Are you a "gold bug?"

I found the article interesting but a bit disjointed.

The notion of cutting back consumption is a good one.

Your illustration of heating the house in Maine is a bit thin, though. Lots of pain can be involved in the economic dislocations caused by changes in petroleum prices.

You seem to also assume a certain faith in the "Markets" that all do not share....?

I think that this faith has become the key unexamined premise of "economists" in our world today.

It may very well be that we have perpetrated the greatest market failure of all time because of unexamined premises.

I like reading John Gray ("Straw Dogs" and "False Dawn") to counter current economic thought.

Just some thoughts in response.

Are you a "gold bug?"

One doesn't have to be a 'gold bug' to look at the present money system and claim flaws. The 'gold bugs' have many more years of "working" systems to draw conclusions from is all.

Any system has flaws.