 | DrumBeat: October 24, 2006 | The Oil Drum | DrumBeat II-10/24 (and the "are you going to Boston?" coordination thread as well) |  |
142 comments on Fuel Prices As We Go over the Top...?
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
User login
Archives
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
There is abolutely nothing wrong with this picture, unless your economic credo is that you can only profit if someone else starves. I think the world as a whole has reduced such 18th century thinking to rubble. We all profit from China and India taking over the industries that we can't run profitably any longer.
Now, I take it from your post that you are probably not a billionaire...?
I also represent a growing fraction of the world's population that understands the necessity to move around. My point was that there are many reasons to be mobile. Being part of the jetset is the unlikeliest one, though. It is much more likely that either you are starving or that your level of education is needed somewhere else. In my case it is the latter. In the case of my parents it was the former. We did not make the world this way, we just adapted to it.
Infinite, I do see your points as being valueable, but I think you've read one too many Thomas Friedman articles on the wonders of cinnabons. I guess you have a positive outlook on "globalization", you seem to have a romantic vision of efficiency, profit and order for all... Whereas I see globalization simply as labor arbitrage and squeezing the last few bucks out of an industrial system that is bound to collapse (in any form, whether run by global capitalism or so called "marxist socialism".)
First off, sure, you have to be smart to be a billionaire (at least a self made one, if you look at the Forbe 400 list you will find that although many are self made, there are quite a few that inherited.) On the other hand, becoming filthy rich is way less a function of "smarts", than it is of hard work, taking advantage of every opportunity and, of course, greed. I would put way more stress on greed than "smarts"... In fact, I would bet that you could be a total fucktard and still become a billionaire simply by pure greed (of course, I'm not saying a greedy mentally deficient individual could achieve such a feat--there is obviously a nominal base of intelligence to make money). My point is simply that I think you're wrong to stress "smarts", since there are millions upon millions of people that are way more smart then the vast majority of billionaires. In fact, billionaires usually employ people that are far moer intelligent than them.
You misunderstood BrianT. Perhaps you need to get down from the saddle and actually discuss things as opposed to stating your opinions as facts from high atop hi-ho silver. My understanding of what BrianT was saying is that we are all on the same boat. We are all homo sapiens, we are all related and we all live on "spaceship earth". Our space ship may be easy to get around right now, and may have enough resources for everyone to plow around in military vechicles in urban environments, but eventually this free for all will end. Just because people have been crying wolf since whale oil, doesn't mean that resources are infinite and that prognosticators will forever be wrong. In case you didn't notice, this blog's focus is energy depletion and our "future".
BrianT's point was that once TSHTF billionaires and the unemployed will both have problems, albeit different ones. For instance, billionaires will be concerned with having even tighter security, contingents of body guards and militarized homes then they already do... They will be afraid of the masses of enraged Americans who were told by Reagan in the 80s that it was Morning in America... When people find out it is actually Dusk in America, the public will want to eat the upper class alive.
Perhaps you disagree with my perspective on this, since you obviously seem joyfully optimistic about our future (despite massive, never before experienced challenges for our species on the very near horizon...) To go down the list briefly with no depth:
- spiraling wars in the middle east (already in progress)
- global oil production depletion (no one knows--not a good thing)
- global warming (again, no one knows--not a good thing)
- unprecendent debt levels (growing rapidly monthly)
- overpopulation (approaching 7 billion--more people have been alive in the last 200 years than cumultively in all of human history)
- mass extinction
- ecological degradation (rainforests all around the world be burned and chopped down, coral reefs dying, etc.)
I could go on but you get the jist of it.While you seem to enjoy doing the "hey look how stupid feckless unemployed 20 somethings are compared to our brilliant billionaires!" I would rather side with BrianT and simply agree that we are products of only two things... Our environments and genetic dispositions. (Not to mention millions of years of natural selection.)
"potential of a billionaire"?????
So I assume you are saying that essentially there is a billionaire gene? Or there must be a rearing technique to enhance the "billionaire potential"?
Those are rhetorical questions, because obviously both have to be true. In order to get a billionaire you need A) the disposition to become one B) the environmental know how to function in the world to impress people, network, makes deals, etc with all the other BS required. Plus, the obvious desire to do so...
Again, I'm just writing this to make it known to all that I agree with BrianT, and think your arrogance is now apparent to anyone to see.
BrianT tries to say we're all in this together and you go out and write that he must not be a billionaire and that billionaires are smart? Wow.
hrmm...
"Whereas I see globalization simply as labor arbitrage and squeezing the last few bucks out of an industrial system that is bound to collapse (in any form, whether run by global capitalism or so called "marxist socialism".)"
Labor arbitrage existed everywhere at all times. It is not limited to moving jobs across borders in the late 20th century. Labor intense industries always moved to where the cheapest labor was and they always created high concentrations of low earners. What seems misguided to me is that some people in these posts complained that they can't be the low earners. I always ask myself why someone who has reasonable chances to move up to the middle class would want to hang on to the bottom of the system kinds of jobs. The Chinese who are taking these will certainly encourage their children NOT to follow Mom and Dad to the factory but go to school, then college and become an engineer or better.
As for the collapse of the system... I have yet to see any signs of that. Capitalism is happily producing one record result after the other everywhere in the world. One can argue that some of it is ecologically not sustainable. I would agree with that, but then, there is no law of physics that I know (and I am a physicist) which states that similar gains can not be had with less waste of energy and resources. America is 50% less efficient than Europe and Europe is probably 50% less efficient than it could be according to the laws of physics. We have plenty of solar radiation to satisfy our children's and grandchildren's hunger for energy. Real limits exist, but we aren't even close, yet.
My billionaire story was meant to be hyperbole... apologies that people misunderstood my sense of humor. Since I don't dine with billionaires, I know nothing about them first hand. But the fact that they are billionaires and most people are not kind of leads me to believe that they are doing something differently... :-)
:-)