Only drink the good stuff. Today on Zorba Paster's “On Your Health” show on NPR he affirmed that premium vodka has less chance of giving you a hangover because of less esters. I prefer Chopin vodka because I am slightly intolerant of gluten - it's made from potatoes.

I'm afraid that somewhere along the line between implementing your ELP and living a healthier life with no debt would be the collapse of the worlwide economy, war, societal collapse, then a re-ordering of society-- THEN the living healthier debt free bit!! (if you are still alive)!

Marco.

I make exactly this point with others who side with forever growth approach. They see ANY limitation on growth, particularly a choice to not participate in the growth of consumerism, for which the growth and consumerism reign supreme as a "threat."

I recently pointed out to one advocate of "unlimited fossil fuels" who wishes to claim that we don't know how much fossil fuel is available that even if that is true, we can put some limit on "unlimited fossil fuels" for the planet Earth. If the solid part of the planet was nothing but fossil fuels, we know that it could be no more than a slightly oblate speroid of approximately 7900 miles in diameter. We know the mass (Newton, Einstein) but would have to ignore a number of issues associated with gravitational effects. Yet, no one actually thinks the the planet is nothing but fossil fuels.

But this aside, knowing how much mass must be fossil fuels, with unrestrained growth (no peak resource constraints which they also don't believe in the manner of Julian Simon) you consume the entire amss of the Earth in less than 800 years (at 2.6% growth). For this I am seen, by this group of people, as a "doom and gloomer." Yet these are mathematical consequences and being informed, these people are making the "informed choice" to run headlong into destruction.

So, what is the downside? They won't make more money because of mindless growth and consumerism. To them, that is a very serious downside because without that their skill sets would put them back into the fields as farm laborers.

The challenge remains that the MSM embraces CERA and the "Yerginites" with such vigor. Ed Wallace, on a major Dallas radio station yesterday, was quoting the revised CERA study that all's well that will end well and we don't have to worry about PO until at least 2035! This guy is a well thought of "Car" guy in the Dallas area and is frequently quoted in the Dallas press. I am sure I heard a big sigh of relief echoing from North Dallas and Plano area as he reassured everyone to keep on motoring and that life as "they" know it will never end. John

WT writes: "So, if you are a member of the Yerginite Community, and you maintained your long distance SUV commute to and from your suburban McMortgage, and the Yeginites continue to be wrong, what is the downside?"

Westexas: This is an observation and it borders on being content free. You appear to be risk aversive and speak to a risk aversive community. Yergin on the other hand appears to be risk accepting and speaks to a risk accepting community. Or at least speaks to a community with more experience in gaging and coping with risk than the readers of TOD.

So the key appears to be how well can one gage and cope with risk. That's not me by the way. I'm risk aversive too.

But I can see how large differences in estimating risk could evolve from differences in the learned skills of coping with risk. And I can see how Yerginites and their community could gage risk wrong and still have the ability to make money.

But that is something that is largely unique to humans. To a tree or a cat gold would be of no interest whatsoever. A magpie on the other hand would take a piece of gold, just because it is shiny, but there aren't many species that would do this.

Even though gold never rusts, it is far too soft to be of any use as a tool - for that bronze and iron worked much better. And even neolithic cultures had interest in gold (apparently as jewelry of some sort). Some cultures used gold to make religious icons of one sort or another, which implies that trade wasn't the primary motive for collecting the stuff..

There must be something deep in the human mind that draws us to shiny objects...

I think silver should be worth more than gold. Its reflective, an exceleent conductor of heat and electricity and has anti bacterial properties, its a useful catalyst and can be used in batteries. Pretty useful stuff to have around, keeps the warewolvess from the door too.

all of the above are true, so far as they go.

But the Native Americans in the Sierra Nevada foothills could not have been ignorant of gold -- it was all over in their creeks. I believe they were part of a rather wide-ranging trading system, and they certainly had a material culture that included the concept of "wealth." But until the '49ers, the gold just lay there for millenia.

Indo-Europeans have always favored gold, and some of the North and Central American tribes were apparently intoxicated by it. But I'm not entirely sure that addiction to gold is universal in the human psyche.

Re Gold:

Take a look at the graph of gold prices way back to 1450 . Mid way down this article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XGOOYRHTQ5GV5QFIQ...

I wonder if these South American natives drink petroleum. The free market at work! Make these useless lazy village dwellers work for the good of capitalism! Christopher Columbus knew the value of good work ethic. So what if it killed you - the economy grew.

You've never been searched.
SOP.

Actually, I think potable wealth will be ethanol.

Sorry, sorry.

The notion that it has 'intrinsic' value is IMO nonsense.

Your statement is what is nonsense. Gold is very valuable as a medium of exchange. That is it has value as utility, the state or quality of being useful. This gives it intristic value.

Ron Patterson

I wish I could find a link to this rather - strange - feature of gold, since it's going to sound sorta airheaded and loopy: As a grad student at Stanford (ca. 1980), I heard a talk in the Chem Dept. by a visiting heavyweight about his computational analysis of metallic structures in electromagnetic fields. It's all highly dependent on geometry, so he chose as a model system a random collection of spheres that were suspended with about one diameter of free space between them over a substrate of the same material. The near-optical impedance characteristics of some metals are such that when the incident EM wavelength is on the order of a sphere diameter, the spaces between the spheres can see changes to the magnitude of the electric field of a million-fold. What struck me about the results were the metals that fell into the two distinct categories: Gold, silver, and copper amplified the interstitial electric field, while lead, iron, and InSb attenuated it, and the changes could be huge. Once again, this applies to the high-frequency EM impedance characteristics of certain metals, which may or may not influence the bioelectric fields of nearby people. But it makes me wonder, what with all the gold-hilted, leaded-iron swords that have been crafted and treasured over the centuries.

From Wikipedia...BTW, touch stones are still in common use among jewelers in the East...But, when I mentioned touch stone to a long time jeweler in town I got a blank look.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchstone

Use of the touchstone revolutionized the concept of money. Use of the touchstone in Ancient Greece and Anatolia dates to circa 500 BC. The fourth century philosopher Theophrastus in the tract de lapidibus (On Stones) described the testing of gold by fire or by the touchstone.

Prior to its introduction gold and silver were common currencies, but these could easily be alloyed with a less expensive metal (tin and lead were common). These were less valuable, but it was difficult to test for. The invention of touchstone made it possible to test for such forgeries quickly and efficiently, and also to determine the relative value of different alloys. That paved the road for gold and silver to become standard equivalents of value, and eventually to government-issued currency which began as coins of pre-probed alloys and weights guaranteed by the mint