Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Explore a hypothetical with me

An Empirical Fact is: "Pertaining to, or founded upon, experiment or experience."

Your hypothetical is based upon "Peak Oil" which has been predicting such a thing for two or three generations now.

Fact, oil is finite.

Fact, the source of the earth's energy--the Sun--is also finite.

Problem: Humans have been solving problems for a very long time. Humans will be forced to solve the next one. In order to do so, personal liberty is necessary. The Soviets has resources and order-- but lacked personal liberty--and thus inventions to solve their problems.

The day you, Jeff, were born, the iPhone was a fantasy-science fiction. Today, its "normal".

When one discounts humanity, one is bound to fail.

BMT

It cannot be over-emphasized that the problem is COST. The COST of this liquid energy will go exponential as production declines and demand stats high.

The cost of energy is a major structural element of the globally economy. Hell... it's THE major structural element.

When it fails- and it will- everything changes. It will make the current endless recession seem like a bad joke. There will be massive societal upheaval. So- perhaps one thing that changes is as Will says. We remove the parasitic financial class. Currently, speculators add .80� to the retail cost of a gallon of gas. There's an obvious one.

So to my point- what political theory, what political movement or party, is most likely to say this, to actually attempt to remove the parasitic parts of the finance sector

We have a 100 year supply of coal that we are not allowed to touch and sufficient domestic oil for other purposes.

We also have wind power going online and nuclear. Pleayy of energy by political forces (many from the peak oil crowd) won't let us use it.

BMT

Agreed. But freedom to allow folks to invent, and profit from their inventions, is what makes change.

Witness: Thomas Edison.

Not some CZAR from the Politburo telling everyone to have 1 child.

BMT

Who's not allowed to touch it?

My god every time I go home I pass be another mountain that has been blown straight to hell in the process of removing coal. I see trains with hundreds of box cars loaded to the brim with prime bituminous pass me by on the way down New River.

I don't know where they ain't allowed to dig it but it sure the hell ain't in my old stomping grounds. :p

Will

Beautiful! And true.

But you still don't get it. It's ok, we are so "of the era" that it's very difficult to imagine otherwise.

Who buys an iPhone when an economy is in such turmoil that the basics- such as how to afford food when you've lost your job because the company you worked for went under because nobody buys their widgets because everybody can barely afford food?

Who can afford to commute to work from the suburbs at $20/gal?

Transporting goods cheaply is the most basic element of the global economy. Look around you. Virtually everything you own, is directly traceable to CHEAP OIL.

So- will humanity prevail? Yes we will. But it's going to get very ugly first for a very long time.

So given this premise how do politics play out? How do the positions of the current parties dovetail with this?

$20 per gallon-No problem--Work at home via computer.

Cost of transportation increases? CHINA loses. Imports decrease.

CHINA will have turmoil, famine and death. We produce enough food, with Transportation costs HIGH, foreign imports go DOWN.

Canning (versus frozen foods) goes up. Fruit is irradiated and stored in Pure Nitrogen.

These solutions exist today, but CHEAP TRANSPORTATION keeps them at bay.

Did you know that band-aids are s irradiated?

BMT

"Peak coal" is just as real. Again, it's COST. We've picked the low hanging fruit, things just get more expensive from here. Same with natural gas.

And coal isn't cheap, portable, and dense (all three). It can't fly planes, power cars, or container ships (practically speaking).

Nuclear is a good one. Guys who hate it- like me- are going to have to just STFU. But it still doesn't provide for cheap transportation of goods.

China will have those things. We are in a better position by far.

Which doesn't change what I'm saying. Long, deep, dark recession. Decades long. Deeper than anyone can imagine.

Does classic liberalism or conservatism show a way forward? Seems to me both have the assumption that things are more or less stable and "normal".

Works for the Navy . . . . .

And most Trains are ELECTICAL with Diesel generators.

BMT

Promotion of personal freedom breeds SOLUTIONS to problems.

Cannot be shown to have worked under any Monarchy or Communist system.

BMT

We have enough coal to power the US for several centuries to come.

so, what do we globalist humans need? we need cheap, or available food, cheap clothing, cotton, or otherwise. wool, down, etc. etc. are not bad, in a cold climate.

and of course shelter. waterproof shelter, with a central htg system. now, we're talking.

would all of those attributes be down in the Heart of Texas??

+1

They're closing down lots of coal burning plants, and plan to close down the rest of them by making it too expensive for them to remain in operation.

A clue.

so, should we release all humans to go with the flow? or should we work to keep them bottled up within various countries?

seriously, what are the advantages and disadvantages about or related to such choices??

i mean, we've got the Euro, the Yen, the Chinese Yuan, and the Peso.

the Peso, you say?

Start your own thread.

This one is JO's

Gus, did you forget your anti-psychotic today?

I knew it, blame the Mexicans