So I am becoming someone new again. That rapid growth period where every joint aches. I am growing a new sensory organ. Let me tell you alllll about it.
I'm not going to toot my own horn, for very long, but I was a very intelligent and contemplative child. I rarely spoke except to ask my dad questions. I think back now to the questions I would ask and remember the staggering number of instances in which the response was "I don't know, son. No one really does."
Fair enough. Some things are just too difficult to grasp. I have no idea how to make a toaster from scratch.... Wait. Wait a minute. Yes I fucking do! It would take a long time though! That was my ah-hah tonight.
Complexity arises from simple parts. These simple parts make many connections within the system and begin to create emergent behavior. Behavior different than the behavior of individual parts. This is the way I've thought complex human society works. And it does to some extent. But as far as the vast number of human issues out at the forefront today go... it doesn't account!! And this brings me to the worst point to ever ever ever Ever FUCKING EVER realize!
OIL
Oil is more than gas prices. It's a big part, but that's too narrow to think about! Oil is our country's energy source. It drives infrastructure. Everyone talking about going green has the right idea but the wrong approach. Want to make everything based on corn products, eg. ethanol? How will you harvest it? Fuck using tractors, it costs oil to produce the steel, run the plants, make tires, fuel the tractors, maintain the tractors. How will you manufacture it? It costs oil to transport the corn, build the factories, run the machinery, produce the enzymes, store the ethanol, and transport the ethanol. What if we built a bunch of ethanol factories now? The energy yield of corn ethanol is not enough to sustain the production of ethanol! We forget that oil is already energy rich and all we need to do is move the shit out of the ground and, relative to ethanol production, do a small amount of consumer grade refining!
Plastic? Forget about it. Try to go a day without using anything plastic. I doubt you will get more than 2 or 3 menial tasks done. Fuck driving, your car won't run without the thousands of plastic components its built with. Medicine? No treatment that involves plastic medical supplies for you.
Peak oil is the moment in time when oil production surpasses oil discovery and the beginning of oil depletion. Oil reserves are described by a small fucking dictionary of actuarial terms which assign probability values to the various oil wells. Emphasis on fucking. Why? Because that is the point of this post. We are getting fucked.
Related: I am a grown man and it took me several weeks to find a reasonable answer of what a fucking derivative (in the economic sense not calculus sense) is. The concept is difficult because so-called experts, or gurus, or finance gods (essentially the people with the money) don't want you to understand money. A derivative is essentially any non-real thing that is assigned value based on something that has actual fucking value. What's interesting is that stocks are not considered derivatives of companies. (or maybe they are... fuck) Stocks are not really things that have true intrinsic value because the company can created more stock at any time, out of thin air. To makes things even more convoluted, there are stock derivatives which have value, which are based on stock value, which is based on investor sentiment which is based on company value and revenues and profits and assets and trading volume and shares outstanding and news and hearsay and schemes and scandals and politics. Not unlike the oil business, within all this economic bullshit is another vast actuarial fucking dictionary filled with terms like longs and shorts and calls and puts and shorts and covers.
Compound interest? Fuck me. Attempt to explain the real world dynamics of this outside of actuarial terms and you'll realize what a fucking pyramid scheme this all is.
Because I have seen it with my own eyes, I'll recap the Iraq bullshit.
What we were supposed to think happened:
Bush:
-9/11
-Massive world network of anti-American terrorists are going to bring down the country if we don't stop them
-Afghanistan: destroyed a powerful network of cave-dwelling evil geniuses
-Iraq: found weapons of mass destruction... well almost, saved world from near holocaust and a people of decades of repression and fear and pain
-Massive intelligence network hunting down the remaining key players of Al Qaeda.
-Operation 'merica Fuck Yeah! over any time now.
-Military will be retracted any time now.
Obama:
-Lets build the bottom up.
-Lets create green energy.
-We should decrease dependency on foreign oil.
-We're gonna bring the troops home dawg.
-Well, we're not gonna bring the troops home yet because 'merica 'n freedom.
In hindsight what really happened:
Bush:
-9/11
-Fuck around in Afghanistan. Afghanis are like "thanks... I guess..."
-Well, lets go after Hussein (what?)
-Build largest set of U.S. military bases in the world.
-Build largest U.S. Embassy compound in the world.
-Military contractors make fat bank.
-Overthrow government planning to put its oil in the euro. Iraqis are like "thanks... I guess..."
-Set-up U.S. sympathetic government.
-Put Iraq's oil in the dollar.
-U.S. Oil makes fat bank.
-Maintain U.S. economic and military presence in Iraq.
Obama:
-Passes fast food bill - taxes lower class
-Attempts to pass medical reform bill, without even addressing the distribution of wealth issue (meaning cheaper healthcare for us, but more taxes for us, while Big Health makes fat bank anway)
-Does abso-fucking-lutely nothing for alternative energy.
-Supports drilling at home, says decrease foreign dependency
-Maintain U.S. economic and military presence in Iraq.
It's like they are saying this right behind my back, "That fucking moron. We have him so confused on our stances in the issues that we can say one thing do the complete opposite. And he'll praise us for it! Well, we'll drill in Alaska AND maintain presence in the Middle East! I'll fucking do anything to appear to slow the growth of the deficit to save face, even though the deficit will increase anyway. The whole world is going to shit, might as well ride the beast down reigns in hand, right guys LOL?!" *high fives Forbes and Buffett*
I am angry.
Here's another little tidbit to consider:
-We're told Saudi Arabia has massive oil inland reserves.
-Land oil is MUCH cheaper to produce than offshore oil.
-Saudi Arabia exports oil from offshore drilling.
How much oil do you really think there is now?
I'm not suggesting any certain mode of thought, more suggesting a path of reasonable skepticism. These are facts.
Oil prices are going up... no new accessible oil is being found. I think we are seeing peak oil peek its dirty fucking head out. And no one cares, because no one knows.
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