DrumBeat: October 27, 2007
Posted by Leanan on October 27, 2007 - 9:20am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Why Kuwait wants to shift to heavy oil
Last week, Kuwait announced its plans to shift into heavy oil production during an international oil conference to meet its 2020 target of producing 4 million barrels per day (bpd).Kuwait has traditionally produced and exported mainly medium to light crude since the 1950s. Now KOC is pushing for more involvement of international oil companies in developing its heavy oil assets. But why is Kuwait shifting to heavy oil production?
Record-high oil prices have dramatically shifted the balance of global power. At nearly $90 a barrel, oil is more than a crucial energy source, it's a strategic commodity of central importance. The $30 per barrel rise in crude prices since last October raises the daily imported oil bills of the United States and Europe by $300 million each, while Middle East exporters collect an additional $500 million daily. These are sums with huge financial and political implications that are beginning to reverberate.
Why BP is cutting back in Aberdeen as oil prices soar
Deeper reasons lie behind the cutbacks, however, and BP's economies may just be the first of others by competitors. It is no secret that the North Sea fields are running out. Of the six BP-operated fields there, all but two - Rhum and Clair - started producing in the 1980s and 1990s. And two - Valhall and Magnus, Britain's most northerly field - date from the early 1980s. In oil terms that makes them geriatrics.
Methane Bubbling From Arctic Lakes, Now And At End Of Last Ice Age
A team of scientists led by a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has identified a new likely source of a spike in atmospheric methane coming out of the North during the end of the last ice age.
CLIMATE CHANGE: CO2 Levels Begin Accelerated Climb
Global warming has been compared to a slow-moving train wreck, in which the passengers are blissfully unaware of the coming catastrophe.With the shocking loss of the Arctic sea ice this summer and several new reports this week that oceans and tropical forests are now absorbing less of the world's steadily rising carbon emissions, our collective train wreck appears to have already tipped into fast forward.
The Prophet of Climate Change: James Lovelock
In Lovelock's view, the scale of the catastrophe that awaits us will soon become obvious. By 2020, droughts and other extreme weather will be commonplace. By 2040, the Sahara will be moving into Europe, and Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad. Atlanta will end up a kudzu jungle. Phoenix will become uninhabitable, as will parts of Beijing (desert), Miami (rising seas) and London (floods). Food shortages will drive millions of people north, raising political tensions. "The Chinese have nowhere to go but up into Siberia," Lovelock says. "How will the Russians feel about that? I fear that war between Russia and China is probably inevitable." With hardship and mass migrations will come epidemics, which are likely to kill millions. By 2100, Lovelock believes, the Earth's population will be culled from today's 6.6 billion to as few as 500 million, with most of the survivors living in the far latitudes -- Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia, the Arctic Basin.
Fretting about climate change, calling for conservation, and making fuel from animal fats—these days James Mulva might not sound like the chief executive of the third-largest U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips. With 34 years in the oil business, Mulva concedes that times for his industry have changed. As crude oil prices surge—hitting yet another record on Oct. 26—and worries about global warming and China's oil thirst abound, Mulva and his peers at other energy giants are now pressing for a new federal energy policy.
Mexico To Start Booking Chicontepec Reserves In 2008 - Pemex
Petroleos Mexicanos will begin booking new reserves at the Chicontepec oil field in 2008 when the company begins exploiting new areas of the oil zone, said Pemex CEO Jesus Reyes Heroles on Friday.Pemex's current proven reserves will only last 9.3 years at current production rates, and the company must find and tap new reserves just to keep oil production at current levels.
Airlines struggle to keep pace with soaring fuel costs
For more than three years, the nation's airlines have grappled with persistently high fuel costs. But they haven't seen prices quite like this before.
Rising cost of crude oil stirs concern at Northwest
The pilots union says it wants the airline to take a longer-term approach to controlling fuel prices - the carrier's biggest cost.
U.S. Airlines Put Off Buying New Planes
American Airlines operates a fleet of 300 older MD-80s, a model that guzzles fuel and lacks the latest in passenger comforts. And American has only a handful of replacement planes coming in the next couple of years.
Mid-Columbia farmers feel sting of rising gas prices
Each time the price of oil goes up, Eltopia farmer Gary Middleton feels the pinch, and he's been feeling the hurt a lot lately.He uses about 30,000 gallons of fuel annually, mostly diesel, to run machinery at his 100-acre organic apple and cherry orchard. And diesel and gasoline prices have surged recently with the onset of winter and rapidly rising world oil prices.
