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Everybody seems to be attracted like moths to a candle by the two doomer keyposts today. While I don't mind some of that, its both improbable and unremittingly gloomy. IMHO, association witk survivalist sorts is why peakists get labeled a cult. Way too many doomers/survivalists are in fact dangerous psychopaths-the latest was the man in Las Vegas who taped himself having sex with a three year old, but it goes back in US history as long as I am aware. They go from the apocalypse sorts like Warren Jeffs and Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, to the Unibomber squirrel and Timothy McVeigh. I don't know if this type of philosophy attracts them, or that if a certain type of paranoid is attracted to visions of the world on fire. The Iranian suicide bombers with their vision of the 12th Imman seem to have them too.
The other thing thats possible is that so much of people's lives are spinning out of control that its easier to focus on a fantasy than to admit that we are all scared and powerless. Look at this key post. I'm lucky in that I'm in oil exploration and prices are rising, but if I love my home and don't want to move to Argentina or Costa Rica (true most mornings) there's really not much I can do for the 17 months, and there's no telling what that bunch is going to do. Attack Iran and murder a few million more? Short the market first and take the cash overseas and into gold, stored on their Paraguayan fiefdoms? Dare the world to come after them with the Praetorian Guards from Blackwater and tactical nukes, keeping the rest of their army at Dubai in the new Haliburton headquarters?
Bah, Humbug, I can get seduced into this craziness too!
And I know its happening.Part of and possibly most of the oil field manufacturing has moved from factories and machine shops in oil field towns like Houston and Fort Worth to where its just assembly of foreign parts and a US sales force. The oil patch equipment is made closer to where that bulky, hard to ship stuff is used. I don't know if the industries are going to survive this new downturn in boom times caused by the narcistic management style cutivated by the corporate-owned media. The guy who owned the local machine shop with 30 good paying jobs being a hero at church and at the little league game of the kids he'd bought shirts for has been replaced by the cost-cutting accountant who ships the jobs overseas. Bob Ebersole
Oilmanbob, I'm kind of with you on the doomer thing, I think the doomers go too far. There may be a collapse but it's looking like a relatively slow motion collapse (or maybe that's just the way it looks when you're in the middle of it). One correction (I'm sure you didn't intentionally make this mistake), the psycho in Las Vegas didn't "have sex" with a 3-year old, he raped her.
All I know is that its evil, violent and inexcusable to do that kind of thing to a baby.
Bob Ebersole
Almost as bad as economic analysis heh?
SW
Rape & tape is the norm for that sort - then they pass 'em around. There is a sort of barter economy - gotta prove you're one of the in crowd before they're willing to share.
I used to teach computer forensics to police officers. The first time I did it I was quite surprised at how little they cared for anything security related and how fascinated they were with means to automatically find and review images. I didn't really know what they dealt with ... so I asked during a break ... and stopped the guy after about thirty seconds - it was just too frightful.
Yeah, cause THAT is really representative of the typical Peak Oil doomer . . .
This latest salvo by the media to paint all survivalists as pedophiles is not unintentional. Their masters require that they discredit good work such as yours.
That's a useful term, "doomer." It's essential to many religions: There's one way to heaven, and every other road leads to doom. Even people who think they're not religious in the slightest get seduced by that general scheme. Then it's used backwards: If things are basically going well, why then we must be on the road to heaven; if things aren't, then the road to hell. So a lot of the "political" arguments are really this sort of religious attempt to read the tea leaves in some god's cup, and deduce from them just which particular road is the one true way, and whether we're collectively on it.
This of course is essentially nonsense. There are many, many ways forward that will essentially be good for the greater number of people. The quest shouldn't be for the one true way, but for any of those ways which are good. Very few ways lead to utter and irrevocable disaster - there are some, and we must of course avoid them at all cost, but they aren't remotely in the majority, let alone every single way but the one true one.
So now it costs more to spend dollars in Europe. Is this a reality of things out of balance, or is it a fairly accurate reflection of Europe's being governed better at present, both in government and in businesses? Strong social programs survive. Check. Executives are not wildly overpaid. Check. Many of the advantages US businesses used to enjoy have been learned from, and applied to some success. Check.
The euro has earned its strength. America is being punished by the currency markets for its relative idiocy. America may even take a lesson from this turn, institute things like universal health care and caps on executive compensation, and surpass Europe again in a few decades. Meanwhile, it was okay living in Europe even when the dollar was much stronger; it can be okay living in the US when the euro is much stronger.
"Everybody seems to be attracted like moths to a candle by the two doomer keyposts today"
What doomer keyposts? Did I miss something :)
I find the financial / macroeconomy posts quite a change of pace for myself. Finance trends come and go. Businesses are cyclical.
I can live with that, even if it puts a crunch on my wallet. I've lived through one hard depression. Yes, job was hard to find. Yes, I couldn't afford a lot. Yet, here I am, alive and well, more than 15 years later.
Peak oil however, may not be such a cyclical thing that comes to pass in 7 years (not necessarily anyway). At least not in my life time.
I'm all for more of these distracting posts on finance, economy and other normally cyclical events :)
I do agree with you on one thing though: collapse (if any) of complex societies is a multi-generational act in slow-motion (ref: Tainter's work on this). Societies tend not to collapse overnight and personally I find Mad Max type scenarios amusing at times, and annoying at other times.
Tell that to the ghosts of those who died at Chaco Canyon as that entire native American civilization destroyed itself. Mad Max? Ha! At least in Mad Max they didn't eat you.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert Bartlett
Into the Grey Zone
A note on slow motion.
It is relative. If you talk every change in the financial markets to death each and every day then it is slow motion. If you are going to work and supporting a family and one day the price of beer is $15 a liter than it is lightning quick.
Tim