Wednesday's Open Thread
Posted by Heading Out on April 4, 2006 - 10:01pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: peak oil [list all tags]
Since we were asked . . .enjoy
Posted by Heading Out on April 4, 2006 - 10:01pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: peak oil [list all tags]
I'd like to hear people's thoughts on the whole financial, monetary issue - ya know, the whole "If you don't change the way money works, you don't change anything".
And we discussed this back in October in reaction to Peter Huber's book, but I'm sort of looking for some fresh ideas.
If we don't deal with this in some way, the disconnect will continue to skew incentives IMO.
Imagine that 4500 years ago someone very poor put aside as an investment the tiniest grain of silver she could scrape off, and lent it out at 2% annual interest. And imagine that up to the present day, her descendants didn't draw on that store, but kept reinvesting it with the profits in the same way, at the same rate of interest.
Of course, over the great majority of that time, no-one would have lent at anything like so low a rate. But let's stick with my scenario.
By now, that family's hoard of gold would have grown so large, that to create it we would have to turn every single atom in the universe, (we can't observe it any farther even in principle, no matter how big our telescopes) into gold, and then add as many other universes as there are atoms in this one, and turn them all to gold, and still we wouldn't be done.
I should have let her lend at 7%. Still many times less than the lowest rate you could borrow at for most of the time elapsed since then.
Ultimately, lending money and getting back more can be thought of as supported by the growth of the economy. But only in recent years has the economy grown as fast as 2% per year. 4500 years ago the economy was dominated by farming. As argued in economist Robin Hanson's analysis, the economy at that time took about 900 years to double in size, compared to about 20 years today. An appropriate interest rate at that time would have been something like 0.08%. Today the equivalent would be about 3-4%.
Over the time period since 2500 BC, world product has increased by roughly a factor of 50,000. That is a realistic estimate of how much an investment should be expected to grow in that interval of 4500 years. It's a substantial amount but not the extravagant figure you calculated. And it corresponds to using the interest rates above, 0.08% for most of the period, ramping up to 3-4% today.
Even today no investor will settle for 3-4%, though now you can get that with virtually no risk. In ancient times all commercial enterprises, including moneylending, expected huge rates of return, and were correspondingly risky by our standards. From such considerations, Keynes foresaw a future time when real interest rates would reach zero.
If we want to know whether any activity, including interest bearing loan, is sustainable over some time period, we need to consider its real conditions, not those we would prefer in retrospect.
Before anyone can answer you, we have to be clear about terminology.
- Money is just a temporary storage of relative value. If most folk in our society agree that you can exchange 30,000 money units (i.e. US dollars) for a car, then the relative value of the money unit is 1/30,000 of a car.
- I have no idea what Hubbert was referring to by the "culture of money" phrase. It is so ambiguous that it can refer to anything you personally want it to refer to.
- We will always have "money" as a means of exchange because it sure beats the heck out of bartering.
- The problem is not "money" but rather what people in a given society "value". If people do not attribute much "value" to the ability to generate renewable energy and to not emitting CO2; then that is how they value it. If people do highly "value" the ability to impress their neighbors with that shiny,CO2-belching SUV perched on the driveway, then they will demonstrate their "value" system by pricing the SUV and its support structure (oil industry) one way --by not accounting for the true costs of that SUV and its support systems. They will demonstrate their lack of value for a green life by pricing a renewable source (i.e. windmill) another way --by not "accounting" for the positive effects that the windmill has on the environment. It's all in how you pretend to "account" for things or not count them at all. Some of the people who do the counting for us are called Enron accountants. In accountants we trust. To think otherwise is heresy.
None of these are "fresh ideas". It's just a rehash of old ideas. We humans express our value system by making a noise. It is called the "price" noise.Mother Nature does not listen to our "price" noises. There is a finite amount of easily extractable sweet crude and when it's gone, it's gone. There is a finite amount of CO2 that our atmosphere and oceans can absorb, and when that limit is exceeded, it is exceeded. Make all the price noises you want. It won't change Mother Nature's mind. It won't change the scientific facts.
"That, Hubbert says, has been happening since the start of the industrial revolution but it is soon going to end because the amount the matter-energy system can grow is limited while money's growth is not."
Oh brother, here we go again. I am not going to spend much time on this because frankly, it's not worth it.
But, for all practical human purposes, the amount of "matter-energy" is decidedly not limited.
OIL per se, is limited. LIGHT SWEET CRUDE OIL per se is limited. NATURAL GAS per se is limited.