In sum, Republicans are trying to stop Democrats from further reducing America's production of its own fuel, placing us even more at the mercy of Middle East Arab states and oil-rich thugs like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.They're also trying to stop Democrats from doing something that would raise gasoline prices at the pump to an even higher level than they are now.
Will pain at the pump lower consumption?
Nationwide, hybrid-vehicle registrations climbed 49 percent in the first seven months of 2007, according to R.L. Polk & Co., an automotive data company in Southfield, Mich. Polk said hybrids account for more than 2 percent of the U.S. market.
UK: Fuel price rises are crippling us, hauliers warn Chancellor
Hauliers warned that their industry is being crippled by the increases in taxes and rising oil prices.
Pakistan: Gas loadshedding may be from mid November
The Sui Northern Gas Pipeline Limited is facing a shortage of about 700 MMCFD gas which will compel the company to continue the load management policy in the coming winter....Sources said the company high-ups had decided to start load management by the end of November 2007. Under the policy, the most affected industries would be of cement, power, and CNG and fertilizers.
Caribbean nations grapple with biofuel issues
The Caribbean, which includes the Dominican Republic and Central America, offers examples of the uncertainty many regions face in the global energy grid. If those regions have the resources, they have to ask whether biofuels are worth the investment.
World’s addiction to coal growing
Coal is big, and getting bigger. As oil and natural gas prices soar, the world is relying ever more on the cheap, black-burning mainstay of the Industrial Revolution. Mining companies are racing into Africa. Workers are laying miles of new railroad track to haul coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.And nowhere is coal bigger than in China.
The high-rolling risk takers who brought you personal computing, the telecommunications revolution, the commercialization of the Internet, and, of course, Google now aim to do nothing less than save planet Earth—and make billions while doing it. If the venture capital industry is successful, it might be the ultimate act of "angel investing," and perhaps no one is more emblematic of this new wave of high-minded technology entrepreneurship than Vinod Khosla, who, after a failed soy milk start-up in his native India, went on to become one of the driving forces of Silicon Valley as cofounder of Sun Microsystems and later as a venture capitalist. Khosla views climate change as the gravest threat the world has ever faced, and he knows others see America's foreign oil dependence as an urgent crisis. But in his calculus, we've been pitching pebbles at these Goliath problems. "Building a biofuels plant here and a solar plant there is not enough," he says, "unless we can replace 50 percent and hopefully 100 percent of the fossil energy sources."
In a yearlong trial run that ended in the spring, 200 or so homes on Washington's Olympic Peninsula engaged in a daily bidding war for electricity. It was a sort of robotic Ebay auction in which the thermostat in one house, say, bid against the clothes dryer in another for scarce electrons. The loser would turn off and wait for prices to drop before jumping back onto the grid. Engineers at the federally funded Pacific Northwest National Laboratory showed that by equipping appliances and thermostats with a few cheap microchips and Internet connections, they could cut peak demand by as much as 50%. That's a big number, because 8% to 12% of peak demand for power capacity comes during the busiest 1% of hours. Most of the extra supply comes from inefficient gas-turbine generators.
Green Grid Members Open Energy Efficient R&D Data Center
Businesses in the United States have been put on notice by the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy that power used by data centers is growing at a disproportionate rate, and multiple sources within the industry have predicted a looming energy crisis that could threaten half or more of operations.Tackling the issues will require an industry-wide and vendor-specific focus as demonstrated by the latest meeting of The Green Grid consortium this week in St. Louis, Mo., where APC-MGE and parent company Schneider Electric hosted the meeting and opened a 100,000-square-foot technology center that is dedicated to research and development of energy efficient data center equipment and design processes.
Brave B.C. talks true carbon tax
VANCOUVER -- Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion won't do it, and most Canadian politicians won't even say it out loud.But in British Columbia, Finance Minister Carole Taylor is merrily pursuing a carbon tax, eyeing a plan that could see the province levy substantial fees on economic choices that spew greenhouse gases, but that would slash other kinds of taxes, including income taxes.
Gulf poised to delay monetary union, official says
Gulf Arab oil producers are likely to postpone a 2010 deadline for monetary union at a meeting of central bankers and finance ministers on Saturday, an official of the region's economic bloc said.Investors are watching the meeting in the Saudi Red Sea port city of Jeddah for any signs of a rift on currency policy, which could renew market bets on the demise of a regional exchange-rate regime pegged to the tumbling U.S. dollar.
