This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Guest Post: America's Childlike Desire to Avoid Making Trade-Offs
By Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds
America's Childlike Desire to Avoid Making Trade-Offs
The U.S. is childlike: we refuse to make trade-offs, as these require analysis, judgment, sacrifice and maturity.
The key characteristic of adulthood is the ability to make trade-offs. The child and the adolescent want everything that they want, now, and they soon learn (at least in America) that whining, cajoling, bargaining and guilt-tripping will get them what they want without having to make difficult choices between less-than-perfect options.
America has not yet grown up because it refuses to make any adult trade-offs that require sacrificing one desire to bring another desire within reach, or matching reality with competing demands. Energy offers a cogent example.
When I posted a rather measured report on natural gas ( The (Relatively) Good News About Natural Gas), I was accused of being a "shill" for the natural gas industry, and many readers sent me links to the documentary Gasland.
I understand there are serious environmental issues in fraccing, which the report I published noted. (I wrote about these concerns for AOL Daily Finance over a year ago: Natural gas boom not all it's fracced up to be, and I was excoriated by industry insiders as a result.)
I am not an expert in fraccing, but it seems fairly evident that if the drilling is performed properly and carefully, then the water table could be protected from contamination.
Should fraccing be exempt from environmental laws? No. Clearly, any private enterprise which has the potential to damage or destroy "the commons" of our soil, air and water needs to be tightly regulated and inspected. That is the proper role of government--protecting the commons and the citizenry via common-sense regulation and rigorous inspections.
But let's follow the notion that the potential environmental hazards of fraccing mean it should be banned.
To be consistent, then we should also ban other energy extraction activities which are potentially hazardous/destructive to the environment:
1. no fraccing for natural gas.
2. no drilling for oil or natural gas offshore (see Gulf Disaster).
3. no nuclear plants (waste is only stored, remains a hazard for decades/centuries).
4. no hydroelectric dams (dams destroy the rivers and wildlife).
5. no wind turbines (visual pollution, kills birds).
6. no geothermal energy wells (they can trigger earthquakes).
7. no shipping via freighters which burn bunker fuel (trans-Pacific shipping creates 40% of the air pollution in the Pacific Basin).
8. no coal-mining or burning coal (massive degradation from open-pit mines, danger to miners in deep-tunnel mines, mountains of toxic tailings and waste, acid-rain and air pollution).
9. no tar sands or shale oil mining (massive stripping of the land, moonscapes, huge use of water, pollution of water and air from "dirty" oil produced).
10. no more subsidized solar energy plants (they don't pencil out without subsidies and make no sense in the northern half of the nation).
Each of these objections are based on valid points. Many residents and environmentalists don't approve of wind turbines, solar arrays currently don't make financial sense in most places unless they're subsidized by taxpayers ( a no-no to many), coal is an environmental disaster (I will believe in clean coal when coal executives are clamoring to live in the downwind plume from "clean" plants burning coal), nuclear power depends on hazardous mining of uranium, the waste from nukes has yet to be resolved, and so on.
Many environmentalists view dams as ecological catastrophes that should be torn down.
Ships burning bunker oil are creating an air-pollution calamity and should be banned.
Add all this up and the only acceptable sources of energy are existing hydroelectric dams, solar arrays and land-based oil wells which don't require pressurized water to extract the oil (as the pressurized water could pollute the water table, just like fraccing), and maybe existing nuclear power plants though many would choose to close these down.
That means the domestic energy supply would be 10% or less of demand/consumption. The rest would come from overseas or our North American neighbors, Canada and Mexico.
So it's OK for the fraccing to be done elsewhere, and for oil spills to ruin Nigeria, because we don't have to live with it. That's the classic definition of a colonial power: extract the resources from elsewhere, regardless of the damage to the local environment or people. The root assumption of this dependence on imports: Only the Imperial citizens matter.
Are we ready to face the consequences of closing down all environmentally damaging energy sources? That would require giving up 90% of our consumption. Are we ready to pay higher taxes or utility bills to subsidize solar power arrays? We still need backup capacity for nighttime consumption--where will that come from? Imported natural gas? From where?
If the present is any guide, we are happy to import that 90% of our energy from elsewhere, knowing full well there are few if any environmental restrictions in many of those exporting nations.
In other words, we want a perfect world: no potential "costs" to producing energy domestically, and also no significant reduction in our consumption of energy.
The "solution" we have chosen is to import the energy from elsewhere, leaving the damages and environmental costs to others, while leaving our own nation exquisitely vulnerable to distruption of energy supply chains and Peak Oil.