But this planet and the solar system around it is awash in energy.
Humans do not even "scratch the eyeball" of the amount of solar, wind, tidal, lightning, and unknown other forces present in the solar system that are available to us given the right technology and yes, sorry to say it, MONEY.
Our system simply did what any system would do (and for all the left wing utopians, Socialists and Marxists style systems are equally energy intensive if they are "technical" and "modern" in communication and transport, which they MUST be to survive exterior competition), that is, gravitate to the cheapest and easiest fuel source, and then build outward around it. This was not a SIN, it was not IDIOCY, but was simply the normal development that would have been expected. So what's the problem? It is actually a very simple one: To re-steer such a complex system won't be easy...it is much the same problem of trying to steer the Titanic away from an iceberg a mile away...sounds easy, but it took more distance than that to slow or stop such a mammoth device.
This does NOT diminish the real and dangerous problem...it may seem like a technicality but it proved fatal for the passengers of the Titanic.
Likewise, if steering does not begin soon enough for the oil based economies, it could prove fatal for us. (the point of the Hirsch report)
This does not mean the problem is incapable of being resolved (as so many here assert over and over again) but it does mean that steering action should already be underway. It actually is, but the question is, is it enough, soon enough. We don't know, but that should not keep us from cranking on the tiller! :-)
We are on the same page but probably using different words.
Yes, our Titanic Cruise Ship is heading for the Iceberg and yes we need to change course. Problem is that those in charge say, don't worry, the Invisible Hand is upstairs in the steering house taking care of everything. I went upstairs to take a look and there was nobody home. Nobody is steering the ship. It is a mindless machine going on its own unintelligently-designed course straight for the Berg.
Now you say that "we" simply homed in on the "cheapest" energy sources, oil (and before that coal and wood). The word "cheapest" implies that someone is doing a proper accounting of what it "costs" to use oil, or coal or wood. But when you check in on our Enron-era accountants, you find they never accounted for everything. They only accounted for that which makes themselves look good. They served their own "enlightened self-interest" as Adam Smith would have them do. The bottom line is not the bottom line. It's the CYA line. Except now it's our "A" that is going to be on the line as that ship draws ever closer to the Berg's peak.
I like to think that more value (money) is assigned to anything that has higher entropy. In this sense things that are more ordered or complex have higher value. Even precious metals fit this rule because a ring of gold commands more value (money) than a lump of gold.
So converting something to a more ordered/complex form adds value and we assign dollars to it. Energy enters the system to allow us to add complexity to things easily. This happens primarily through the manufacturing process. We make things. Houses, cordless drills, cars, computers, canned food, fishing rods, etc. All those things are more complex than their starting material or individual components. Like wise the components are more complex than their raw materials. And the raw materials are more complex than the raw ores or petroleum products.
All these changes of state require energy input into the system. Hundreds of years ago much of the energy came from muscle power. People used hand saws to cut wood. Now they use power saws. Both the manufacture of the new saw and it's operation use much more energy than a hand saw. To make the hand saw hundreds of years ago metal was smelted with heat and physically hammered and tempered using muscle power at a forge and anvil. Only the heating process consumed vast amounts of fossil energy. The rest of the process was by human or animal muscle power driven by caloric intake of food.
Clearly that hand saw, made by a craftsman, commanded a lot of value for what it allowed people to do. Their was a lot of money assigned to it so that the person who made it could buy his food rather than spend time growing or catching it.
Today we have substituted fossil energy for a lot of the craftsmenship and manufacturing duities that humans used to do. People still build houses but it is a heck of a lot easier using power tools, air nailers, precut lumber, siding, premade windows, etc. All those high entropy tools and materials allow rapid construction. So has the value of a house gone up or gone down with the ability to do things quickly?
I can't answer that, but clearly a continuous supply of fossil energy is required to maintain this system. But where is the value (money) to be assigned in this process? Most of the money used to go to the people that actually built the house, the laborers. Now that value has to be split between the laborers, every supplier of pre made material, the designers, the makers of the tools, etc. The price of the house is now really a price for being able to build a house quickly. And this is all underpinned by huge energy expenditures at every step of the way.
So everything from the smelting of ore to the manufacture of tools to making of windows through to the erection of the house is happening much, much, much faster than it did hundreds of years ago. All of this speed is underpined by energy. In most people eyes money is still being assigned to the physical goods. The tools, appliances, finished lumber, finished houses. All of these things used to be primarily shaped and created by human brains and muscle power but they are not anymore.
