Because I care about my loyal minions, despite vicious and rude rumors to the contrary, I will reply to a comment section question not with a full blown article but merely to half of one. Okay, the first half to one and the second half to another. My point here, if I might be allowed to get to it without a bunch of snickers and snide asides from the peanut gallery, is that I know how sensitive you are about Peak Oil ( Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World
) and so I’m graciously limiting myself on the subject. I could easily become just another Peak Oil site but as I have said before, I easily amuse but quickly grow bored. I don’t like being a one track ( or is it tract? ) record. Not that you are grateful. I start screaming about the sky falling over grain availability and you get tired of hearing about that. Yet as soon as I go back to Peak Oil you grow weary over that. You don’t have to worry about my staying on economics as I myself got a bit tired of that subject. And now I can’t blather on and on over the beauty and wonderfulness and goshdarn perfectness of the bestest battle rifle ever, the Lee-Enfield ( The Lee Enfield Number Four Rifles (British firearms)
) because now it is too damn expensive. Now it is only for the rich or fanatics. Remember this moment, a sad day that should live in infamy. The Enfield went from being available to the masses to only being affordable to collectors. Soon, we will step back in time to the Clinton era militia movement as we all arm ourselves with commie crap. But enough of guns, damn you all. *
Why do I strongly believe in Peak Oil? I mean, besides the fact that with a growing population using a finite resource, you are guaranteed to run out. Besides the fact that as exporting nations increase their populations they export less to us so they can provide for their own people. Besides the fact that a contracting economy, due to being able to import less oil due to the following, is in no position to buy the oil it needs, which further contracts the economy in a reinforcing downward cycle. Despite the rapidly contracting availability of energy rich carbon fuels and their being substituted with low energy fuels such as tar sand ( Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Revised and Updated Edition
) and ethanol. The main reason to believe that the end of cheap and affordable energy will happen is that the seer that forecast it was already proven correct. H. King gave us the bell curve of oil production in the mid-1950’s and told us that the US would reach its peak of production in 1970. And it did. His math gives global peak between 2000 and 2005. You can already look in the rear view mirror and see global production entered the flat plateau of production in 2005. Peak Oil has already happened. It is already here. I wrote a booklet about it in 2006 ( nothing original on my part- based on others research ) and nothing has happened since to invalidate that. No, the taps didn’t dry up. What has happened is that the supply has stopped growing. Our whole economy, based on exponential growth in all aspects, can only work when the energy supply grows. That is now over. It is the CHEAP and ABUNDANT part of our oil supply that is what we should focus on, not the total supply. The experts were wrong in the 50’s and they are wrong again. Telling you half the supply still remains doesn’t help our contracting economy, nor tell you the undesirability of what is left. Case closed, we are indeed all going to die. Let the games begin ( wait a few years, if you think Obammy is bad ).*
On to the next brushfire I have to put out. It would be a lot easier on me if you would all just treat me as a deity ( Running from the Deity: A Pip & Flinx Adventure (Adventures of Pip and Flinx)
), write down all I murmur for the sake of prosperity, and take everything I say as gospel. But, noooo! You have to actually think for yourself and ask pertinent questions. Damn you. The whole question on who is really poor and who is just crying po. I call myself poor, melting under a flood of my own tears every time my paycheck shows half evaporate from deductions. Yeh, well, my ex-wife sheds plenty of tears herself over her deplorable conditions of “only” making $30 a year, five grand tax free from me, a Social Security ( Social Security: The Phony Crisis
) payment from the husband she killed off of at least several hundred bucks a month and a house payment of only a few hundred. My parents, with two full time jobs, two SS checks and another state pension, are buried by their living conditions. A mortgage is their only debt, but at age 65-71, their supplemental medical insurance is astronomical. As in, more than I bring home from work and writing, just on that one expense. Hell, I don’t feel poor compared to them. And those minions living on the river working part time, they feel poor compared to me as I spend ridiculous amounts of money on books. And Third World peasants living on top of a mound of garbage would kill that guy for half of what he makes. It isn’t what you make that makes you poor. It isn’t even your income in relation to living expenses, to a certain point. I think what makes you feel poor is lack of options to better yourself. Making a hundred grand a year and no where to go from a mortgage and wife in the SUV, you feel poor. On the gerbil wheel with no exit. *
So, yes, I just cry po. I could immediately halve my expenses with minimal disruptions. I don’t feel poor because I have a huge amount of flexibility. Did I feel this way two years ago, living in a trailer park( White Trash Etiquette: The Definitive Guide to Upscale Trailer Park Manners
)? No. I had zero wiggle room in my paycheck. I was working full time with five hours of overtime every single week. If my writing didn’t bring in some money I was in trouble. All to pay rent, to live on the grid. Junk land living ( or, if conditions work for you, squatting ) gave you freedom. You couldn’t offer me your paycheck if it came with your mortgage. But, hey, you have central heat and cable TV. Congratulations on your comfortable cage.END
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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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10 comments:
It's one-track, like a one way railroad track.
The most expensive thing about a Lee-Enfield is not the initial purchase price. It is the shoulder replacement surgery you may need.
Hieronymous again, the rhymes-with-Anonymous fool.
Good post today. Your take on Peak Oil is short, sweet, and gets the REAL point, that it's not all oil gone, it's merely the stopping of growth in "produced" (gotten out of the ground) oil that's going to kill our highly leveraged society. We don't live on resources, our way of life has been based on GROWTH of "production" of resources. This has been the case since King George used to have prime trees in America marked with the Royal broad arrow symbol, to be saved for British ship masts. It didn't even start with oil, it started with the gobbling up of the "New World". That's where our worldview, our religion of progress started.