This is the same "solution" we've chosen for industry in general: close down the "dirty" domestic industries and import the goods from overseas. Even recycling plants are inherently "dirty"--there is no such thing as "clean" industry--there are trade-offs to be made at every step. So let's also stop recycling.
As a result of our childlike fantasies of "clean" living with no trade-offs, the states have fallen over themselves to offer film producers huge subsidies. Hollywood is a "clean" industry and everybody loves "clean" industries which fill office parks with white-collar workers and "information" businesses which pay lots of taxes.
Too bad the states didn't grasp that films are at best a $5 billion "industry" in a $14.7 trillion economy. The states improved the profitability of the film industry by offering dueling tax breaks, but they didn't really boost state revenues. It was all a foolish fantasy, attractive to adolescents who hoped to be seen with "movie stars."
Isn't this same desire for "clean" no-trade-off businesses one driver behind the financialization of the U.S. economy? It was all "clean" money-making: lower interest rates and jack up leverage and securitization, causing property values to skyrocket, which boosted consumer consumption of overseas-made imports (just unload on the dock and truck to Wal-Mart or the mall) and simultaneously increased the equity foundation for further financialized skimming and churn.
It was an adolescent fantasy: everyone could work shuffling electrons and paper in office parks and towers, making money by producing nothing. By speculating in housing, everyone could make money doing absolutely nothing but transferring pieces of paper and electronic entries.
But like any other adolescent fantasy, reality eventually intruded. The debts remained after the bubble, and even at 4.5%, a $500,000 mortgage requires hefty payments--as do the skyrocketing property taxes.
Corporations played the same game, too, of course: profits could be plumped up just by borrowing vast sums to buy competitors or to buy back stock, boosting the per-share earnings without having to actually produce more or work harder.
This is the fantasy world the U.S. continues to live in. Yes, fraccing is potentially hazardous; so are coal, oil, wind turbines, geothermal, hydroelectric and nuclear power. Those who are against each of these can make very strong cases, as can those who argue that subsidizing solar power at the expense of the taxpayers is misguided and a malinvestment made to benefit politically favored industries. (Needless to say, the fossil fuels industries have long had massive tax breaks and hidden subsidies paid for by other industries and taxpayers.)
Those of you who deal with children and teens probably know the "solution" to whiny demands: invite the kid/teen to solve the real issues and make the trade-offs themselves.
Nobody demands that of America as a nation. We want everything and we want it now, and we don't want to sacrifice anything to get it. Our solution is pathetically childlike: just borrow trillions of dollars every year to buy what we want, so no adult trade-offs are ever required. Just buy our energy from somewhere else so we don't have to make any sacrifices or balance competing demands.
We want to spend $700 billion on "defense," another $700 billion on Social Security, $600 billion on Medicare, $250 billion on interest on old debt, $350 billion for Medicaid, $567 billion on other entitlement transfers (pensions, Federal unemployment costs, etc.), etc., for a total of $3.7 trillion, while revenues may run about $2 trillion at best. The rest is borrowed.
States and local governments are borrowing billions more via bonds, and the shadow bailouts of the "too big to fail" banks are safely masked in the Federal Reserve balance sheet and accounting that's hidden "off budget." Those add up to trillions more that's being borrowed or printed.
We want abundant, cheap energy, and we want someone else to supply it to us so we don't have to make any difficult trade-offs. We want all our entitlements and we also don't want higher taxes. Isn't this the acme of childish fantasy?
When pressed about energy, we want to hide behind fantasies of fusion, or algae-based fuels, or some other technology which has been "10 years away" for the past 30 years or which is 20 years away from scaling up to industrial production, if ever. Our ignorance of the actual science is breathtaking, but we refuse to consider the possibility that breeder reactors and algae-based fuels may not pan out.
At some point, probably within the next 5-6 years, the oil exporters will stop shipping their hydrocarbons to us in sufficient quantities to meet our demands, and bond buyers will stop trading their capital for absurdly low rates of return on U.S. Treasury bonds.
Once it costs $1 trillion just to pay the interest on existing (and rapidly ballooning) debt, then we won't be able to borrow enough to fund the Empire and the Savior State and the interest. Trade-off time will finally be forced upon us.
At that point, the trade-offs will be much harsher than they would be now. But we don't want to make adult trade-offs; that makes us testy and pouty. Fortunately, Uncle Sam is indulgent; he can borrow trillions every year to give us everything we want--at least for now.
»
- 10234 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
This is great stuff.
