Poverty in the US
 

Ed Huntress wrote:

Anyway, this war is costing a hell of a lot more than anyone will say out in
the open, and stabilizing oil prices, should that even be possible, isn't
worth the loss of lives...forget about the cost in dollars.

--
Ed Huntress





Ed, I don't really believe this mes is about stabalizing oil prices.

I believe it's about securing an oil supply.

Period.


Richard

Poverty in the US
 

"cavelamb himself" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

Anyway, this war is costing a hell of a lot more than anyone will say out
in the open, and stabilizing oil prices, should that even be possible,
isn't worth the loss of lives...forget about the cost in dollars.

--
Ed Huntress



Ed, I don't really believe this mes is about stabalizing oil prices.

I believe it's about securing an oil supply.

Period.


Richard

It's a continuation of the same thing that was going on during the Cold War,
Richard. The West is so dependent upon oil that we're vulnerable as hell.
And there are a lot of people who would like to exploit that vulnerability
by making life miserable for all of us; coercing us into making outrageous
concessions; outright blackmail. During the Cold War it was the Soviets. Now
it's radical Islamists.

And now we have competing doctrines about how to stabilize it, to maintain a
reliable flow of oil at tolerable prices. So we have our hands in the Middle
East, which we poorly understand, under conditions that we can't really
control, fighting a legacy of having screwed it up pretty well. Some of that
screwing up was inevitable under the conditions of the Cold War, and more of
it is the even longer legacy of the Versailles Treaty, but now we're paying
the price.

It could be worse, however. And maybe it will be.

--
Ed Huntress

Poverty in the US
 

On Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:02:43 -0600, cavelamb himself
wrote:

Ed, I don't really believe this mes is about stabalizing oil prices.

I believe it's about securing an oil supply.

Period.


Richard
=================
I'm not Ed, but--

It may well be more about securing an oil supply. If oil hits
150$ or 200$/bbl the major oil companies will cry all the way to
the bank (and may hurt themselves carrying that much money).

The question that must be asked is "why does the US have to have
an *OIL* supply?"

It seems apparent given the huge amounts of money expended [now
estimated at 3 trillion dollars] and 6 years, the US could [and
should] have been well along the road to energy independence
using alternative sources such as solar, tidal, bio, geothermal,
etc. This would not only reduce or eliminate our dependence on
energy imports, and *GREATLY* improve our balance of payments
[trade] deficits, but would stimulate the domestic
[technical/industrial] economy as well addressing a number of
"green" issues.

Why is this not being done?

#1 If the major energy sources were domestically located, the
multinationals would no longer be able to play their transfer
pricing games to shift revenues to secretive tax havens and evade
taxes.

#2 This would bankrupt [or at the very least severely reduce the
cash flow of] some very powerful corporations and people (i.e.
"fat cat" campaign donors). They have "low balled" their
cash-flow/profits and assets for years, thus any compensation
(assuming any is justified) based on "book value" and "earnings"
would have been far below the actual value, and any attempt to
justify the actual value for compensation would (justifiably)
resulted in huge numbers of tax evasion cases and suits for
recovery of evaded property, severance, and franchise taxes, as
well as stockholder suits for back dividends.

#4 Any shift to some form of domestically [US] sourced/produced
energy, even if liquid, would have rendered even more of the oil
company assets such as petrochemical plants obsolete, worth only
scrap value, and also rendering much of their intellectual
property such as polymer patents worthless.


Unka' George [George McDuffee]
-------------------------------------------
He that will not apply new remedies,
must expect new evils:
for Time is the greatest innovator: and
if Time, of course, alter things to the worse,
and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better,
what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman.
Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Poverty in the US
 

Hi Unka' George,

I can't address how things should or shouldn't be.
Or who make a buck and who doesn't.

The simple fact is that we can't change our oil addiction.

That's what our society developed from.

That's what our society runs on.

Nothing else even comes close to the energy and portability of oil
derived fuels.

AND the supply has gotten noticibly harder to supply.



As for the why alternate energies are not being developed?

They are.

But it will never be enough energy to maintain this population level.

Maybe 1950's population levels?

But more likely 1900's levels.

Hopefully!

We are going to take a hit.

The realy question is how hard?