One Neocon's ideas about peak oil
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Hi guys. I am going to come right out and say it : I'm a neo-con. Not an official National Review columnist, that's just who I most agree with. I'm also that rare breed, an atheist neo-con. I know I am massively out-numbered here on the peak oil board by all you anti-neo-cons.
About being a neo-con, the shortest simplest explanation for my beliefs is that someone has to be the hegemonic superpower and it better be the United States rather than Russia or China. Everybody else doesn't care enough (India) or has a pathetic military (North Korea). To run the world we're going to need arms, energy and our friends in power in strategic areas of the world. If you look at inter-hegemonic periods such as between the US and British empire, from the decline beginning with World War One, to the end of World War II, when the U.S emerged as the Hegemon, a lot of bad things happened in between. Lefties like to make the U.S look bad by comparing the U.S to some perfect entity that always makes the right decision everytime and can have its cake and eat it to. To me the standard is not perfection, the standard is the alternative, a world under the sway of a non-U.S hegemon or with multiple evenly matched powers competing for control.
When there isn't a dominant power many countries emerge that try to stake their claim such as Germany, Russia, Japan, and Italy, etc. All of them thought they were going to run the world and all went to war. Peak Oil is going to be an even more screwed up period so better that the U.S is the one running things when the SHTF.
BTW, Global Corporations are not running things. They are very important partners in U.S power though but they are pretty much ideologically unconcerned with what happens to the world as long as they profit. Sure they want money, but guess who has the money? Well money is created when the U.S Government makes little important looking pieces of paper called Treasury Bonds and sells them to the Federal Reserve, The Federal Reserve of course makes money appear out of thin air and deposits it in the government's bank account. Whereby the banks lend it out 10 times in a row, through the wonder of fractional reserve banking. So the corporations really are controlled by the banks, government spending and tax liabilities. Of course us Neo-Cons like it when corporations do well because it increases the amount of military and economic power we have to work with because believe it or not corporations make STUFF and we need stuff to run a military and provide for the standard of living in the U.S.
It seems that anti-americans seem to congregate in gloom and doom sections of the internet whether it be peak oil discussions or bearish investment forums as they are not disturbed and even amenable to a collapse of U.S power.
BUT I DIGRESS
As far as peak oil goes, the U.S military is probably already preparing for peak oil and is going to make sure that we are in control of the worlds energy resources by using our soft power, making friends with the Saudis and Iraqis and Hard Power vs a vs the Iraq War, etc. That's all that really matters. When the SHTF if the U.S is in control of world oil supplies or at least they are being sold in dollars, the U.S is going to be running things, China will collapse in on itself. The U.S has huge reserves of coal which will help us fair better as well.
The U.S military is building Hybrid humvees... Because they care about the environment?! NOT! George Bush and Dick Cheney have Environmentalist fuel efficent solar powered dream homes because they are granola chomping hippies? NOT! Having strong ties to the oil industry, they know what's coming and are preparing for it.
If we keep the free market rolling along when peak oil hits it will help make the best out of a bad situation. There will be huge disruptions no doubt but rationing would be stupid. For instance, rationing away from automobile usage vs agriculture would lead to less fuel efficient agricultural methods and all kind of inefficiencies like how is the guy who knows how to make the fuel efficient tractors or wind generators going to commute to work, etc. How is the guy who makes the parts for his tractor going to get the fuel he needs for his blast furnace, etc, etc. There's a huge web of economic connections that will be destroyed by rationing that would otherwise help create a tidal strength economic push through the economy in all directions leading to alternative energy production and conservation. Anyone wonder why there is a six month wait for Prius hybrids now? Expect immense economic forces to start being unleashed over the next few years. Suburbia is going to implode, people are going to move to cities and concentrate. Air travel will become an exclusive boutique business.
It's going to be a wild ride down, especially when demand destruction hits. China is going to collapse in on itself and be really gruesome as the central planners re-assert and run around like crazy trying to ration the hell out of everything. They are probably going to lash out, which is why we need to keep up the military. I still think the U.S is going to be a good bet for Peak Oil. There's going to be lots of crime and the poor are going to get hit hard, mainly because they will be competing for survival with a lot of other poor people. Whereas they wouldn't have survived in the 18th century, they now live on top of the immense wealth that our industrial civilization provides, but this will soon be pulled out from underneath them.
One last thing, leftist governments were unintentionally wonderful to American power throughout the 20th century. They consumed few natural resources because their centrally planned economies were too disorganized to consume resources at the rates that the market economies of these countries are consuming them now.
Perhaps we'll see socialism reappear in certain areas of the world, if only because the cynical elitists (NOT THE NEO CONS OR THE IDEALISTIC LEFT) want to destroy foreign economies ability to consume resources, the extreme of this being Pol Pot style regiemes that believe that they can revert to pre-industrial agrarian wonderlands. How many barrels of oil a day do you think Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regieme consumed a day? This kind of thing is brewing in Bolivia right now with the racist indigenous movements gaining strength there. I wouldn't be suprised for a lot of Africa to follow this way.
