Gas and oil in the ground is like money in the bank. We know where much of it is and it will only appreciate in value over time. Why are we so hasty to suck it out of the ground and burn it? Is it because we think we need it now? Extra supply will indeed drive global motor fuel prices down for a time.
A side effect of supporting continued cheap petroleum is that ever more infrastructure will be constructed that is dependent on cheap hydrocarbon energy and less infrastructure constructed for other forms of energy. Inevitably, supply will become scarce and a society constructed on a foundation of cheap petroleum energy will collapse.
This perilous proposition seems pretty simple in concept. What history shows is that a small number of highly dedicated people can swing the mood of a larger population. Many revolutions begin with a dedicated core who exploit some dissatisfaction to effect a desired change.
Right now we see a GOP that is driven by a minority of religious zealots wrapped in the flag and bent on an orgy of fratricide. What drives the Democrats is a mystery to me. They are a herd of cats.
Americans need to find meaning and a place in the world that does not involve urban warfare. We need to throttle back military spending and direct resources towards a sustainable market economy unified by peaceful common purpose. We are at a place in history where the Enlightenment is at risk of ending.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
A herd of cats is unfair to cats. Cats generally know what they want – they don’t all want they same things, but they know what they want. The Democratic Party, in theory, has some agreement on what it wants to do, but it lacks the stiffness of purpose to persist, either in making the terms of its conflict plain so that the situation is clear (cough “class warfare” cough) or to persist in making policy (openness in Presidential policy, closing Guantanamo Bay as a prison, financial reform). If you lack the will to either do what you say or to force the nature of your opposition to become clear (whose interests were served by allowing banks to become overly invested in risk while becoming too large to effectively manage?), then your word is no good. Your word is even less useful than that of someone who lies continually. At least you know what the liar will do.
Hi Hap,
Thanks for the comment.
I’m a registered democrat (liberal dissident is more accurate), but I have to say that this party has produced no coherent doctrine or unified political theory that can be set forth in a single paragraph. What’s more, the president has folded like a lawn chair to a long series of outrageous attempts by republicans to effect their program of cultural reconstruction. By now, Wall Street sidewalks should be crowded with the dessicated skulls of bankers mounted on sharp sticks, but instead, this crowd got what they paid for- an effective immunity from public trials and minimal oversight. The American experiment has wandered off into the weeds.
I sort of think they might have principles, though it’s hard to tell if you can’t ooze a straight line…
1) It might be a good idea to follow the Constitution, at least once in a while. (The Dems have a habit of ignoring this for Amendment 2, but that seems to be a better record than the Repubs, who don’t seem to be able to read the rest of the Bill of Rights.)
2) Markets work for some things and not for others – if it can’t be easily valued (or the values to different people who have a share differ drastically) and if the distribution of the goods matters, government and not markets are probably a better way to distribute them. If you want goods for all (or the benefits of a systems that allows you to get yours), then you have to pay.
3) Everyone has intrinsic value that can’t be destroyed when they do something you don’t like or wish to choose to do things you don’t like.That status and its corresponding duties and rights don’t depend on how much money you have (little or lots).
4) Data doesn’t go away because you don’t like it (although seeing some budget assumptions, I don’t know if the Dems believe this, either)
5) You won’t always be the biggest or baddest kid on the block – it might help to play nice with others once in a while.
6) You have power because you can make useful things and because people are free and worthy to use them, and because people elsewhere have realized that they have worth that doesn’t depend on the favor in the eyes of their masters – if 5 is true, than making sure you behave consistently with your country’s core principles is a better way of amplifying your power than acting like a petulant bully with a very nice pair of brass knuckles.
7) Tell the truth – eventually it will come out anyway, and when it does it will hurt more. (If the Repubs believed what they say about God, I don’t see why this is so hard for them.)
I don’t know that we’re done yet, but we seem to have become the “Me” country, when we would not have existed at all had that been true of those before us. I wonder if we’re Israel at 1 CE – we think the world is ours by fiat. That lasted…about seventy years, and ended poorly.