OPEC to study currency basket for pricing: Venezuela
OPEC is likely to discuss creating a basket of currencies for oil pricing at its next summit due to the steady decline in the dollar, Venezuela's Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said on Friday.
Iran says enough supply in oil market
‘There is no problem regarding supply. OPEC is producing at full capacity,’ caretaker Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari told the official daily, called Iran.
Iraq threatens to cut off oil if sanctions imposed
The speaker of Iraq's Parliament has warned Turkey that his government would cut off the flow of oil from northern Iraq if Ankara followed through on its threat to level economic sanctions against the country.
Chávez: Bush's threats are to push oil prices up
Following execution of seven memoranda of intent between Algeria and Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez insisted that oil prices would climb to USD 100 per barrel.The Venezuelan ruler underscored that mounting oil prices are the result of the imperialist pressures. "If the United States continues to threaten or destabilize" oil exporting countries, then high prices will continue to prevail in world markets.
What Steven Landsburg doesn't understand about climate change
Landsburg claims, "Climatologists estimate what it takes to put New York underwater; economists estimate the cost of moving New York inland." No. Few, if any, economists would bother to estimate the cost of moving New York City, with its unique physical assets and vast infrastructure — let alone the billion people worldwide who would lose their homes if sea levels rose 25 meters. Economists do estimate the cost of building levees, but how do we build levees if sea levels are rising more than a foot a decade — and if many coastal cities face Katrina-like superstorms in the future?
Global Warming Alarmism Reaches A 'Tipping Point' (Sen. James Inhofe, R-OK)
An abundance of new peer-reviewed studies, analyses, and data error discoveries in the last several months has prompted scientists to declare that fear of catastrophic man-made global warming "bites the dust" and the scientific underpinnings for alarm are "falling apart."
Deeper, rougher, further - in search of the last North Sea oil
Britain is in the autumn of its North sea era. "The oil we're getting from the North Sea is in decline," says the energy minister, Malcolm Wicks. "A lot of it is getting more difficult to recover. Some of the big companies have gone away. In the last few years, our oil production has fallen by 8% or 9% annually. We aim to slow that decline to, say, 5% a year."Last year Britain's oil output was the lowest since 1979, the first big year of North Sea production. This week BP announced it was shedding up to 350 North Sea jobs, the latest in a series of cuts in the oilfield by major companies.
China rations diesel as record oil hits supplies
China is rationing diesel at pump stations in at least four booming coastal provinces in the widest-scale rationing seen since 2003, as red-hot global oil prices hit output at loss-making Chinese refiners.With U.S. crude soaring to new highs above $92 a barrel on Friday, the supply squeeze is a telling sign that high oil is taking its toll on demand in the world's second-largest consumer by forcing refiners to limit output.
Oil and gas rich Gulf seeks alternative energy
With booming domestic demand for power, the hydrocarbon-rich Arabian Gulf countries are exploring the use of alternative and renewable energy resources - including coal, nuclear, solar, wind and hydrogen - says a leading industry expert.
Mexico's Cantarell oil output recovers in Sept
Crude oil output from Mexico's declining Cantarell offshore field recovered to 1.461 million barrels per day in September after a hurricane knocked down August production levels to 1.319 million bpd, the energy ministry reported on Friday.
Lower oil production blamed for Royal Dutch Shell profits fall
Royal Dutch Shell yesterday blamed lower oil production, weaker refining margins and higher costs for a fall in third quarter profits.
Petrol price to hit record as oil-shortage fears bite
Petrol prices are set to hit record highs next week after escalating fears of a global oil shortage this winter pushed the price of US crude above $92 a barrel. At one point yesterday US light crude spiralled to $92.22 as world markets reacted to the US Government’s latest sanctions on Iran, a surprise fall in US stockpiles and the kidnapping of six oil workers in Nigeria.Kevin Norrish, analyst at Barclays Capital, said: “The door to $100 a barrel oil is open. It is no longer a question of if but when.” The AA said pump prices were certain to set new records across the UK next week, placing a further strain on motorists who are paying £8.5 million more a day to fill up their cars than in January.
On the other side of the mountain
Is the British government doing enough to prepare for a future of diminishing oil production both internationally and in the North Sea? It seems a timely question as oil reached another record price of $92 yesterday, creeping closer to $100 a barrel.