Today complex things are almost completely shaped and made by fossil energy expenditure. Most people think that paying people money will get things done. The reality is that we are mostly paying for fossil energy to get these things done. People just hang around and contribute a little bit of direction once in a while. The monetary system is too many layers away from the energy for people to really understand this concept. Too many people have been raised to believe that if they direct money at a problem than people will solve it. The reality is that energy has been solving the problems. And it always did but was easy to see in a person sawing wood or a water wheel grinding wheat.
Human ingenuity has becoming less and less important. I don't see any thing inherently wrong with money. It is just being assigned to the wrong thing. Take away the easy energy of fossil fuels and people, by themselves, are not going to accomplish very much. I personally do not think we are as smart at solving problems as our great, great grand parents were. We almost always substitute energy rather than true problem solving to do things. This leads to very energy innefficient approaches and designs.
The financial systems are blind to this. They assign money to human actions when the money should be assigned to what is lifting everything to complex states. That is energy. Without energy the whole monetary system as we practice it today doesn't work. Applying money to solve problems won't work without energy, or will happen so much slower as to be meaningless compared to today.
But people who primarily or only deal with money transactions have a hard time grasping this concept. Even if you have limited energy to run the computers and banking system their may not be enough energy to run saw mills, bulldozers, milling machines, etc. Without that part of the economy the finance system can not actually do anything. So harnessing energy is where money needs to be focused. But today the focus is on harnessing money, to make more money through, that can be leveraged into more money, through investments to make more money, etc. It is all interest gains in a never ending cycle that refuses to recognize the contribution of energy.
NC,
You and I are saying close to the same thing except that use of the passive verbal form, "being assigned" hides the true cause of our predicament. Money is not on its own "assigned". People assign it. People decide what they "value" more and what they value less.
So if tomorrow, everyone gets this crazy notion that they must have a tulip in their home, the value of tulips will skyrocket. If the day after, the herd changes its "rational" mind and decides that tulips are no longer vogue, tulip "prices" will drop. The "demand" part of supply and demand is not a rational process. It is driven by emotional impulse. Madison Avenue knows that. This is why they use emotional appeals (sex, power, fear) to sell us things.
Right now they are selling us on buying SUV's and mega-homes filled with massive quantities of consumables. This activity causes our "economy" to "grow". Fossil fuels help it grow faster just like lots of rain, sunshine and fertilizer help the weeds grow faster.
There is a manipulation of money for moneys sake. It is no longer a good substitute for the barter system as an exchange medium.
Your Quote: "The financial systems are blind to this."
How sadly true. After the last winter earthquake hit Bam, Iran on Friday, Dec 26, 2003:
http://tinyurl.com/zzkz2
It occurred to me how many people will sadly die of exposure to the bitter cold & wet. I then imagined 'land lifeboats': the most bare, but most effective way to help protect people from the weather elements and hypothermia.
Basically, I envisioned a sturdy, but very lightweight, insulated carbon-fiber or fiberglass 'human cocoon' on bicycle wheels. It would be waterproof, have an additional storage compartment for the bare essentials [water filter, small stove, cooking pot, etc], and have a small solar panel and battery cell to power a heating pad at night. It would be light enough to be pulled by one person, either on foot or behind a bicycle.
So I drew a sketch and went down to my local banker to ask if this is a viable business. He said that people living in mud houses couldn't afford these, and Americans, even after an major earthquake hit, would refuse to live in these 'coffins'. So my dreams of saving lives and being a big business success went nowhere, but I left my card that referred him to Dieoff.com and LATOC, and related books. He has never called me back, yet it seems obvious to me that there will be great demand for these in a postPeak world of wandering migrant field workers. Such is life.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
If you are passionate about your idea you should not take one person's rejection as the final say so. You may flip his criticisms around (if they are valid) and see them as suggestions of how to improve on your idea. Maybe the US government (FEMA) might be willing to fund your idea? Maybe you are on to something except it needs further development. For example what if a bunch of your survival bikes could be modularly hooked together to make a large tent for many people? There are some interesting ideas and possibility buried in your initial proposal. However, before you post your ideas on a public forum like this one perhaps you should talk to a patent attorney or agent. Inventing is hard hard work. Turning it into a viable business model is even harder. But that is no reason to give up. (Someone on TOD earlier posted some quote by Churchill about knowing that you are on the right track when things start to feel like hell and that is when you must develop the resolve to march forward even harder.)
