TLDR: Petrol fuel energy has been at the center of enclosure politics and foreclosing on the American people and now the rest of the world seems to be leaving the US behind over it. Since 1970 it has resulted in the theft of the American people's standard of living and quality of life. The time to begin complete divestiture petrol fuel/energy was the early 1950s waiting this needless 70 years means there is now no choice, no more waiting is possible. ------------------------------- In 1970 about 3/4 of US GDP went to workers. Recently about only about 1/3 went to workers and these are workers that are 4x as productive with the difference in the interim and currently accruing the to a top that contributes less than ever. In 1970 a family with one income had job security and that one income was enough to raise 5 kids, and pay off a home. Reasonable retirement was a given. Medical bankruptcy was un-heard of- as county systems were like single payer. That one income was enough to put 5 kids through the university without debt. In 1970 there was social mobility and the expectation of one's children having an even better standard of living than one's self. Now with 2 incomes we have none of those things and are told that none of it is practical or that it was the result of 3 prior golden decades having something vaguely to do with WWII. In the 30's Maynard Keynes said at some point the economic problem (scarcity) would be solved and that capitalism would be over and by implication the role of capital would cease. That point came earlier than predicted around 1970. At that time and in spite of the low economic efficiency of petrol, the economic profession recognized that the economic problem had been solved. Many in the profession were advocating high indexed GAIs to keep the peace in light of what would foreseeably ensue. In response the Right planned to reintroduce scarcity or in essence create artificial scarcity and a phony economy and have people living in denial for as long as possible. In short it was a plan to go back to the plantation in order to keep obsolete capital seemingly relevant in the face of obsolete labor and hide all of this. The change/recognition was real and presumably it was part of why the USSR essentially peacefully dissolved 20 years later. This change or its recognition signaled to the world that the West was in fact itself a totally planned centralized top down economy which had long been the core criticism of the USSR. It was known even then that most large corporates were pure welfare cases living off the tax base for essentially all of their profits and dividends- that tax was and had always been the primary creator of demand and tax was the real force behind money the coercive element that made fiat tangible enough to be believed in- but in light of the prescribed GAI's what justification would there be for maintaining an oppressive leisure class when everyone was going to be a member? It was around this time that the Powell memo came out, describing a business based fascism, a society for the sake of business. In retrospect its seems the Right's plan to take us back to the plantation involved a few elements. Wages were delinked from inflation. Media was captured by sponsorship enabling lobbying or bribery based capture of law which was then used to push on the technocrats to shift the tax burden downward- really a nullification of the vote or a mass censorship- the vote through sponsor capture of media would become a matter of bribery and pre-filtering candidates and so also would law. Unions were captured with agency shops, and civil rights and labor leaders were killed off. Despite a problematic gold standard the currency which already had a fiat basis was unnecessarily pegged or tied to petrol (petrol dollar) and there was a double down on petrol as the core of the economy precisely for its scarcity inducing economic features and this was the heart of the strategy to create artificial scarcity and longer hours and lower wages to tread mill people into exhaustion and non-resistance. The economics of petrol and its cumulative effects are so bad, that despite petrol getting us to the modern era, these terrible economics could be used to hollow out the public sector financially to hold it in check so it couldn't in turn check defunct capital. In essence it was coup. It must have been around 1950 that policy people started to questions the economics and prospects of petrol especially in light of fission power becoming available and the role petrol played in the dynamics of WWII. Presumably, the peak oil thesis was a manifestation of these questions. Why was petrol never in the black? Why did it always need subsidies radically in excess of revenues? Why even with these radical subsidies was it always in need of huge amounts of debt, amounts that would prove to be cumulatively destabilizing? Why were its externalities so high and so concentrating and cumulative? Continued-
Continued- It seems the answer was very low economic efficiency based on very low physical efficiency which would otherwise become intolerable in the light of almost recognized alternative. The massive vertical integration and draw of so much resource for what would be increasingly be less and less return was apparently not a limited supply issue, but a permanent feature and Debeers type limits were just part of the deception. One clue to the terrible inefficiency can be seen in the physical function of the early petrol era Watt steam engine, having 1% efficiency, so that out of 100 lbs of fuel only 1lbs would be used for work like moving a train down the tracks. But similar inefficiencies run throughout the whole supply and use chain with petrol. Petrol has to be found, fought for (excuse for Machiavellian politics, preemptive wars and imperialism,) extracted, defended, shipped, stored, refined, shipped again, stored, retailed, combusted (a far from solid state process,) driven