Raymond J. Learsy: With Oil at Plus $90 Highs Where is the Outrage of the Press!?
It is quite incredible to me, with the price of oil at $90 a barrel plus, how benign the media has been in determining the cause these vertiginous levels. Banalities abound. Its China and India (this even though China's oil imports have been the lowest in 20 months), it's the dollar, its production constraints, its peak oil, its lack of refining capacity (the interlocutor never being asked to explain why if refining capacity is constrained, thereby limiting the consumption of its feedstock-crude oil- the price of crude should go up-Ecomomics 101?). And on.
Peak oil already arrived in 2006
Warnings that the capacity for global oil production is soon to drop off were wrong: it’s not soon, it’s now.
Bacteria species may help ethanol output
Scientists say a new bacteria species discovered in Yellowstone's thermal pools could improve the use of bacteria to produce ethanol.
UN expert seeks to halt biofuel output
A U.N. expert on Friday called the growing practice of converting food crops into biofuel "a crime against humanity," saying it is creating food shortages and price jumps that cause millions of poor people to go hungry.Jean Ziegler, who has been the United Nations' independent expert on the right to food since the position was established in 2000, called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production to halt what he called a growing "catastrophe" for the poor.
Senator: Global warming bill needs work
A bipartisan Senate bill to limit greenhouse gases will have a hard time getting the 60 votes needed to overcome parliamentary roadblocks unless it addresses some of industry's concerns, a Republican senator said Friday.
Dengue fever outbreak hits parts of Asia
The worst outbreak of dengue fever in years has hit Southeast Asia, prompting the World Health Organization to call for better prevention campaigns as experts question whether global warming is partly to blame.
A tax on carbon to cool the planet
Conservative and liberal economists like it. James Connaughton, President Bush's top environmental adviser, backs it. Al Gore says he's always preached it. So why isn't a carbon tax on the table in Congress as it weighs measures to curb climate change? A three-letter reason: T-A-X.
Re: A tax on carbon to cool the planet
If a carbon tax (i.e., ration-by-price) won't work, then I think the only alternative is a true rationing system, with a white market to trade allocations (or allowances, as Obama's plan labels them). Thoughts?
E. Swanson
I think it will come to that. But not until our backs are against the wall.
Not until ~we notice~ that our backs are against the wall..
yes, and for that we have to turn 180 dg, and have a look - b'cus we dont believe anyting before it is right up in our faces ...
"we are held at wall-point.." :-)
"When you've got your back against the wall, you have to turn round and fight!"
- Former British PM John Major
I think that sums up how our politicians are going to deal with peak oil.
But, OUR BACKS ARE AGAINST THE WALL!
We know that the problem is much larger than just Peak Oil, although that is the immediate manifestation. There's climate change as the longer term aspect and in both cases, there's the tremendous inertia of the system which will impede any serious attempts to address the situation. If we really had those 20 years before Peak Oil to implement Hirsch Report Wedges, things might turn out differently, but indications are that It's Too Late!!
The Senate Bill which Lieberman and Warner introduced last week is now on Thomas. I took a quick look at it and I didn't see where the "allowances" actually get passed down to where the rubber meets the road, aka, Joe Sixpack and his kid, Billy Fourwheeler. The bill is apparently directed toward industry. See for yourself (search: S. 2191):
http://thomas.loc.gov/
These guys want to auction the "allowances", which would result in ever higher prices for the consumer and a perpetual upward price spiral, i.e., inflation. Perhaps worse, there will be another layer of emissions regulations for industry. Having an auction for the allowances means that there would provide another way for the big money folks to play "get rich quick", like the stock and futures markets which produced ENRON, Worldcom and Long Term Capital Management. I think the whole approach shows that the market based approach probably won't work. Take notice the names of the other sponsors...
E. Swanson
Its interesting to note that the basis of a modern rationing system would be a secure, authenticated nation ID card system...
This has been noted before in discussions about the proposed UK ID system. Coming soon.
It WILL come to this. - And is a perfect means of societal control.
No ID? - no food.
And more.
If you maintain a large information database on everyone in the country you can determine what they NEED as opposed to want. Piece of cake, only 60million records. No need for a Granny who does 2,000 miles a year to have the same fuel ration as a family man. Keep her ration at 2,000 miles worth for her car and put his at 9,000 miles worth for his. Personalised rations mean no trading on of rations you don't need for things you do.
