(Sorry, that’s as clever a title as I could muster).
The rationing of oil.
Michael Ruppert, writing in From the Wilderness, tells us that the International Energy Agency has “dusted off plans for rationing to be imposed (with the full authority of government and the UN) in nations which had signed the original UN treaty in 1974 or joined later.”
These nations include the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and most of continental Europe. Not China (who are the socialists, again? I get so confused).
While Ruppert doesn’t like the plan’s particulars, he is a firm supporter of rationing:
“On the other hand, mandatory and enforced rationing might be the only way to penetrate a very thick American skull. We do reveal a bovine nature on occasion.”
“So I think it’s time we all put rationing (serious rationing) on our schedule of upcoming events. ”
“When? (Sigh). It could be as soon as this winter. I would say, of a certainty, no later than January or February 2007.”
Ruppert also reprints a Falls Church (VA) News-Press article by Tom Whipple which touts the idea:
“It has to come sooner or later. As oil becomes scarcer and scarcer and price rises higher and higher, pressures will grow for a formal allocation system. Rationing will come, if only to calm the havoc at the gas lines and the social upheavals that are bound to occur as long as rationing is only by price. “
This statement reveals a startling lack of economic understanding. It is not rationing by price which caused “havoc at the gas lines”! It was Nixon’s price controls. When you put a price ceiling in place, demand outstrips supply, causing a shortage. When prices are allowed to freely float, they rise in response to tightening supplies or increased demand. Consumers thus try to cut back on purchases, economizing where they can. Long lines are thus avoided. The price system is the most efficient allocation system ever invented, and we owe much of our material well-being to it.
A warning to UK readers. Whipple writes (approvingly):
“Once again our friends in Europe , this time in Britain , appear to be out in front in thinking about this problem…
“A couple of weeks ago, the British press reported that Her Majesty’s cabinet is considering a plan to ration energy consumption. The immediate reason for implementing such a system is to reduce the UK ‘s emission of greenhouse gases as required by the Kyoto Treaty. The plans authors, however, claim that if the proposal works, it will deal equally well with equitably allocating dwindling energy supplies caused by peak oil.”
By forcibly limiting energy usage, this plan will cause distortions in choices, and create inefficiencies for businesses. With the UK already in recession and the US likely to follow in another year or so, this is the last thing we need. The plan will also cause “black” (i.e. free) markets to spring up, making criminals out of ordinary people who are just trying trying to do business peacefully. Finally, like all such plans, there will be plenty of chances for the politically powerful to game the system, at the expense of average citizens.
{ 9 comments }
All fans of freedom should be aware that there is a major energy technology languishing under a black ban of government bureaucracy. Cold Fusion, those hot little test tubes from Utah University, are still out there. We have not cracked all the problems but the claim that cold fusion is dead is just plain lies!
See http://world.std.com/~mica/cft.html
http://www.lenr-canr.org/
http://www.newenergytimes.com/
http://www.infinite-energy.com/
If you can kill the black ban we could kill your energy problems forever.
Oil rationing is the only way to stop oil from pricing itself so high that people start being realistic about finding alternatives. In a rationed society there is a strong incentive to find alternatives but little capital because the locked down price means that competing technologies are still priced above the rationed commodity.
“The price system is the most efficient allocation system ever invented, and we owe much of our material well-being to it.”
It’s a sad thing that this piece of knowledge is so widely unknown. Instead, people complain about “price gouging” or demand subsidies for their favored industries, unaware of the damage they’re causing.
Yahooyahoo!
wesley bruce – the governments have no capacity to suppress technologies, period. You’re being taken for a ride by the tinfoil hat squad.
The cold fusion remains in the “not shown to work” limbo. Until someone shows how to build an actually working apparatus which does its trick in the hands of independent researchers, it remains a mere phantom, sorry.
I have come up with an even better title: “A Really, Really, Dumb Idea”.
I’ve worked in labs working on cold fusion. When the pons and fleishman experiments were first published, I read pre-print number 23 (they were numbered to keep track in case there were leaks.)
We were some of the first to attempt to reproduce their efforts. We followed their methodology exactly, and we followed a slightly different methodology to test the theory. In both cases, nothing came of it.
Since then, there have been lots of reports, but no real results.
The fact of the matter is, anyone can put some liquid in a jar, hook up a volt meter and claim they’ve found cold fusion– but all the time its simply they’ve discovered lemon juice.
Legitimate research in cold fusion has my endorsement. Crackpot research in the garage has my endorsement– everyone who thinks they have an idea is free to try it.
But claiming that cold fusion is a suppressed technology (as L. Neil Smith impeaches his rationality by doing so) is just bunk. There’s far more evidence that the WTC was brought down by shaped charges than for cold fusion.
If someone ever gets reproducible results, we’ll hear about it. IF you had a pointer to some, you’d be telling us about it… instead of going on about how the technology is suppressed.
Its ok to be an enthusiast, but don’t let your paranoia convince you of a conspiracy that doesn’t exist… there are plenty of legitimate ones.
A Ban on patents, and a ban on government R & D is still a black ban. The former kills private investment and the latter cripples the rest. There was no conspiracy it was all done out in the open.
Dozens have duplicated the original heat and helium. When you worked with the cells did you use rolled palladium in a cell, it will not work under any conditions. Was it above 83 degree C during four weeks loading? Did you have the same electrolyte? Many did not think it was important but it was.
A hundred failures do not disprove a discovery if even one duplication occured; it only proves that there are more variables to be nailed. The researchers said that in their paper and in the press. More variables are now being identified. Yet now the writers in the field can’t get anyone to publish their papers or even read the things.
Mr Bruce,
Please look beyond the USA. The world is Not completely controlled by the USA.
If cold fusion was as simple as you mentioned, don’t you think that Japanese, Chinese or taiwanese scientists would have cracked the problem of mass production of electricity via this process? Japan and Taiwan were(and still are) FAR MORE in need of cheap energy than the US ever was. If they have the ability to create limitless amounts of energy with the sacrifice of a few tons of platinum and palladium , don’t you think they would have done it already?
Can you even imagine what a strategic advantage a free energy source can give to taiwan incase it ever came into conflict with china?
Wesley, there is no ban on patents. Like many others you misinterpret a simple rule that was created to curb the flood of meaningless bunk patent applications.
There is no ‘ban’ on government R&D into cold fusion, at least not in the US government. The US navy has invested significantly in CF/LENR/CANR research. Even if the US goivernment decide not to fund such research that is by no means a ‘black ban’. Governments are meant to manage their funds responsibly, so they have every right to decline to fund ventures that are unlikley to produce anything useful.
Comments on this entry are closed.