SMLE's $500-odd now, It's amazing. What's a Moisin now, $300-$400? It's crazy. A Mini-14, a politically-correct "Ranch Rifle" would cost me $700-$800 these days. Guns are NOT going to get cheaper, this is why your advice to at least get one that sips ammo is so solid.
And I'm sure I've seen it thus defined somewhere else, but thanks for your reminder that poor = lack of degrees of freedom. Under the old rules, yes you'd be considered poor and I'd be financially subterranean, but you have much more freedom than many making the vaunted "6 figures" and even I have a lot of free time to develop skills and well, just enjoy life.
Just, as I always say, make your preps for when your job goes away buddy. When that happens, you probably won't be able to simply be a client of the food bank you work for, it will be gone.
Bison, I hope you'll talk more about that commie crap, the PiecesOS the mall ninjas think is che and mao wrapped in one. Shitin' their pants they'll smell like a ruptured thousand year old chinie egg.
Mountain rifleman
"But, noooo! You have to actually think for yourself and ask pertinent questions."
I don't have to ask questions, my lord. Does this mean that I get a Super Secret Bison Decoder Ring (TM)?
Oh Great and Wise Orcalce, Oracle,
please allow me to comment. OK, its not quite as bad as you think. We still have dirty oil, we still have the military to steal what we can't buy. We still have nuclear weapons to blow everyone up with. The problems isn't the lack of oil, but to many people consuming to much. I suspect we will see a culling of the unwise in the next five years. We can't breathe the air, or eat the food, we have to buy special non-chemically treated clothing. I foresee a toxic enviornment with a tipping point in the next three to five years. But, Oh Great One, look for a major culling soon, even worse then the AIDS in Africa.
jim if you maintain your job and lifstyle you will probabley be upper middle class in 5 to 10 years the way the economy is sinking and everyone elses finances are tanking.i own a gas station /store and the only reason gas prices are falling is lack of demand now if the economy improves gas will shoot up and will crush any growth. as much as i hate to say it looks like KUNTSLERS rollercoaster prediction in the long emergancy is happening.SO IF YOU DONT HAVE PREPS I HOPE YOU FOLKS HAVE CEMETARY PLOTS.
I think a lack of knowledge makes you poor. Consider the typical inner city leech. The only thing the leech knows is how to drink, smoke dope, sell dope, father multitudes of kids that I pay for, bitch that his entitlements are too paltry, and hate me due to my color. Cut his government umbilical cord and the leech fuck has two options, starve or take food from someone else. On the other hand, a knowledgeable, well prepped person can survive almost anything. I can do plumbing, electrical, carpentry, auto repair, and can fix damn near anything. I can work for 5 or 10 bucks an hour cash and survive. There is always work for someone who works hard and cheap, ask any illegal. 10 dollars will buy 50 pounds of feed store corn to grind into cornmeal. 20 dollars will buy 50 pounds of wheat to grind into flour. The only thing a leech will do at a feed store is kill the clerk and take the cash. The corn and wheat will be lying there for the taking. Knowledge is both survival and wealth HAIL FUCKING DARWIN
Jim, you've done it again! You hit the ol' nail right on the head with your explanation of peak oil. It isn't the specific amount of oil reserves left (whatever % of the worlds total oil that may be)
It's the COST of extracting the remaining oil, coupled with the increasing global demand. And under the term "cost" we must factor in both the technology, labor and $ expense to get it out of the ground as well as the COST of running around the world killing people and losing American lives in the process- plus the bazillions of dollars those military adventures cost. Looking at both the cost of getting it and global demand for the finite amount that's left we would naturally reach the conclusion that we couldn't maintain our own level of consumption even if said level was stable year-to-year for decades. But NOOOO...we in the western world have to compound the problem by structuriong our whole freaking economy on (as some genius said- I think it was you)
"exponential growth." Thank you scum-sucking politicians and banksters for setting up a system requiring massive continued growth just for us peons to have even a whiff of the scent of a middle class living. We are so grateful we will take you out quickly and painlessly when that day comes. And now I will stop ranting and return to the "Real" world. I will calmly go through the drive-up window to get my microwaved, mass produced, semi-synthetic food-like substance from the colorfully dressed agent ot the multi-national chain. Then I'll go home, taked my meds(thank you big pharma)
and lie down. My head hurts...
I know this will offend somebody and that goes to prove the point. I blame a lack of resolve for our problems. We conquer a country and destroy their infra structure and then spend billions building it back better than before.We have the first commander and chief in history to bow and apologize.
How do you afford Harvard and Columbia when you come from a single parent home,grow up in a ghetto.Then go to Harvard so you can be a community organizer for 17k a year when you owe a million dollars in student loans.
Your in the senate for two years and you spend all that time running for president. I don't care if he is black or purple as long as he has big balls and don't take any shit.
I want a president who will say fuck you when needed. How about this for diplomacy 'We are taking over your oil production and anything else this shit country has to offer and if you don't like -throw down bitch!" Box cutters my ass, we got nukes to spare. We could rule the world by Christmas if we quit being such pussies.
But we can't make up our mind whether to be the baddest mother on the playground or go hide by the bleachers and hope know one sees us.
Is history going to record we decided to rule the world and killed anybody who disagreed OR is history going to record how the greatest super power to ever exist on this planet died a slow whiny ass death crying like a little bitch.
It ain't peak oil Jim,it's peak guts.
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