Hmm, maybe it IS a good idea to use lot now to ensure you keep improved rights to it later. This is good civil service thinking, spend it all this year or you will only get less next time.
If you maintain a large information database on everyone in the country you can determine what they NEED as opposed to want.
Sound like central planning all over again. A tax is much more efficient in that the price system can restrict and allocate resources in a much more dynamic fashion. After all how much gasoline do you give to 100 different factory that makes 100 different chemicals and parts used in various vital industrial process that you as a central planner know nothing about? If the railroad is shipping shoes does it get more gasoline than if it is shipping plastic widgets used in 30 different sub-assemblies of industrial machines that are used to produce other vital goods? The price system figures this all out automatically. This is why the centrally planned economies could never keep up with the west.
Of course, as long as you get your ration and you get to eat you're fine and you'll defend the system to the death because it's where your food comes from.
Unfortunately its one of those myths of a growth economy that a 'free market' is more efficient. Its not. Its just a good way of playing an evolution game on a grand scale, focused around the single core concept of growth and money as a god. Take other measures and its not very efficient or optimum; tax being one of its simplistic minions of control.
It doesn't take long to realise if that god is dethroned, its minion isn't likely to the best choice for the long term either.
It was once said that the chief problem of the old soviet union was that it was born too early. Born today instead and it would be possible to model and deal with the full complexity of the whole economy, top to bottom.
While you can shudder at bureaucrats having those levers, what it does provide for is large scale optimisation around other factors than money. That after all is the purpose of rationing in the first place. The flexibility to shape an economy around other factors means that to a greater or lesser extent it will be tried as its obvious growth can no longer be the thing to lead the direction of the country.
The alternative is for those large scale entities to dissolve.
I would say that a "free market" pricing system is of course inherently more efficient, for all the reasons outlined above.
However, you need a strong central government to enforce that freedom and to create the conditions that make possible the efficiencies that a market economy can provide. If, as in the U.S. and many other places, the government surrenders the control of the free market system to the large actors in the system... they will act rapidly and forcefully to destroy the price signaling system that creates the efficiencies that justify such a system. They will behave like monopolists and monopsonists.
"Free market" advocates usually forget that someone has to set up the stalls, collect the garbage, create/maintain a currency of exchange, and define the rules of fair competition... and that someone had better not be the most powerful player in the market or the market itself quickly disappears. Market creation is an essential role for a large limited power... like a democratically elected government.
The free market is inherently a competition. In a competition there must be winners and losers. The loser is wasted effort, time, resources, money.
What the free market brings is evolution and the distributed ability to explore every niche. But that is funded, and is at the cost of 'efficiency'. Free markets are not efficient, they are essentially blind evolution machines.
As you realise, evolution can be incredibly 'effective' and what is arrived at can eventually be more efficient than a designed mechanism. However they cost in the meantime and can be slow. Its by no means certain that they would be the best approach in a time of decline where attention was placed on things other than money.
As I said, that's the what and why of rationing, and why it gets used at times of limitation.
However, you need a strong central government to enforce that freedom and to create the conditions that make possible the efficiencies that a market economy can provide.
Strong government or working courts?
What is usually lacking in these discussions is the realization that the government is only a subordinate part of the ruling class in a society. If you have a capitalist economy, the capitalists will run the society; after all, they control jobs, finance, education, the media, the election campaigns, etc., etc.. And capitalists will, indeed they must, put the pursuit of profits (to create more capital) ahead the common good (although the two may happen to coincide at times).
In a capitalist society, there cannot be real democracy, since the capitalist ruling class will never allow anything that seriously goes against their basic interests. They will sometimes have to make concessions to the people, because that's where their wealth comes from. Many of the commenters here admit that there must be a lot of planning in a postpeak world to avoid total chaos, but I would submit that the capitalists cannot be trusted to do it for the common good, and the people do not have the power to make them do it. Look at the wonderful democracy we have in the U.S. right now! Government of the people, right? People have to take power and run the government and the economy, and one of our biggest jobs is to educate them to make that possible. (How? Go back and read the Declaration of Independence.) It may even have to be an authoritarian democracy led by scientists and engineers who know what the score is. Impossible? Maybe so, and maybe civilization itself is impossible, too.
Indeed.
"However, you need a strong central government to enforce that freedom and to create the conditions that make possible the efficiencies that a market economy can provide."
