Since you are so kind, I will post once more, on this probably dead thread. Don Sailorman does not scare me off. I rather like him. A fellow cyclist. A fellow curmudgeon.

The problem is the futility of this endeavour.

Good Lord I probably ran into Garrett Hardin 3 decades ago when some young naiive econ professor ran that article past me. And now he has a new life on the net. Back then I think I bothered to debate it. Looking at that shite again, having been trained as an historian, it just feels like a slap in the face.
There was once, and may be again, a stripe of American scholar who would pick up something plain as dirt, simple as breathing, but unknown to America. Who would know if the facts were wrong? Who would catch that he had no grasp of the field?  Dress it up with a metric. Reference a name physicist, mathematician, philosopher, whatever. Cover by publishing in a journal where no one knows. The audience really was born yesterday. And this stuff now lives forever.

What really bothers me about Hardin is that he committed that essay in 1968. Probably the last time we all really had the chance to live.

Anyone still with me? Read the knave of the soixant-huitards, Guy Debord. The whole oeuvre is 3 inches of shelf, unless you read French and can score a copy of the filmscripts - then it's 5 inches. But would anyone on this board be able to read it? Or read the illustrated version from Grant Morrison.

Anyway this board has people who know lots and lots about about petroleum engineering and the oil biz, subjects of much interest where I should only listen.