for a long time now in the states the political spectrum has shifted very strongly to the left. that is why you hear people talking about how "free markets solve everything". That is patently false, with natural monopolies the free market fails, with monopolies and cartels the free market fails.

Typically those people who advocate only free market solutions are ignorant of the role government should play with regards to private versus societal values(subsidize items where the societal value is greater than the private, and tax those items where societal cost is greater than private). (like mandatory TB vaccinations - did you know that the reason for the no spitting taboo is because of TB, a highly contagious bacterium which resides in the lung. Someone spitting up wads of TB all the time is basically a disease machine!)

The current thinking is to slam society with the costs, and privatize the gain. Look at what it has gotten china, a ruined environment and country which will take decades to clean up.

I'm an economic -6.12
social -6.36

I think you're absolutely correct about libertarians not being fit or interested in leadership. I myself can attest how I hated being a supervisor on the night shift at a small newspaper -- and that really wasn't much of a difficult leadership job. My philosophy is 'don't bother me and I won't bother you'.

Libertarian Socialism shows up on Wikipedia, and the Spanish Revolution was a one-year Libertarian Socialist experiment in 1936.

Employee-owned businesses are a great example of libertarian socialism in the marketplace.

I think the politicalcompass website saying that Ron Paul is on the authoritarian side of the compass is a bit of an error.

Most political figures will rank very high in authoritarianism. Their aim is to dominate. Download Altemeyer's The Authoritarians". John Dean relied heavily on Altemeyer's work for his book "Conservatives Without Conscience". Read it. Read it. It's important.

Full disclosure:

• Economic Left/Right: -10.00
• Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -7.90

That puts me somewhere out in the Delta Quadrant with Janeway, Q, the Swarm and Gandhi.

I wasn't sure how to answer some of the questions: "Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers." Homemaking is a wonderful career; more men should do it. So do I agree or disagree, strongly?

Authoritarianism vs communitarianism - that's the choice we face in Peak Oil. [At least I'd like to think so in my more hopeful moments.] In some ways, it's the difference between the US Constitution and that infinitely more glorious and null-and-void document, the Declaration of Independence.

cfm in Gray, ME

Erm...nice attempt at a strawman, but so far I have yet to see anyone in the upper left or even-left portion of the compass. How does having a social rating of -8.92 make me a supporter of "Big Government"? I'm aware enough to know that government has the incentive to misinform, mismanage, and screw us over just as much as other types of concentrated power (such as corporations). The only way we are going to save ourselves from a lot of unnecessary hardship in the coming years is if the populace can manage to take responsibility for fixing its own problems, realize that nobody will solve their problems except for themselves, and realize that the only way to make this happen is to decide on its own farsighted self-interest in a rational and democratic manner and then act on that.

But, of course, the people are idiots. Genetically pre-determined to screw up. Well, if that's the case, then why are we wasting our efforts here on trying to spread peak oil awareness? Basically, if you are one of the disadvantaged in society who recognizes the problems ahead but who is at the same time resource-less and powerless to mitigate against catastrophe without building a broad social response to these problems...then you're screwed. According to this reasoning, it's futile. If you happen to be privileged enough to have the resources to individually prepare for peak oil ($ for land, stockpiles, ammo, solar power, oil stocks, etc.), then I guess it makes sense to come together with the rest of the enlightened peak oil-aware elite and share individual mitigation strategies...but for most people, such discussion is irrelevant. If you think that you can guard against peak oil problems by appealing not to the masses (who actually have an incentive to change course), but instead to "the powers that be," you are barking up the wrong tree. Most politicians simply do not want to change course--they have little to lose by not doing so; at worst they will find cozy positions as lords in a new society of privation, pillage, and practical serfdom (and meanwhile the oil companies and oil states can sell their dwindling oil supplies very dearly, setting them up to be the major investors and owners in the next era's dominant form of energy). Politicians risk losing $$$ from their corporate backers, and what do they have to gain from calling for intensive peak oil mitigation? Even if a politician was truly well-meaning or "benevolent," what power would such politicians have against the establishment's consensus, against corporate power? But in any case, appealing to the "enlightened benevolence" of philosopher kings or U.S. senators does not add up to a peak oil mitigation strategy with any significant probability of success. More often than not, "benevolence" is trumped by self-interest, and this time is no difference. So, unless "the masses" really can act in a democratic, rational, and collectively-beneficial way when faced with peak oil problems (at least potentially, even if they struggle to do so now under the weight of corporate disinformation and demoralization), I am screwed. You are screwed as well, unless you have the resources to implement individual solutions and thus become one of the "pruners" instead of "one of the prunees" (like me).

So, why are we investing our time and effort on this website? For me, I'm trying to equip myself with the knowledge to set the stage, little by little, for a dramatic social shift in favor of rational peak oil mitigation in a way that benefits ME. (And then, to make it practical, I need to figure out which of these solutions that benefit me also benefit the majority of everyone else so that we have enough power to bring the common plan to fruition). That's how I approach the peak oil discourse. I don't know about some others, though.

You seem unaware of economic history, even recent history. In the northeast US electricity production was highly regulated. There was a mandated fixed percentage above the growth numbers required by all producers to build. This was met consistently and the northeast had few electrical issues once this system went into place in the early 1970s. When deregulation hit, in the first 5 years afterwards, the corporations barely made a few percent above the old buffer number and in the second five years not at all. Thus they cannibalized the resiliency of the system for greater profits.

What you fail to understand is that free markets are good at producing efficiency but efficiency is not always the goal. Sometimes reliability and resiliency is the goal and this costs more! But corporations, being insane people, only focus on profit, not on long term goals other than profit. This is precisely why corporations must be regulated in different markets. The level of regulation is directly related to the level of resiliency and reliability that we seek versus the corporation's ability to maximize efficiency for the sake of profits.

Note: I consider corporations insane because they have legal personhood status under the law but any flesh and blood person who exhibited the behaviors of a corporation would be considered psychopathic.

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone