steel and transporting massive turbine blades - all demands high-density, uninterrupted process heat and power. In an ironic twist, this energy is supplied almost exclusively by coal, oil and gas.

The gridlock this creates is almost farcical. Because wind and solar remain weather-dependent, grids must keep fast-ramping gas peakers or idling coal plants on standby. They are burning fuel in the background to step in the instant the wind drops or clouds roll over.

Great business plan.

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

@amitylee13 I wrote this book to calm your inner turmoil:
https://t.co/x35koato4v

[Rand Paul @RandPaul]

Great new book by Mark A. Monoscalco

The Forbidden Idea: Hidden Truths About Individual Liberty, Economic Freedom, Political Philosophy, and History https://t.co/J6QoZPiO9r

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

@YALiberty Fix the money, fix the world.

[Foundation for Economic Education @feeonline]

The Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, and Cuba all tried to replace markets with planning. The results followed a grim pattern: shortages, repression, rationing, stagnant productivity, and political control over work, food, movement, and speech.

[Students For Liberty @sfliberty]

"The Welfare State is merely a method for transforming the market economy step by step into socialism."

— Ludwig von Mises

[Per Bylund @PerBylund]

If you are troubled by #poverty and #inequality, then your best bet for a solution in our lifetimes is to advocate for radical deregulation of markets. That so many believe the opposite, despite centuries of experience, indicates the sad state of people's economic understanding.

[Mises Media @mises_media]

Government is not self-correcting the way a market economy is. A business that destroys value goes bankrupt. A political movement that destroys value gains voters—because the destruction creates the dependency that sustains it. https://t.co/kG2enVqaDj

[Handre @Handre]

The Berlin Wall was built to trap East German citizens inside their supposed workers' paradise, not to keep enemies out. East German authorities erected it in 1961 because their system had already failed: when you need barbed wire and machine guns to prevent people from leaving, you've admitted as much.

By 1961, over 2.7 million East Germans had fled to the West through Berlin. The exodus included doctors, engineers, skilled workers, and intellectuals. Brain drain doesn't begin to capture the hemorrhaging. The East German economy was collapsing as productive people voted with their feet against socialism. Walter Ulbricht's government faced a choice: reform the system or build a prison. They chose the prison.

You can see the same pattern everywhere socialism takes hold. Cuba builds rafts. North Koreans risk execution to cross the DMZ. Venezuelans walk thousands of miles to escape Maduro's paradise. The pattern never changes because the economics never change. When the state controls production, innovation dies. When bureaucrats set prices, shortages multiply. When politicians promise equality, they deliver poverty equally.

The Wall stood for 28 years as the perfect symbol of socialism in practice. Guards shot 140 people trying to escape between 1961 and 1989. Each death proved the same point: people will risk everything to escape centralized planning. They will climb walls, dig tunnels, and hide in car trunks to reach free markets.

Ludwig von Mises warned in 1922 that socialist calculation was impossible without market prices. Every socialist experiment since has required walls, gulags, or killing fields to function. The Berlin Wall was just socialism being honest about what it really takes to make paradise work.

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman on how real reform happens:

“You can’t reform any institution from inside because people don’t act against their own interest.”

“The only way you reform institutions is by competition from the outside.”

[Foundation for Economic Education @feeonline]

Without property, all other rights become vulnerable.

[Mises Media @mises_media]

Under persistent inflation, the finishing line disappears. Whatever you've saved is perpetually threatened. There is no amount at which you can stop and feel secure. Rest becomes dangerous. Arrival becomes impossible. Every balance sheet becomes a treadmill. https://t.co/MRzHpr9zi7

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

The Forbidden Idea is available everywhere books are sold. Click on the video above to buy from Amazon. For more information follow this link: https://t.co/7Bxc3rgMJK

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

Defend voluntary cooperation.
Advance individual liberty
Read The Forbidden Idea

[Milton Friedman Quotes @MiltonFriedmanW]

Milton Friedman on inflation:

“Inflation is just like alcoholism. In both cases when you start drinking or when you start printing too much money, the good effects come first. The bad effects only come later.”

“That’s why in both cases there is a strong temptation to overdo it: to drink too much and to print too much money.”

“When it comes to the cure, it’s the other way around. When you stop drinking or when you stop printing money, the bad effects come first and the good effects only come later.”

“That’s why it’s so hard to persist with the cure.”

[Connor Boyack 📚 @cboyack]

The most simple statement that socialists simply cannot reconcile:

You don't have a right to anything that requires another person's compelled labor to provide.

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

From chapter 6 of my book, The Forbidden Idea https://t.co/QoyRfF7H1u:
"...natural rights are, by definition, inherent to all human beings simply by virtue of their being human and possessing the ability to reason. Since these rights are universal, everyone must be able to exercise them simultaneously and equally. If this is not possible, the claimed right cannot be considered a “natural” right."

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

https://t.co/7Bxc3rgMJK

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

Today’s Book: The Forbidden Idea: Hidden Truths About Individual Liberty... https://t.co/jytYDYN3Sj via @YouTube

[Mark A. Monoscalco @markm1776]

https://t.co/QoyRfF7H1u
From chapter 6 of my book The Forbidden Idea: "...natural rights are, by definition, inherent to all human beings simply by virtue of their being human and possessing the ability to reason. Since these rights are universal, everyone must be able to exercise them simultaneously and equally. If this is not possible, the claimed right cannot be considered a “natural” right."