About being a neo-con, the shortest simplest explanation for my beliefs is that someone has to be the hegemonic superpower and it better be the United States rather than Russia or China. Everybody else doesn't care enough (India) or has a pathetic military (North Korea). To run the world we're going to need arms, energy and our friends in power in strategic areas of the world. If you look at inter-hegemonic periods such as between the US and British empire, from the decline beginning with World War One, to the end of World War II, when the U.S emerged as the Hegemon, a lot of bad things happened in between. Lefties like to make the U.S look bad by comparing the U.S to some perfect entity that always makes the right decision everytime and can have its cake and eat it to. To me the standard is not perfection, the standard is the alternative, a world under the sway of a non-U.S hegemon or with multiple evenly matched powers competing for control.
When there isn't a dominant power many countries emerge that try to stake their claim such as Germany, Russia, Japan, and Italy, etc. All of them thought they were going to run the world and all went to war. Peak Oil is going to be an even more screwed up period so better that the U.S is the one running things when the SHTF.
BTW, Global Corporations are not running things. They are very important partners in U.S power though but they are pretty much ideologically unconcerned with what happens to the world as long as they profit. Sure they want money, but guess who has the money? Well money is created when the U.S Government makes little important looking pieces of paper called Treasury Bonds and sells them to the Federal Reserve, The Federal Reserve of course makes money appear out of thin air and deposits it in the government's bank account. Whereby the banks lend it out 10 times in a row, through the wonder of fractional reserve banking. So the corporations really are controlled by the banks, government spending and tax liabilities. Of course us Neo-Cons like it when corporations do well because it increases the amount of military and economic power we have to work with because believe it or not corporations make STUFF and we need stuff to run a military and provide for the standard of living in the U.S.
It seems that anti-americans seem to congregate in gloom and doom sections of the internet whether it be peak oil discussions or bearish investment forums as they are not disturbed and even amenable to a collapse of U.S power.
BUT I DIGRESS
As far as peak oil goes, the U.S military is probably already preparing for peak oil and is going to make sure that we are in control of the worlds energy resources by using our soft power, making friends with the Saudis and Iraqis and Hard Power vs a vs the Iraq War, etc. That's all that really matters. When the SHTF if the U.S is in control of world oil supplies or at least they are being sold in dollars, the U.S is going to be running things, China will collapse in on itself. The U.S has huge reserves of coal which will help us fair better as well.
The U.S military is building Hybrid humvees... Because they care about the environment?! NOT! George Bush and Dick Cheney have Environmentalist fuel efficent solar powered dream homes because they are granola chomping hippies? NOT! Having strong ties to the oil industry, they know what's coming and are preparing for it.
If we keep the free market rolling along when peak oil hits it will help make the best out of a bad situation. There will be huge disruptions no doubt but rationing would be stupid. For instance, rationing away from automobile usage vs agriculture would lead to less fuel efficient agricultural methods and all kind of inefficiencies like how is the guy who knows how to make the fuel efficient tractors or wind generators going to commute to work, etc. How is the guy who makes the parts for his tractor going to get the fuel he needs for his blast furnace, etc, etc. There's a huge web of economic connections that will be destroyed by rationing that would otherwise help create a tidal strength economic push through the economy in all directions leading to alternative energy production and conservation. Anyone wonder why there is a six month wait for Prius hybrids now? Expect immense economic forces to start being unleashed over the next few years. Suburbia is going to implode, people are going to move to cities and concentrate. Air travel will become an exclusive boutique business.
It's going to be a wild ride down, especially when demand destruction hits. China is going to collapse in on itself and be really gruesome as the central planners re-assert and run around like crazy trying to ration the hell out of everything. They are probably going to lash out, which is why we need to keep up the military. I still think the U.S is going to be a good bet for Peak Oil. There's going to be lots of crime and the poor are going to get hit hard, mainly because they will be competing for survival with a lot of other poor people. Whereas they wouldn't have survived in the 18th century, they now live on top of the immense wealth that our industrial civilization provides, but this will soon be pulled out from underneath them.
One last thing, leftist governments were unintentionally wonderful to American power throughout the 20th century. They consumed few natural resources because their centrally planned economies were too disorganized to consume resources at the rates that the market economies of these countries are consuming them now.
Perhaps we'll see socialism reappear in certain areas of the world, if only because the cynical elitists (NOT THE NEO CONS OR THE IDEALISTIC LEFT) want to destroy foreign economies ability to consume resources, the extreme of this being Pol Pot style regiemes that believe that they can revert to pre-industrial agrarian wonderlands. How many barrels of oil a day do you think Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regieme consumed a day? This kind of thing is brewing in Bolivia right now with the racist indigenous movements gaining strength there. I wouldn't be suprised for a lot of Africa to follow this way.