Energy Development and Security and Supply‐side Ideology

. 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.