Energy Development and Security and Supply‐side Ideology

A bstract . Should energy development , of any form, be encouraged by the federal govemment? Inasmuch as conventional economic theories all are inapplicable, incomplete, or unrealistic as descriptions and explanations of real world energy markets , they cannot illuminate this value question. To date, American energy policies generally have manipulated supplies and prices of energy. If the objectives of energy policy are to conserve fuel , To reduce vulnerability to energy‐related inflation , to control expenditures on energy, and to tree Western Europe, Japan , and the United States from dependence upon hostile or potentially hostile suppliers, then an effective policy would have to alter both demand and supply for energy. Advocates of simplistic deregulation , unwilling or unable to anticipate the undesirable consequences of that policy, invite the very governmental interference from which they recoil.