Thxs for responding. I don't believe anything is patentable: the wheel, solar panel, battery, fiberglass, heating pad, sleeping bag, etc, have all been done before. My initial goal was to make it, as cheap as possible using existing tech, so production could quickly be ramped up. I don't even care about patent royalties, just a modest stock position would be fine: I am more interested in saving lives, and providing minimal, but highly ruggedized, portable postPeak habitat. I sent a email to the city council detailing this idea for the Phx homeless-- no reply. I think they prefer the poor struggling to live out of wobbly grocery carts and cardboard shelters in the dry river bottoms and alleys. Can't have the rich tourists being exposed to the unpleasant side of life.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Best,
Matt
You say, "I don't care about patent royalties." That's what they ALL say until some other yahoo makes a million off the idea and gets all the females!
I recommend the Nolo series books. They have one about patenting your own ideas. It's not an easy thing to do, but it can be done.
Best,
Matt
I don't have your email address, but I think this is a fantastic idea. Mostly I think it is because I had almost the exact same idea myself! Genetically mutated minds think alike I say. I even went and reasearched what it would cost to create one myself. A sturdy bike with one of those bike trailers, slide out solar panels, etc.
I don't have your email addy and you don't have it posted on the info page but email me and let's talk.
I would think there would be a market for this type of thing after Katrina, Rita, etc. I would totally buy one myself. It's like the ultimate sustainable bug out vehicle!
I want mine in all black with some cool name like "snake" or "ghostrider" blazened in on the side and chrome spinning wheels to impress the local females.
Best,
Matt
I was rereading your excellent post and this quote tickled my imagination:
NC: "I personally do not think we are as smart at solving problems as our great, great grand parents were. We almost always substitute energy rather than true problem solving to do things. This leads to very energy inefficient approaches and designs."
It occurred to me that this is exactly what we are doing with our prison systems! In the olden days, the prisoners were forced to grow their own food within the prison confines-- to be a self-sustaining biosolar habitat.
Nowadays, most prisoners sit in their cells watching TV or even playing videogames. We powered up the prison system, when it would be much better to power it down!
It would save tremendous taxdollars and provide future post-prison skills for these felons if they were earlier forced to adapt to biosolar lifestyles. They, by being early adopters, would encounter prePeak, many of the kinks that normal society will have to learn postPeak. They can learn to be permaculturists, humanure engineers, install solar PV and water heating, animal husbandry, leather tanning and blacksmithing skills, total disassembley and careful recycling techniques of fossil fueled generated items, and building super-efficient housing from locally available resources [adobe bricks, rammed earth housing, housing made from recycled items, etc]. Best of all, the prison guards could almost be considered the first inductees for my surmised Earthmarine vanguard.
Arizona alone has 35,000 prisoners currently incarcerated, living off the taxpayers' funds. Their housing is very energy intensive and bleak: http://tinyurl.com/ljo75
I think it would be far better to expand the land around a prison system, and then green it up. Let them grow switchgrass for biofuels at a minimum. Comments, TODers?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
So, would it be fair to say, that the "biosolars" would be forced to support the "earthmarines", who would rule over them?
Thxs for responding.
This is a highly complex problem that I have not thought through all the details and ramifications. Basically, the detritovores need to pay to support the Earthmarine protection of the biosolars, just as taxpayers now pay for the Secret Service protection of the President. The continued use of detritus [fossil fuel] allows a leveraged surplus that the biosolars will never be able to afford from their initial efforts. But some kind of system needs to be setup to protect the biosolars from being overrun until the detritovores decline to postPeak energetic parity with the biosolars or below.
If the NW & NE parts of the US secede to become biosolars, it is like the creation of the first wildlife preserves for humans. If they gradually become large enough in expanding their territory and techniques to create a small surplus of biosolar generated goods, when the energy parity point is reached vis-a-vis the detritovores, the Earthmarines will be highly incentivized to protect the biosolars even more.
The Earthmarines will necessarily be highly educated and understanding of Dieoff.com concepts: they will know that plundering the biosolars would be the worst thing they could do, their efforts will be solely focused on keeping the eventual starving detritovores from invading and stupidly plundering the biosolar habitat.
Our current economic system is optimized to expand the detritus 'spiderweb' everywhere, but we know this cannot continue. We need to start creating a biosolar 'spiderweb', and my proposal of choking fossil fuel production would create an economic incentive for the oil companies, yet also allow the increased profits to be siphoned off to be EXCLUSIVELY USED for funding this biosolar web.
