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Strategies & Market Trends : Booms, Busts, and Recoveries -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BubbaFred who wrote (40657)	11/2/2003 8:26:43 AM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 74559

Last century we saw dirty poor countries; Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Ireland -which, by the way used to export people to the US- becoming rich. Brazil used to send aid to Sweden in the 19th century!!!!! There's no reason why this century can't see other countries progressing too. China perhaps will show the way that it is possible. Don't think that the trick will be done the same way elsewhere, i.e., exporting their way it poverty, perhaps there are other ways that should be tried. We are always prisioner of some long time dead economist, ideas, which, for all practial purposes have lost their meaning. It needs someone to turn the whole constrcut around and give at a hard look. Don't expect a person from a rich country to think that way. They are spoiled and run out of ideas. It will come from somewhere you would not expect. You need some group of guys to violate all the rules.

To: BubbaFred who wrote (40657)	11/2/2003 5:01:24 PM
From: Seeker of Truth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Bubba Fred, your whole topic is very interesting. When we consider the boom and bust here we are mostly talking about the US. To various degrees we think the bust will spread out over other countries too. Unfortunately there is another event, an overhanging boom and bust on a longer time scale, that of oil. The discovery of lots of oil in the world and the invention of hydrocarbon supplied engines propelled the modern world.in the 20'th century and today. Except for dams, all other energy resources are more expensive than oil has been.And there are lots of arguments about dams, silting over, the ultimate cost of desilting etc. According to credible experts we have reached the maximum in world oil output and from here or from 3 years ago world hydrocarbon(oil and gas) output steadily decreases.The alternatives: 1.Coal.When we burn it cleanly it is more expensive than oil. 2.Nuclear. Pricing the storage is still an open question. 3. Solar power, i.e. the direct generation of electricity via solar cells. The last I saw, the price of such electricity was six times that of oil powered generators. 4. Wind: Again it is several times the cost of oil energy. 5. Tides. ??? As for reduced costs of electrical transmission, that would be a great boon but short of room temperature superconductors only minor improvements are possible. Nobody has found r.t. superconductors; we are far away from that. Supercooling of transmission lines would be far too expensive. Hydrogen gas is a way to store energy but it costs a little more in energy to make H2 than we can get out of it at maximum efficiency. Bush is counting on benefits from this, I read. ?? It has been estimated that if we burn palm oil, use solar heat stored in H2O to heat houses in relatively warm places like Japan, and use economic dams our planet can comfortably support about a billion people. All this may sound quite remote but probably there is immediate benefit to one's portfolio as it sinks in that there are no new great sources of oil or other energy. I don't think science can save us from this problem. It can certainly raise our life expectancy still further. As to the energy of Chinese people. I think it arises from the relative strength of family ties versus religious obligations. Family ties are omnipresent, concrete, supporting, encouraging, stimulating. Religious obligations must continually be surrounded by doubts which are assuaged by prayer, incantations, payments to the religious establishment, war on those with different beliefs etc. In short they are mostly burden and since the object of worship is invisible there is a constant struggle to maintain faith and to wipe out unbelief, in one way or the other. Chinese superstition imposes a burden, but this or that superstition can be shrugged off or discarded without any noticeable penalty. A collection of superstitions is not the same as religion. Unlike religion, superstitions are not primary in life. The first line in one of the philosophical classics of China is "Fulfilling our duty to our parents is the root of all virtue."