>Hi Jay, > >In actual fact, corporations have been regulated in the past, certain >environmental advances were accomplished in the past via regulation, and >there are still certain social services too. And whenever the bourgeoisie >felt sufficiently threatened, as in wartime for example, it will introduce am >additional amount of regulation, often of the harshest nature. This >regulation will be, of course, capitalist regulation, that rewards >capitalists and squeezes the masses.
Joseph, Thank you for your comprehensive reply. I believe we are in general agreement. I was not aware of Flannery's book and will get a copy. I have read some of his other work and admire him greatly. I would like to ask this group one more question. You may have discussed it before I joined the group... Here is the question: What will our government (the US) do when the price of oil is high enough to prevent us from exiting an economic recession? Will we simply send our military to "go fetch" (occupy the oil fields in the Middle East or Africa and ship the oil directly home bypassing the market altogether)? Jay ------- BACKGROUND See my earlier comments in this thread about the increasing energy cost of energy. The increasing energy cost of energy is one component in the "declining productivity of money" [ see the charts below ] Our (the US) infrastructure was built with the requirement for oil and automobiles. Unfortunately, no combination of alternate energies can replace oil and allow our present way of life to continue (see recent study below). Moreover, not enough energy remains to rebuild our infrastructure around alternate energy availability. Without enough oil -- plus a shortage of water on the horizon -- tens of millions of Americans will probably have to relocate out of our deserts to survive. Within a couple of years, the price of oil reaches a number ($140 bbl?) that throws our economy back into a recession. Eventually it becomes obvious to everyone that here the US, "capitalism as usual" is over because we cannot produce enough goods and services to buy the oil we need to exit a recession. DECLINING PRODUCTIVITY OF MONEY http://tinyurl.com/y9kc42r http://tinyurl.com/2berho5 http://tinyurl.com/2369c22 PEAK OIL http://tinyurl.com/33qz6rh RENEWABLES New renewables paper by Ted Trainer http://jayhanson.us/_Energy/TrainerRenewables.pdf a b s t r a c t Virtually all current discussion of climate change and energy problems proceeds on the assumption that technical solutions are possible within basically affluent-consumer societies. There is however a substantial case that this assumption is mistaken. This case derives from a consideration of the scale of the tasks and of the limits of non-carbon energy sources, focusing especially on the need for redundant capacity in winter. The first line of argument is to do with the extremely high capital cost of the supply system that would be required, and the second is to do with the problems set by the intermittency of renewable sources. It is concluded that the general climate change and energy problem cannot be solved without large scale reductions in rates of economic production and consumption, and therefore without transition to fundamentally different social structures and systems. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