Just the President announcing this kind of funding system would send billions to TOD, LATOC, Dieoff.com and other websites to find what is going on. Once the unwashed masses understood the necessity of biosolar habitats, they would gladly continue to pay their taxes because NOW it is finally being spent wisely for a postPeak world. Or so I hope-- it is my proposal to minimize postPeak violence as much as possible, but I am 'permeable', as Stuart says, to better suggestions. It seems almost impossible at this point in time, but who knows? Maybe, just maybe, we will get lucky.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Being a fast-crash Doomer, I am inclined to agree, but I am always trying to prod people to consider less dire alternatives. It will be up to the combined aggregate will of the masses as to how our future goes.
The curious thing about Peakoil is that doomers sounding the alarm creates an Powerdown impetus that delays the downslope, but optimists, by saying Peakoil will be no big deal, only hastens the downslope as the masses ignore Powerdown. It's like an inverse psychological function--very ironic to me.
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Women were disenfranchised, as were black or Native American men. Over time women and people of color have been formally included as citizens, but more importantly than this, we have not effectively the role of concentrated wealth in control of our culture and government.
A second book (and movie) related to this is "The Corporation" (book by Joel Bakan). The rise of the corporation -- and corporatism -- have much to do with the way concentrated wealth has been protected from democratic innovation. In a way, human culture has been innoculated against economic democracy by very limited political democracy.
Behind this is the reality that our concept of wealth and our ways of measuring wealth are essentially superstitious. Human systems of understanding and measuring wealth have to do with concentration of wealth and economic control of the many by the few.
If we measure wealth in terms of making "liberty and justice for all" our standard, then we are very poor. If we measure wealth in terms of the ability of a few to grow wealthy without regard to the common good or to "liberty and justice for all" then we are a wealthy species.
Finally, we concieve of wealth as something one (or many)can accumulate without understanding or regard for the larger ecosystem. Permaculturalists on the other hand view the ecosystem as a dynamic resource to be understood and tended while harvesting only the energy income one can understand how to harvest without destroying the ecosystem itself. Wealth is a dynamic living wisdom in this understanding, and not capable of being measured by money or commodity.
So the economic system we have is simply obsolete.
However, those who benefit the most from the system are mostly unable to see any flaws with it, and are hysterically afraid to consider the possibility of devloping any alternatives.
A few people are working on "parecon" and other ideas for transformation, but these don't make tons of profit for Wall Street, and so stand a snowball's chance in Hell of being considered seriously unless we have a big fat "market failure" which shows the error of our current ways. It is possible that enough people could lose faith in our current ideas of wealth to insist that we try something different.
Why are we not working at ways to bring economic democracy to the world? Follow the money.
There is a relationship between energy and money (duh?). Energy is a quantitative abstraction just as (exchange) value is. Value is the amount of human labor power embodied in a commodity. Energy, the physicists tell us, is the ability to do work, e.g. lifting a 1 lb brick a foot high. Energy is contained in oil, gas, wood, etc. Each of these is a commodity and requires a certain amount of labor power to extract from the earth (which includes the labor embodied in all the machinery and ships and so forth employed in extracting it).
But still, what's the difference between human labor power (expended over time) and energy? Insofar as it is a matter of lifting bricks, there ISN'T ANY! But of course you must feed the human laborer, which food he or she converts (inefficiently) into brick lifting energy. Up to this point, a human is no different from a horse, which can also supply energy to lift bricks.
The horse is actually much more efficient at providing energy for brick lifting than humans, and horses don't have a clue as to how to grow oats. So having humans grow oats to feed the horses so the horses can supply the energy to lift the bricks is a far better deal. A better deal still is to have humans collect oil and gas that can be used to power machines that lift the bricks. And now the gas and oil can be used to power the machines the drill for and transport the oil and gas.
The end result of all of this is that energy becomes cheaper and cheaper, meaning there is less and less human labor power embodied in each barrel or whatever.
Ah, what is money? Money is also a commodity (gold, silver, linen, etc) and embodies a certain amount of human labor power. (Let's not get into credit money and all that at this point.) So cheaper energy means less labor power embodied in a barrel which means less gold (embodied labor power) per barrel.
BUT, what happens if the amount of labor power needed to gather up each barrel of oil begins to increase, because, just say, it's deeper in the earth, more soldier manpower (labor power) is needed to protect each barrel, and that none of this is completely compensated for by improved technique or machinery? THEN energy is going to become more expensive, and each barrel will embody more labor power. And since this energy is used in the production of all other commodities, they will ALL go up in price in accordance with the increased amount of human labor power embodied in them.
Well, so what?