Didn't the founding fathers in the US advocate a weak central government and strong local government? That of course has now been eroded...
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
"Didn't the founding fathers in the US advocate a weak central government and strong local government? That of course has now been eroded..."
Yes they did, and we will eventually return to it.
A tax is much more efficient in that the price system can restrict and allocate resources in a much more dynamic fashion. After all how much gasoline do you give to 100 different factory that makes 100 different chemicals and parts used in various vital industrial process that you as a central planner know nothing about?
Any honest economist will tell you that while a competitive market can be efficient*, it doesn't deal with equity at all. A politician in a democracy must be concerned at least somewhat with equitable outcomes -- not too many people must be allowed to fall too far behind. A rationing system can cap the total consumption of gasoline, while still allowing, for example, the working poor or people in rural areas where driving distances are longer to get their few gallons per week. The alternative of, say, gasoline at $20/gal, would not be noticed by Paris Hilton as she drove from club to club, but would force millions of the working poor to quit their jobs, since they simply couldn't afford the gas needed to get there. If rations can be sold, Paris will still get to the clubs, and still pay the high price, but not by pricing a large number of people out of the market entirely.
*When you take graduate-level economics, the micro class spends less than a week proving that a competitive market can produce optimal results, then spends several weeks covering all the ways that the assumptions needed for that proof can fail.
My point is is that when goods are used for their own sake, for consumption, by Paris Hilton or Granny it's easy to divide up the goods evenly. What about though when goods are used to create other goods? For instance what parts should a factory produce? What goods should a freight railroad be used to transport? How many bulldozers should be produced? Multiply that by the complexity of a modern economy and it becomes very easy to make errors and be overwhelmed no matter how moral and well meaning the planners are. Of course in the capitalist system money is used and cost accounting are used to determine all this. Which is why the mechanism for the creation of money is a very very important issue that gets far less attention than it should.
Yes,
there are lots of things you can do with ID cards and the follow-on Ration Cards, both for food and carbon rations and all sorts of other measures.
And the greatest beauty of all is crushing dissent:
No ID Card and you immediately become stateless, a non person. And since the Government issue the card, which remains the property of the State, then the holder of the card becomes...the property of the State.
(BTW as free born Englishman, I am opposed to them, but as a grim realist I know they are coming).
Labour are pushing ahead with them. They call them 'entitlement cards' . This fits neatly with the highly successful world wide con of renaming Citizens as 'Consumers'.
Initially, they will be voluntary.
That will last about two days, when immediately, opening a bank account, or entering a government building, or opening a utility account or getting hospital treatment suddenly requires the presentation of your 'entitlement card'.
No card? - no entitlement.
No card? - no access.
The Tories say they will scrap them if they get in power. This is disingenuous: A) The Tories will find them as equally useful as will Labour (or any other Government) and B) The European Union want then throughout Europe.
We increasingly live in a world where we are to become worker-slaves. A world where ration control of sufficient calories to allow us to work (but not much else) will be the norm. The coming debt - servitude, or indenture; possibly even inherited debt-servitude are almost within reach of the elite now.
At some point after the Second World War, the elite of each nation realised that they actually had more in common with each other than they had with the common ruck of their own nations. At this point, globalisation was offered to the hoi-poloi of each nation as a panacea to world problems and world wars etc.
There are two real nations in the world now.
The Elite
and
The Helots.
Already, it has been mooted that the 'Great and Good' will have their personal data for the up and coming UK ID Card scheme held on a separate data-base...
PS:
And by the way, there will be no place for the middle class in this brave new world.
The Elite - Helot feudal model is perfectly acceptable and pleasant to the Elite.
The evolution of the middle classes, begining as Craft-Guilds in Medieval Cities, and rural Yeoman farmers through to the religious dissenters and recusants of the Renaissance in Northern Europe have always been a pain in the arse for the elite.
People who believe in educating children, getting on, reading books and pamphlets, agitating for a fair share, agitating for the vote are really not required in this new planetary business model.
The Middle Class created lots of troublesome events for the Elite:
English Civil War
Scottish Enlightenment
French Revolution
American Revolution
The repeal of rotten boroughs and Parliamentary Representation of industrial cities
1848
The Russian Revolution.
Poland
If you are in the Elite , why would you let these educated, sassy creatures thrive, when all you really need are 'bent backs' in the potato, cotton and bio-diesel fields...
