Jack wrote:As for people from the north - if they wish to stroll through Houston on a pleasant summer day with the temperature at 101 and the humidity at 99%, far be it from me to dissuade them. As they have their heat stroke, perhaps they should be reminded to toughen up.
Wear shorts. It gets that hot in Michigan and with high humidity - I used to go running at 1am in Michigan in August shirtless because it was 80 and humid. What do you think it was like in the day? 90-100 and humid . . . I know cause I ran at 3pm also. In between I worked a full shift. Honestly, vegitating around in AC houses, cars and malls is not normal for humans and it really needn't be that way.
And I know you don't care about less fortunate countries or anyone who you consider whining etc . . . oh well.
_________________________________________
Blistered Whippet - I understand the scenario you are outlining. I do think on the timescale of nation building the changes will come quite quickly after we have passed the peak by several years. But until then I think you can expect a slow tightening of slack.
When the changes start coming quickly it's anyones guess whether you will see self reinforcing collapse or a series of breaks with subsequent semiadequate solution followed by more breaks etc. There isn't much way to be sure. This is seen quite often in mathematical modeling of complex systems . . . when you vary some constant then at some lower values you may find the system responding to pressure without breaking . . . and then beyond some particular critical value for this constant it destabilizes so that the system collapses under significant pressure.
So in short I see no reason why this should happen all at once. I think it more likely that PO will hit the mainstream conciousness in waves - "Oil might be running out" then "never fear technology is here" then "current technical solutions have not slowed oil prices" then "recession kills demand growth" then "economic recovery stalled by rising energy prices" etc etc
By their resistance to change the dumb wall streeters have managed to build in some resistance to crashes. Puts and Calls especially have lowered volatility . . . that's why the oil prices seem to behave so strangely on occasion - there are certain resistances built in to the market. Turns out the perfectly efficienct market idea was unhealthy for brokers.
I'm going to cogitate on your "those who fear anarchy will lost their democracy" [what democracy?]