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To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (2879)	11/12/2002 4:30:35 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6901

Lazy, the weakness of democracy is concentrated benefits and diffuse costs. "Concentrated benefits" translates to special interests, lobby groups, voter groups with strong identity. The result is increasing taxes and increasing controls until suffocation after which voters cut the Gordian Knot and go back to freedom, which has been lost in the bureaucratic kleptocracy of Kremlin-style central bossiness and Byzantine intrigue. SUV drivers are a diffuse electorate. I guess that $1 million from Exxon as a political donation would count more than $100 from me. Especially as my donation wouldn't have an oil tag on it. There would be almost no SUV donors who tag their donation as 'to get oil prices down'. Apart from donations, there is the human "We're in this together" aspect. Big Oil has featured strongly in USA political crony politics for decades. Buddies look after buddies. That's just how humans work. Call it nepotism, crony capitalism, old boy network, girls supportive mutual admiration society, melanin-rich affirmative action, Masonic secret handshakes, the Umma or Jewish global conspiracies, birds of a feather ... King George II and I are oil through and through. Dick Cheney sensibly wants US oil companies and exploration and production companies to not go broke. USA oil is expensive oil and only worth thinking about if oil prices are high. Cheap oil = massive unemployment in the Cheney/Bush buddies' club. When OPEC was formed, I didn't think the situation needed to be "fixed". I don't mind cartels. They always leak around the edges and end up more bound and imprisoned by their introspection and attempts to control the uncontrollable. There is an infinite array of ways around OPEC, from insulation, to doing something else which doesn't need oil, to coal, sunshine, cyberspace instead of driving or flying or simply find other oil. A major problems of governments is that they think they need to "fix" things. Which usually results in them damaging things further. There didn't need to be any shortages, rationing or queues during the oil crises. When oil supplies ran low, the prices should have been put up, not controlled or supplies controlled. When prices go up, that reduces demand. It's a novel concept but it always works. Governments and many people have trouble with the idea. Globalstar went bust because the management of the company and service providers didn't understand what "supply and demand" and "consumer surplus" mean. I agree with Osama that NZ and Oz should expect to be attacked. NZ troops have been in Afghanistan, spotting and killing, or helping to kill or capture Al Qaeda people. Also, NZ has helped in UN blockades of Iraq, so we should expect them and maybe their supporters to attack us. That's what happens when people start fighting. Fighting always leads to big messes and unhappiness. A bonus theory is that "Weapons of Mass Destruction" are anything more than a knife, which can only kill one person at a time, and a hammer, which can only break one window at a time. The USA is the bearer of more weapons of mass destruction than anyone else on earth and since they aren't keen on having universal human rights, that's quite a worry and they need to be brought under control, which I'm in the process of doing. I hasten to add that of course it's important to bring other countries such as Saddam's under control too, but the biggest dog is the most dangerous in a dog eat dog world. Also, whether somebody is gassed, napalmed, shot, bombed, run over, buried alive or starved to death, it's very horrible for the recipient of the attack. I don't see why the USA and others get all hot and bothered about gassing. The theatre-goers in Moscow were gassed to death and it seemed nicer than being sprayed with burning petrol with a spot of phosphorus mixed in which seemed to be how the USA handled anyone in Vietnam who they too a dislike to. Or being half-cooked and neutron shredded as per Hiroshima and Nagasaki - lots of relatively innocent women and children experienced weapons of mass destruction. So, there's the day's theory for you. Mqurice