Now we have to go beyond money. What is capital? Money is not necessarily capital and existed prior to capital, and was used simply to facilitate exchange. But modern industrial capital arose with the separation of the laborer from the means of production. A laborer now sells his ability to labor for 8 hours say, to the captialist, but he is compensated with commodities (or money to buy the commodities) that embody only 4 hours of work. The 4 hours difference (surplus value), embodied in commodities, is in turn exchanged for money, which is in turn invested in more means of production, including labor power, etc. The whole cycle is the movement of capital, money which is "invested", not to mediate an exchange, but to increase its value, profit. Money is money, and the sole point is increase.
Now we come to the whole point. Modern industrial capitalism is built around the profit motive. What happens to profit when the price of energy reverses its long term trend, and begins going up? It means that the share of total human labor power going to energy acquisition goes up. It means that the total amount of human labor power available for the production of consumption commodities and production commodities (machinery)
goes down. Yet the amount of labor embodied in production commodities involved in extraction must go up. So therefore the amount of labor power available for use commodities and the production commodities used in their production must go down.
The end result must be highly destructive not only to labor, but also to those sections of capital that are suppliers of the mass consumption market. The capital devoted to energy acquisition, production and protection will grow ever larger at the expense of all else. The amount of capital left to supply consumer needs will shrivel up.
In the end, the capital invested in energy production, distribution and security will dominate and starve out all else -- until such a point is reached as the capital invested in energy is itself threatened with collapse by lack of the human and other infrastructure needed for its continued existence.
One last thing. I mentioned credit money, like the dollar for example. The dollar used to be backed by gold, then only partly, then not at all. However, it was in a very real sense backed by Saudi oil. We are now not only witnessing a competing credit money, the euro, but oil itself is become monetized. Venezuela is bartering oil for doctors and much else, entirely sidestepping the "international currency". But regular barter in a certain commodity is a big step toward monetization of that commodity. This is no small threat to the dollar. As oil becomes monetized, the dollar weakens, except insofar as the US is able to control oil. This monetization of oil empowers the possessors of oil, because they can not only barter for oil -- they can get credit.
At some point, the US is going to turn south and try to reverse this whole trend. Chavez knows this.
Also, nearly everything has become a "financial instrument" first, and what it is only incidently.
A home is no longer valued as a home, but as a financial instrument to be gotten as cheaply as possible and sold as dearly as possible.
The same goes for a barrel of oil.
So we have become an economy of traders who are making money not from creating work of real value, but by trying to scam some moey on both ends of a deal.
The banking system with the debt-based economy has thrown another monkey wrench into things. We must have more debt for the economy to "grow." No creation of wealth, just more debt.
This is true of our measures like GDP as well. If Johnny breaks a window that's great because it creates a need for product and services. If Katrina blows away the GOM, that's good because it creates a need for goods and services. To quote Enron's "Kenny Boy" Lay, "It's all good!"
So our economy is divorced from reality. If one is going to choose not to be wed to reality, one is going to find that reality just cannot be denied.
Hubbert was getting at this divorce of economics from reality. We consume and toxify and call it "economic growth." It is not economic, nor is it growth. It is simply a long, slow, suicide trip.
I do not know what I am, but I ride tricycles that can carry several hundred pounds, and I plan to die poor, naked, and happy to have lived. I also get a kick out of helping others, especially the next generations, as best I can. I must be a clown.
If I were an economist, I would be a Doomer or a Cornucopian, and either way would probably live with a nagging anxiety, lots of toys, and a nose full of cocaine.
The economy is a lie woven to bind and enslave the masses for the benefit of the few. Until we truly democratise the human household budget and harmonise it with the larger multi-species household, we won't be able to claim to understand economics.
Chavez nationalizes two oil fields
Some Snippets:
and this one:
A theater was presenting a variety show, with each act even better than the one before. I happened that a fire broke out backstage. The manager came forward to warn the audience of the danger. The audience, supposing this to be part of the show, applauded. When he tried to warn them again, they just applauded more enthusiastically. So will the world end, with all the wits supposing it is a joke.
If you want to see a preview of things to come, check out this letter to the Billings Gazette, and the comments underneath. A sampling:
The Point is people shouldnt have to change there life style just because the price of gas is high.
Have any of you sent letters to your congressment or to the Prez to tell them we are sick and tired of the gouging? I went on a one woman campaign last year. Sent letters every day to Mr. Prez. Did it do a bit of good? I doubt it. They just said, "Drive less." Well, if I drove any less, I'd be walking and it's too dang far to town!
These people are in for a very rude awakening.
RR