Message-ID: <LPEKICBDBBPACCOELKCAGECNCJAA.j@chatzilla.com> Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 10:16:17 -1000 From: Jay Hanson <mailto:j@CHATZILLA.COM> Subject: Future oil production by country! To: mailto:DEVEL-L@LISTSERV.AMERICAN.EDU
[ Permission to repost expressly granted! ]Now you can estimate when your own country will disintegrate! For example, once Mexico's petroleum production "peaks" (est. 2001) and starts to decline, foreign capital will flee the country and Mexico will once again descend into anarchy -- this time forever. [1] Ultimately, the US will be forced to build a new Berlin Wall to keep the Mexicans out.
Never published anywhere before! See future oil production curves for 42 Countries at http://dieoff.com/42Countries/42Countries.htm
OVERVIEW One hundred years ago, fundamentally stupid economic theories led to two world wars with millions killed:
"By the end of the seventies the free trade episode (1846-79) was at an end; the actual use of the gold standard by Germany marked the beginnings of an era of protectionism and colonial expansion. the symptoms of the dissolution of the existing forms of world economy -- colonial rivalry and competition for exotic markets -- became acute. The ability of haute finance to avert the spread of wars was diminishing rapidly. For another seven years peace dragged on but it was only a question of time before the dissolution of nineteenth century economic organization would bring the Hundred Years' Peace to a close." [p. 19, Polanyi]
Today, the same stupid economic theories are still being taught to students all over the world and are leading to a new generation of world wars with billions killed:
"Protesters representing a rainbow of causes attempted to disrupt Tuesday's opening session of the World Trade Organization conference. Activists in large numbers vowed to shut down the city with acts of civil disobedience. At one location, police used tear gas to clear protesters." [ CNN, Nov. 30, 1999]
Neoclassical economic theory teaches that we will never "run out" of a commodity. This is because as prices increase, we will use less-and-less of it, but there will always be some available at some finite price. Practically every economics textbook teaches this, but every economics textbook is wrong because "energy" is fundamentally different from every other commodity.
There is no substitute for energy. Energy is the prerequisite for all other commodities, so if we "run out" of energy, we will "run out" of everything else too.
By definition, energy "sources" must produce more energy than they consume, otherwise they are called "sinks". By definition, energy sources have "run out" when they consume more energy than they produce. This universal energy law holds no matter how high the money price of energy goes.
Economists are blind to the unique properties of energy because economic methodology is inherently defective. Economists first abstract all commodities to money -- which of course, obliterates all qualitative differences between the commodities themselves -- and leaves economists uniquely unqualified to know the relationships between the commodities they purport to study.
"The origins of the cataclysm lay in the utopian endeavor of economic liberalism to set up a self-regulating market system." [p. 29, THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, Karl Polanyi; Beacon, 1957]
Jay -- www.dieoff.com --------------------------- [1] See for example, "Mexico's Petroleum Exports: Safe Collateral for a $50 Billion Loan?" at http://www.hubbertpeak.com/duncan/mexoil.htm