I signed up for the Pickens Plan and have left the “army” as he calls his “devotees” and I have reached similar conclusions as those of Mr. Stephenson. T. Boone is not spending his money to innovate, and that is the rub.

Why not build small wind turbines that can be made here in America and sold inexpensively enough for consumers to appreciate a good ROI within their own life time? That will cut down dependence on oil and also dependence on the power monopoly. And that is why he doesn’t, because I am sure he has plenty of stock in natural gas and power utilities.

That’s the beauty with free markets: they take care of scarcity. As oil is used up and becomes more scarce, it’s price will increase. As the price increases, there will be more of an incentive for people NOT to use oil. Maybe alternative energy sources will be developed, or maybe we’ll learn to do without driving so much. Maybe Pickens’s wind farms and natural gas cars will be profitable without asking tax payers to subsidize them. The point is that there is nothing we have to do collectively. People acting independently to prices is all that is necessary.

The article makes sense from The Freeman point of view, but the question remains: If not taxpayer money, then what? We\\\’ve got to get the project done somehow. It\\\’s in our long-term best interest (probably).