around some more, and allowed to contaminate everything with heat pollution, water pollution, air pollution and resultant bodily injury (e.g. lead in the gas with crime ripple, and in general cancer and lung damage) and allowed to drive shortages of food and water that drive political instability and existential risk of nuclear war. Its ironic that if like France and Japan the world had prioritized fission and possibly hydrogen and electric trains/trolleys nuclear proliferation might be much less today despite probably wider fission use- Gen 3 breeder reactor use might have helped mitigate issues as well. For comparison today's battery backed solar is already better than what was was dreamed of with hot fusion at almost any latitude. The electrons come to you. You don't have to pay for them. They are clean. With batteries overcoming intermittency they are incredibly reliable in their delivery and if they aren't its over anyway. Intermittency has been solved (need for hydro back up is a sham issue.) The mechanism of capture, storage and transmission is solid state- and generally very little transmission is required. Roof top solar plus battery solves grid infrastructure issues and growth pressure. The storage and capture mechanisms are on a Moore's law cost reduction curve and are already 1/4 the parity price of built out, at scale, mature petrol and will drop on energy production basis to almost zero or cheaper than the cost of transmission even through high power super conducting lines- again with roof top solar not much transmission will be needed and is itself another further cost reduction. The production costs are rock steady for a few decades at a time as there is no resupply issues that are subject to wars, and speculation and availability. Also, the materials used for construction are as abundant as sand and lead (lithium is more abundant than lead- and it is only a starter material.) Further, the externality costs are essentially gone and green energy decentralizes and hardens against petrol created disaster and compliments the solutions for petrol induced loss of snow pack with viable sources of energy for desalinization etc. As this tech takes the strain off infrastructure it addresses urban sprawl with tech like electric autonomy vehicles- electric is the only appropriate match for autonomy. Still further, the supply is truly vast with no limit on access with access being universal, maybe 13% of the roof-tops in the US would replace heating, industry, and transport energy uses or all energy uses and electrification appears to be a complete quick replacement for petrol even in shipping and aviation. Economic efficiency on green energy is said to be 90% plus efficient or surplus inducing whereas petrol is 13% and never higher for long and can't be higher in practice or theory short of having the kind of tech that would obviate the need for petrol as an energy source in the first place. This low efficiency is scarcity inducing. Petrol is like us pushing our cars down the street, or like cars driving around with 1000 lbs of lead in the trunk or like someone who drank nothing but vodka during their youth attempting to continue that practice into middle age. Defacto Petrol Bail Outs: Patent suppression law - aimed at stopping tech that could disrupt petrol bilking Korean War Mosaedgh Coup in Iran Vietnam War Pegging dollar to petrol or petrol dollar creation Oil Embargo- a coup against the US Ouster of Carter (learning of the embargo coup he nationalized US oil profit for a decade- hence his ouster) Chrysler bailout Iran Contra Iraq 1 Bush/Cheny Selection and secret energy policy meetings Enron 911 Theft of 2 trillon from treasury also missing DOD monies Iran II Liquidation of private pensions and attack on social security Afghanistan Holding hostage public pensions with stranded petrol assets and derivatives- blind insurance of that junk debt. Petrol derivative induced financial collapse and 20 trillion in TARP Budget Sequestration process Bailout of GM & FCA 311 Libya Additional 500 billion a year added to US defense budget- just more petrol subsidy welfare Trump selection Attempts to gut EPA standards and restart Key Stone disaster Trump Tariffs: (petrol economy cannot compete against green economy lower cost of goods) This last point on the new US tariffs shows the US as an economy that would attempt to compete with petrol against economies that would have almost free energy given them a insurmountable strategic advantage as they cut the cord on the pump hose. Tariffs come into play when they can't false flag their way out anymore ( i.e., invasion of Iran to try to re-inflate petrol mind share) as with the 07 collapse being blamed on loans to the poor these tariffs to protect bad petrol investments said to be to help workers. If we had gone to high indexed GAIs with a more ecological base, if memory serves something like 1700 Trillion in today's since 1970 would have accrued to American families and really its missing and is due immediately with interest all of it to be charged to defunct capital and its estates and trusts. We could have had radically better ecology. We could have avoided so many useless wars and unnecessary risk and the existential risk petrol has created. We could have avoided a corrupting 15% of the global economy accruing to useless petrol wealth every year for last 50 years- guessing energy would have been less than 1% of the global product annually. We would have avoided assertions of what amount to landed hereditary wealth with petrol as an excuse. With petrol we are literally deposing a despotic monarchy, a petrarchy that spans the globe. Worth noting again that petrol's supply may not be limited in the relative sense such as with a Thorium radio decay source but just as with getting an efficient reasonable sequestration for new petrol fuel energy- even in combination its irrelevant, none of that matters or helps its economics or politics.
