<Of course supply would be rationed and many jobs would be lost and economies devastated.>
Que, supply is always rationed. In free countries, that's done by price. In centrally planned Kremlin-style countries, such as the USA, they ration things by government edict.
You are right that such rationing systems introduce great inefficiencies, and economic devastation. Look what happened to California with the government edicts on electricity supply. No free market rationing = a big shambles.
While there isn't rationing by government edict now, at $100 a barrel, the unfree USA and Witches Coven nanny-state New Zealand would ration oil by government edict, damaging the economies as oil would be used by those who shouldn't use it and not used by those who should.
People would hoard and do all sorts of silly things to try to get the oil to the right place and make money in the face of stupid state edict.
You seem fixated on rationing, going forward, [which is about the only place we can go - sideways isn't an option, though with increasing age, I would like sideways for a century or three and going backwards, into the past, would mean time travel, which is not yet possible]. Why should there be rationing [other than by the traditional, peaceable, history-tested method of buyers and sellers pricing the product in an open market]?
As oil supplies are depleted, people will achieve what they want to achieve using other means. There's no need for a huge, expensive and destructive government department of rationing.
You are right that SUV owners on tight budgets might break into a sweat at $100 a barrel. Given the obesity of many of them, they would certainly be sweating as they lumber towards the supermarket to do some grocery shopping. They'd soon lose weight carrying groceries home.
They could jog down to a car pool pickup area to save fuel. Once a week they could take the SUV to work, collecting fare-paying people on the way - they would even make money! The freeways would be freely moving instead of clogged with SUVs.
People would be happier, healthier and wealthier! Ah, the bliss of $100 oil. Heck, the centrally-planning state could right now raise taxes on oil, cut them on food [the new fuel for transport by foot] so that people are fiscally neutral and thereby save a LOT of overseas exchange.
That would also encourage alternative energy sources, conservation, insulation and other means of avoiding the tax. That would cut the deficit and save the US economy.
WTO rules might need a revamp in policy agenda going forwards.
Mqurice
PS: It's ironic that Iraq is being liberated, at the cost of 1000s of USA soldiers killed and maimed, while you are talking about rationing the Iraqis' oil production by way of state edict in the unfree USA. It's looking very like an Alice in Wonderland freedom. Free market rationing is an oxymoron. Free people have free markets in the real world. Free to have the USA state kleptocrats set policy agenda in rationing going forwards by your rule book. Weird if you ask me. But the USA is also preparing for their free citizens to be press-ganged into a conscripted army via a draft to fight for freedom for Iraq. Mad as a Hatter if you ask me. Somebody has to fight King George II's crazy religious crusades though, so the free people must be forced to kill or be killed.
I'd like to see a reconstituted New United Nations [NUN] going forwards with a new policy agenda. But the PNAC guys want to rule the world, in freedom, love and rationing. No stinkin' NUN for them. Democracy and freedom is good hypocritical cant, but not for the real, pragmatic world of Rummy, Dick, Wolfowitz, Perle, Rove and the gang. |
