Ludwig, all you posts of late have had a highly defamatory nature. It is standard green operating procedure to portray a critic as extreme etc. And you are no exception. Your sidesteps feigning incredulity are legend. To spell out my last post, just for you, all the talk about scaling back economic activity to reduce oil consumption or Greenhouse emissions avoids any consideration of the likely consequences. You argue for a sacrifice based on a vague and highly speculative threat and then simply sidestep the fact that such drastic cutbacks will have a devastating impact, mostly on the poor. The reality is, though, that a decimated economy will mean a major decline in government expenditure as well and you did not answer my simple question, what areas of government expenditure would YOU cut to make the adjustment?

Maybe this will help (or hinder?):

Basically, economics used to be a pretty good way of organising society.

Economics used imaginary stuff (money) to transact the relative merits of real stuff across time and distance. Money allowed a store of "value", so that perishable goods might be fairly exchanged for non-perishables.

Unfortunately, economics has been captured by human desires. It no longer represents what is naturally possible. Classical economics has broken free of the laws of physics and has, by slow degrees, become a standalone belief system.

A cult.

We plebs now live in a cargo cult, while the (oh, so successful) "haves" will be Rapture Ready, if only, if ONLY they could stash another million imaginary dollars. Then all will be well and all will be well and all will be well.

Amen.

If the nation's books don't balance, the Federal Treasurer just rules another column in the ledger and calls it "time-delimited reverse-stepover negatively-geared foreign-exchange deposit bonds", or somesuch nonsense. With a straight face (mostly), the high priest fiddles pseudo-scientifically, like a dabbler in astrology.

* * *

Like most people, I am unable to see how we might circumvent this economy thingie when it runs out of gas. It's really hard when that system is all you have known for your entire life. I am pretty sure of this though:

1. The geniuses who built the economy forgot to install a reverse gear.

2. The economy is a barbed-wire canoe. When it starts to go under, it will drown those who insist on keeping it afloat

In the article, Chris said "Would you think me a jester if I said that the one true currency is energy? It always was and always will be. "

Technically, the 'currency' is the desire to use energy, represented by dollars. Not the energy itself. The perception of supply helps to determine the price, but what the PTB are playing with is the perception, not the actual supply. When they take Iraq out of the supply, the perception of the supply goes way down, and the price goes way up. As time goes on, the desire to buy the energy goes down somewhat, but the supply changes slowly. As long as the perception of the supply changes, that's all that matters on the commodities boards.

The population explosion of the 20th century was fueled by cheap oil. Now that the PTB want oil to be expensive, what plans have they already laid for the population problem?

"It's not me." -Martin Blank in "Grosse Pointe Blank"

Continued...sorry.
I forgot to say that the donut is the oil and the desire for oil is the hole. Unfortunately, we are being ruled by the hole, not the donut. You can watch the oil all you want, but the real issue here is the behavior of the human race in response to its own actions. If we spend too much time watching the donuts and not enough time looking in the mirror, we won't understand that all the PTB have thier power because we still buy the donuts just so we can poke our finger in the hole and entertain ourselves.
There isn't going to be enough donuts, since they are just grease fried in oil, unless we start the Soylent Green plant pretty soon.
What is the Net Creativity of the human race going to be? Surely we can do a better job of individually evaluating the things we do, the usefulness we contribute to the universe, and how many of us there needs to be without 'Them' to sell us a plan or a corporation.