Lawyers? Dont need Lawyers. If you are the Elite, you ARE the Law.
You might like to consider your list for the average lifespan of any 'elite' group that tries the model. Its usually about 2 weeks longer than the time it takes for people to realise they are on the bottom, their life is getting worse, and there really aren't that many of 'them'.
Not saying someone won't try it, but in the situation of a general decline in circumstances its not a stable approach or a particularly survivable one for those in control.
Playing silly dictator b*ggers is a good way of separating your head from your neck.
It depends...:-)
On your level of total control.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article602888.ece
From The Times
October 17, 2006
The future ascent (and descent) of man
Within 100,000 years the divide between rich and poor could lead to two human sub-species
By Mark Henderson, Science Editor
The mating preferences of the rich, highly educated and well-nourished could ultimately drive their separation into a genetically distinct group that no longer interbreeds with less fortunate human beings, according to Oliver Curry.
Dr Curry, a research associate in the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science of the London School of Economics, speculated that privileged humans might over tens of thousands of years evolve into a “gracile” subspecies, tall, thin, symmetrical, intelligent and creative. The rest would be shorter and stockier, with asymmetric features and lower intelligence
Eloi vs Morlock, Elite vs Helot.
The distinctive physical features may take a wee while, but the cultural separation could occur within a generation, especially with the help of prozac and the like.
Remember, the Eloi were cultivated for the Morlock gourmet palate.
Let them eat cake.
Let them burn perfume.
| The problem will solve itself.
| But not in a nice way.
"Playing silly dictator b*ggers is a good way of separating your head from your neck."
Those North Korean and Burmese thugocrats are 'heading' straight towards the revolutionary guillotine, Real Soon Now.
Right?
Right?
Bueller?
Anyone?
While in the US, we seem to be moving to a "caste system" of all are equal, but some more equal than others:
Feds strike ID deal over NY licenses
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071027/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/immigrant_driver_s...
Hello Mudlogger,
"As a free-born Englishman"??? Are you sure about this? Last I checked Englishmen were not free-born. They are subjects of the Queen by birth and inhabitants of a country which admits no constitution that guarantees them any rights. Unless, of course, you count the Magna Carta which grants you principally three rights -
1) your freedom to belong to the Church of England (but no other religion)
2) ''all the liberties and customs" of the "City of London and all other Boroughts and Ports". Hell knows what this means, but I wouldn't like to be basing a court case on it.
3) Habeas Corpus - the right of any Freeman not be to "condemned or imprisoned" but by "lawful judgement of his peers". Suspended for the first time by the UK government during the Northern Ireland 'Troubles" of the 1970s and also the recent move by Gordon Brown to institute 56 day detention without trial for people suspected of 'terrorism'.
Don't get me weong - I live in England (London) and know all its charms as well as its deficiencies.......
Cuchulainn
Heck...screw the ID card...just put a barcode on our forehead or a microchip in our buttocks at birth!! Who will need another card again in our life? All credit deducted from our centralized monetary account. All personal information loaded (Social Security #, height, weight, parents, etc.) All locations travelled past scanner checkpoints.
This reminds me of some article I once read stating that barcodes on our arms for this purpose would be the arrival of the "sign of the beast".
Actually the ID card will have an RFID chip in it. Comes out May 2008 in the US. That chip can also be put in a grain of rice sized plastic case and injected under the skin.
The microchip can be initialized at minus forty-five thousand dollars, to reflect your share of the public debt. (or whatever your share is)
"No ID Card and you immediately become stateless, a non person. And since the Government issue the card, which remains the property of the State, then the holder of the card becomes...the property of the State."
What do you think we have now?
If you don't have a passport you cannot leave your country or enter another one.
If you don't have a state issued driver's licence you cannot use state owned roads, and if you offend your vehicle can be taken by the state.
When you are born you are given a birth certificate, without which you can't function in the bureaucracy of society.
And so it goes...
We only need those IDs because the state says so. Their necessity is simply to track people, regulate, prosecute, etc... The new ID Card schemes are just a way to increase that control.
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
I will refuse an ID card as long as feasibly possible. NO ID card, No control over me. Hopefully a subculture will exist to circumvent the "system".
http://www.nonationalid.com/
French Revolution/Bastille day ring a bell?
I'm sure there will be a healthy underground/blackmarket business for hackers and forgers that can trick or otherwise falsify the information on the chip/barcodes.