energy / economy

[dingo]

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/8350#more


The crisis in money is related to the crisis in energy, the environment, and everything else. The difficulty in finding a substitute for oil, for example, is born of economics. Imagine what we could have accomplished if the millions of scientific careers and hundreds of billions of dollars that have been devoted to petroleum and nuclear power over the last fifty years had gone instead into developing "alternative" energy technologies. Imagine if, at the dawn of the environmental movement in the 1960s, we had launched a global scientific effort exceeding that devoted to the space race to create a pollution-free society. It did not happen, and with good reason: there was no money in it (given the kind of money system we have had). Compared to the technologies of Big Energy, there is little profit to be made in the alternatives. The alternatives are not conducive to economic growth, and will never flourish in a money system that compels and depends on growth.

Sunlight, wind, conservation, geothermal energy, and more controversial technologies like cold fusion, Bedini/Bearden devices, and so forth share an important characteristic in common. Their energy source is more or less ubiquitous, so that users needn't be dependent on an ongoing supply of scarce fuel. They are, in an important sense, abundant. This feature puts them at odds with our money system, which depends on the creation and maintenance of scarcity. To profit from something, say energy, it must be scarce: high-tech pharmaceuticals, for example, rather than ubiquitous weeds and folk medicine.

The same is true of information; hence the strenuous efforts of music, book, and film publishers to create artificial scarcity in digital content through copy protections and intellectual property law. They are fighting a losing battle: when the marginal cost of production for any product approaches zero, the natural price point tends toward zero as well. The first copy of Microsoft Word costs hundreds of millions of dollars to produce, but each subsequent copy costs virtually nothing.

[steve74baywin]

Do you know what you stated fits in my view?
They do want and need something they can control and charge you for.
Some call what we have now a "Free range human livestock system".
Before people could see the walls of the kingdom. Now they do it via the need for dollars.
They have to have a way to get people to labor in this system. They have dreams and visions for the world and they have given the people the illusion of freedom. They use things like oil, monthly electric bills, cable bills, taxes, fines, fees, and the continuing desire for more goods to get the people to labor. The need for dollars is great, and it is devaluing piece of paper. It is a controlling tool.
Humans are the most valuable resource on the planet.

I don't want to hijack, but here is a 13 minute video.
The Story of Your Enslavement
http://www.youtube.com/freedomainradio# ... bp6umQT58A

[Amskeptic]

The crisis in money is related to the crisis in energy, the environment, and everything else.

Oil is the Miracle Party Juice. It has allowed us to party hearty for almost 100 years now. We do not comprehend oil as the miracle energy it is. To see modern civilization blow through this irreplaceable high energy juice so utterly hedonistically is frightening. Our food supply! depends on oil! not just in distribution, but in actually growing it. Meanwhile, we are not investing in transition. Look at our leaders in Washington. They are puny in the face of the impending challenges.
Colin

[dingo]

what i got out of the article was that, in our current version of capitalistic system, progress only occurs where profit beckons..thus any headway in the energy sector is severely restricted by the need to demonstrate 'growth'

[Amskeptic]

what i got out of the article was that, in our current version of capitalistic system, progress only occurs where profit beckons..thus any headway in the energy sector is severely restricted by the need to demonstrate 'growth'

The weakness of capitalism is becoming more apparent as the need to act for the common good becomes ever more pressing. It is a variation of the theme, eat or be eaten in the natural world. Researchers keep finding altruism in surprising places. We need to revisit "survival of the fittest" and try to understand that there is a more complex reality where balance is the key to survival. The "market" is clueless.
Colin

[glasseye]

I'd suggest we read up on the history of the TVA or the Rural Electrification Program. Those were not Libertarian, market-driven initiatives, they were socialism, pure and simple.