Cap and trade?
Now you know why Enron had to die.
Haven’t seen this idea expressed very often, but buying and selling nothing is precisely what spelled the end of enron. What a scheme, cap and trade looks like Enron on steroids. With predictable results, AFTER ENRICHING A FEW NOTED PROMOTERS, AND PARTICIPANTS, and without the penalties some of the Enron folks received. Actually the ones penalized the most were the workers, the pension holders, and the investors, the little guy.
Exactly wrong.
Enron was built on the idea that you can commoditize- put a price- on anything. People who have a stake in a given commodity will take positions based on how they think that commodity will do in terms of supply and demand.
This has long been the case in tangible markets like hogs, corn, soybeans, wheat and metals. It allows suppliers to know in advance the price they'll get at market at some point in the future.
Enron applied this principle to things like energy: suppose you could buy next winter's gas or next summer's electricity at a fixed price today? Buyers and sellers would both leverage their advantage, and producers and consumers would enter and leave the market according the risk/reward it offered. Simply said, if I can buy next summer's electricity at a low price today, I'll do it. If the price is too high, a producer will step in and offer their electricity to the market. Prices will fall as supply increases.
California tried to be 'too big to fail' a few years ago and found out what an efficient (and agnostic) market will do: it will ignore you. And your lights will go out.
Al Gore and his disciples realized the genius of this approach, but also the danger: a free market does not favor the hand of government.
So the liberals ginned up every sin, real and imagined, and sent Enron down in flames. The people who worked there are not to be pitied for losing everything-- they should be scorned like the mortgage speculators of today. Their greed superseded their common sense.
If (when) the liberals get their hands on your energy, they will be able to control what you do, where and how you do it and with whom.
Cap and trade is the linchpin of socialistic slavery.
Bingo