Great post El G. But what are those plans? <The plans that the best among us have been making all along are going to begin to be put into action. Some of these plans will work, which means, at least for a while, the best will be on top.>
It seems to me that plenty of talented people are doing things in the USA [Irwin Jacobs et al, Uncle Al KBE, Ellison and co, Gates Gangsters, George Gilder and a whole swarm of them].
Good point about China's limited prospects with industrialisation.
They are working for low pay in the industrial revolution. That's not the way to lead the world. Britain got wealthy from the industrial revolution and being the workshop of the world because they were leading that revolution and pay rates in the revolution were TOP pay rates, while the peasantry struggled with growing hay and knitting wool.
Unless China comes up with creative leadership, they'll remain an also-ran, in competition with India, Indonesia and Africa as low-paid manufacturers.
Meanwhile, people who can will leave for lives of [relative] freedom, where the police aren't watching every move and gaoling them for saying the wrong thing.
On oil, the cost today of producing a barrel of bioethanol or biodiesel or photovoltaic hydrogen is about the same as the cost of the barrels of oil which fed the 1930s [if I remember rightly] if split-adjusted.
So there's no reason why China can't use umpty billion barrels of energy in the form of nuclear power, deserts and roofs covered with photovoltaics, Australia covered in crops, or Africa covered in crops. There is vast amounts of Orinoco heavy oil and vast amounts of coal.
There is no shortage of energy to fuel anything people want to do. At $50 a barrel, we are up to the level where biofuels are economic. Look at Brazil go for example. It's not just subsidies fueling the biofuels now. The old idea that they use more energy than is got out is not true. People used to do energy balances instead of dollar balances. It was easy to cook the books with energy balances. Dollars are more precisely pinned down.
Mqurice |
