Firstly, good job on all the comments; I'm enjoying the feedback, hopefully everyone else is as well. I'll have some real comments on it, well, soon.
Secondly, does anyone out there really doubt that, in 50 years, when the history of the oil age is being written, our children are going to look back at us, and the way we've allowed the megapetrocorps to completely dominate large sectors of our economy, in much the same way we look back and laugh at how the coal barons were allowed to make up their own rules in the late 1800's?
Okay, fine, we don't literally have gas mines where the employees are forced to work 80 hours a week for slave wages, then only allowed to spend their meager earnings at the company store. Although maybe we should, so we had something useful to do with all those damn teenagers, who clearly shouldn't be allowed to run free; do we still have salt mines? So things are better. At the same time, would any of us be surprised if it eventually comes out that the current 'supply crisis' is not entirely legitimate, and there might be a wee bit of supply restrictions going on, just as Enron did in California with electricity?
I'm not a hystericist. I don't support silly boycots of Exxon gas stations. And, frankly, high gas prices are good. People should drive less, or, at the least, the cost of gas should more closely reflect the true economic costs, with regards to pollution, infrastructure upkeep, and some potential future costs as a result of global warm...er....climate change. The problem is, by failing to do anything useful back when gas prices were relatively cheap, you allow patterns to be set. Now people are pretty much stuck with their 40-mile commutes, and their exurban McMansions, and it's going to be a long time before high gas prices can really put a dent in that. As we say when teaching young Ultimate players, it's much easier to form a good habit then to break a bad one, and we've allowed ourselves to form some pretty damn bad habits.
The long-term solution to this is a reduction in demand. It's the only thing that will work. But it's not quite as easy as saying 'drive less.' I'm in favor of a carbon tax, again because that helps reflect the true costs of emitting a ton of CO2, but given the extremely regressive nature of such a tax, it has to be finagled quite a bit to get it to work.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
"then only allowed to spend their meager earnings at the company store."
Actually that was what happened with Enron. Everyone put all of their retirement investment into the company, probably much more than they should put into retirement in general, then the guy went laughing all the way to the bank, then the courthouse, then hell... but the last two parts didn't really work out as he planned.
Well, this is true, but at least it's not quite as blatantly exploitative. The Enron employees chose to believe their CEO when he told them that all was great, and they would all be fantastically wealthy. They let their greed and desire for more wealth, now , to overwhelm their more prudent desire for a safer, but less potentially lucrative, plan. Bad story, but not so bad as what we saw 100 years back.
Interesting.. my major concern is not necessarily with the petrocorps, but rather with how incredibly influential large business is IN GENERAL in the way our society is run. Mind you, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Ayn Rand capitalist, but at some level the folks in government are supposed to be generally SMARTER than the ordinary people, and should be doing things that are best for society in the long run, even if that means maybe shaving a point or two off the GDP for this quarter. Right?
Post a Comment