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133 comments on DrumBeat: July 5, 2006

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Don Sailorman on July 5, 2006 - 11:46am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Alan,
The way oil (or any other futures) market works has little to do with fundamentals of supply and demand. As John Maynard Keynes pointed out back in 1936, speculative markets depend on what speculators think other speculators will do. He has a very amusing passage on this topic, and BTW was a highly successful speculator himself.

When and if I speculate, I dump all my econonic knowledge in the garbage and tap deep into what I know of social psychology (of panics, mob behavior, mass hysteria, delusions, feverish overheating of tulip markets, etc.).

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Prodigal Son on July 5, 2006 - 1:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Whenever folks talk about 'rational markets' I think Tulips and sockpuppets.com.
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step back on July 5, 2006 - 4:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Aha, at long last, a good rational analysis on the rationality of "the market".

We can probably compile a long list of irrationally exuberant moves by "the market" to contradict those who believe that the market acts rationally. Yes, the 2001 dot.com bust and Tulip fever are part of that list as well as the build up of stock values during the roaring 1920's, but numbers one, two on my list are:

  1. Continuing to invest scarce resources and time (also a scarce resource) into the building up of our oil-based infrastructure (suburbia, superhighways to nowhere, SUV factories, etc.) when we know that this is a mad drive towards the cliffs.
  2. Continuing to pump more and more CO2 into our atmosphere when we know the Inconveniant Truth about that tactic.
  3.  Not building a de-centralized DC electric grid.
  4. Not building up intelligence and knowledge in our populations (the dumbing down of the sheeple)
  5. What's on your list???
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tstreet on July 5, 2006 - 6:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Did you hear that Atlanta plans to expand one of its freeways to 23 lanes?  Hello?  No doubt they plan to run all those cars on peanut oil.

Frankly, I think we should be shrinking our current road system, not expanding it.  Let's convert part of those 12+ lane freeways to bus only lanes that actually get you through the whole city, not half way through, like they had in Denver when I used to take a bus to work there.  

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The Interloafer on July 5, 2006 - 10:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Did you hear that Atlanta plans to expand one of its freeways to 23 lanes?
Is that in one direction or two?
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Todd on July 5, 2006 - 7:52pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Not building up intelligence and knowledge in our populations (the dumbing down of the sheeple)

Actually, it is worse than that.  The education system is teaching the wrong skills and knowledge for a post peak world while, at the same time, using information appropriate to children, i.e., dumbing down the little, meaningless crap that is taught.  At some point, people will look back (well, at least old farts like me hope they will look back) and realize that "shop" and "home economics" were far more important than diversity training.

I would also include living on credit (both personal and agency/government) on the list list.

Todd

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133 comments on DrumBeat: July 5, 2006

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