Collapse of What?
Posted: Wed 07 Dec 2016, 20:15:43
I was just posting this in the ETP thread, and I thought rather than diverting attention away from ETP my further thought might warrant a seperate thread.
"The split between the "real economy" that delivers real things for us to use and real services that help us to improve our lives and the "financial economy" that delivers what? is IMO a real symptom of Peak Oil.
Unlike some here who thought the 2008 crash was the result of the housing crisis and NINJA loans and MBS and had nothing to with Peak Oil, it has always been my belief that the housing crisis and NINJA loans and MBS were a result of Peak Oil and the increasing difficulties in finding ways to make real profits delivering real goods and services.
The decline in Energy density per unit of GDP has many reasons not the least being the outsourcing of the real economy to the far east and eastern europe. It's also linked to the growth in the services sector which is often superfluous to real human needs.
The problem is that the real economy is what delivers things that people need to survive stuff like food and shelter and water and transport and that's the stuff that needs energy.
Can the financial sector continue to grow without the real economy delivering the stuff that people need? I really don't know. I don't think it can, but I didn't foresee a recovery following the last crash, if it can be called a recovery. What I do know is that the real economy has to continue to support life and for that it needs an energy source. I also see a rise in poverty with poor housing, foodbanks, health cuts despite debt levels continuing to increase.
The ETP model helps to explain what's happening and is admittedly counter intuitive to conventional economic theory. It does however seem to fit in with whats been happening in the Oil industry and the overall economy. "
Could it be that the collapse that the ETP predicts due to it just not being worth extracting might be the collapse of Global Capitalism.
I still believe that Oil has a utility value that makes it worth extracting because of its Energy density. I realise there would be massive consequences which might well result in massive population decline, but might it be that post PO might actually be a more localised set of economies that use existing infrastructure and resources to prolong some kind of semblance of civilisation.
I asked a similar question previously, but didn't really get a response that clarified the situation in my mind. Could we end up with a series of competing command economies fighting to squeeze the last drops of oil out of the Earths crust to help sustain their local populations. A sort of nation state level Mad Max?
"The split between the "real economy" that delivers real things for us to use and real services that help us to improve our lives and the "financial economy" that delivers what? is IMO a real symptom of Peak Oil.
Unlike some here who thought the 2008 crash was the result of the housing crisis and NINJA loans and MBS and had nothing to with Peak Oil, it has always been my belief that the housing crisis and NINJA loans and MBS were a result of Peak Oil and the increasing difficulties in finding ways to make real profits delivering real goods and services.
The decline in Energy density per unit of GDP has many reasons not the least being the outsourcing of the real economy to the far east and eastern europe. It's also linked to the growth in the services sector which is often superfluous to real human needs.
The problem is that the real economy is what delivers things that people need to survive stuff like food and shelter and water and transport and that's the stuff that needs energy.
Can the financial sector continue to grow without the real economy delivering the stuff that people need? I really don't know. I don't think it can, but I didn't foresee a recovery following the last crash, if it can be called a recovery. What I do know is that the real economy has to continue to support life and for that it needs an energy source. I also see a rise in poverty with poor housing, foodbanks, health cuts despite debt levels continuing to increase.
The ETP model helps to explain what's happening and is admittedly counter intuitive to conventional economic theory. It does however seem to fit in with whats been happening in the Oil industry and the overall economy. "
Could it be that the collapse that the ETP predicts due to it just not being worth extracting might be the collapse of Global Capitalism.
I still believe that Oil has a utility value that makes it worth extracting because of its Energy density. I realise there would be massive consequences which might well result in massive population decline, but might it be that post PO might actually be a more localised set of economies that use existing infrastructure and resources to prolong some kind of semblance of civilisation.
I asked a similar question previously, but didn't really get a response that clarified the situation in my mind. Could we end up with a series of competing command economies fighting to squeeze the last drops of oil out of the Earths crust to help sustain their local populations. A sort of nation state level Mad Max?