I completely agree with the author. If we want to create/bring back jobs in America, we will have to live with more pollution. The "green tech", "clean energy" thing is just a pipe dream, a toy play. Don't forget that hydro-carbon fuel is also solar energy -- it is years of solar energy compressed into small cubes of natural gas or tiny drops of crude oil. That is why hydro-carbon is far more powerful and efficient than solar panels.
If we are serious about replacing hydro-carbon energy, we have to go with nuclear, like the French did.
Why does the author stop at environmentalism?
Why not talk about cutting taxes while waging two wars? That's the perfect example of not doing any trade-offs.
Exactly, because its THE sacred cow in the US. Do you know how 'unpatriotic' you would be if you didn't 'support the troops'. The amount of money spent on the DoD, and their black budgets is truly staggering. Makes everything else insignificant. But, lets not forget the fraudulent nature of fractional reserve banking itself, or how obligated we should be to pay a debt that most intellegent people recognize is created by people not representing our interests.
Oh, let me throw this out there. If any of you think we are pulling out of Afghanistan anytime soon, your dreaming. We are expanding our bases full speed ahead. This is first hand experience.
http://energyfromthorium.com/
BlueGen ceramic fuel cell converts (town) gas to electricity.. at 65% efficiency plus heats water in addition... so total 85% efficiency. Unit is size of a bar fridge for residential or larger for business etc use... gives huge savings on emissions compared with normal electrical production from fossil fuels. Bulk buying and you are all laughing. All you need is a gas connection and a hotwater service.. Its NOT a play toy.
keepyoubastardshonest
I agree. And as people get partisan about it over the next several months, it's worth noting that every politician we tend to deify got to that status because they appealed to our inner child. Shining city on a hill. Hope and change. Thousand points of light. A new deal. Etc. Hard choices. Sacrifice. Austerity. Both personal and corporate. These are the only ways to cure our national disease, which is more rapidly killing us each passing day.
Excellent point. By nature we tend to be optimistic or hopeful about the future. That's why we work hard and try to build one for ourselves. By appealing to that combined with the inner child desire to find the easiest possible way to get something politicians fool us, buy us off and I actually think many fool themselves...in that they really believe something that will not or cannot work...like a childish belief in the efficiency, fairness, effectiveness and caring nature of government...sort of like a parent itself.
There is a school of thought that says we DO get the government we deserve. It irritates me, but I feel there is truth there.
Ain't diddly happening until J6P is denied access to 120 channels on his 50 inch plasma.
Nothing happens until then...
Hugh-Smith does a pretty good job, but it appears he is ignorant that the solution to our energy problem is home-grown and immediately applicable:
http://energyfromthorium.com/
Too bad there's NOTHING ANYONE can do about it.
Imagine you are a company selling ... cars. You KNOW that manual cars are more efficient, safer, cheaper, more reliable (more simple), more fun. You choose to make ONLY manual cars. Buy commercial space trying to convince people about the TRUTH. You're competing with other manufacturers selling also automatics that are telling people that an automatic is EASIER to drive. What happens to your company?
America acting childlike? What about our President?
Obama storms out of press conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3SFXQfE4kk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NWrcn9U0j0
video is fake
Are you suggesting that not everything I find on the internet is true? How could that be? It's right there on the screen!
That's not acting; he has the mind of a ten year old. Look up the u-tube video where he anounces to a gathering in Oregon that he just visited "57 states in America"; I'm not making this up. I wish I was.
Yeah, keep blaming the magic negro while ignoring the men behind the curtain. That's working out really great for us. Sort of like how the Dems blamed the semi-coherent monkey that occupied that office the prior 8 years, or how the Repubs blamed the hornball the prior 8 years before that. Notice the trend, dumbshit?
Tradeoffs? Like Mark Zuckerburg as person of the year over Julian Assange?
http://www.hulu.com/watch/202005/saturday-night-live-a-message-from-mark-zuckerberg#s-p1-sr-i1
America decides to laugh at the truth, rather than fight against it.
Truth is for terrorists.
This brought to you by four decades of boomer-complacency in the face of mafia-government and thug rule to this second.
Can anyone over 50 even spell Vietnam yet? Still believing JFK perished by the effort of one person?! HA!
JFK had balls to stay away from conflict from the likes of LeMay and other 'military brass'. He didn't fall for their tricks and pressure to to strike Cuba.
BTW, if you haven't heard Lew Rockwell interviewing this fascinating author on his show, it's worth the time: http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwell-show/2010/05/13/150-why-was-jfk-m...
What the hell happened to the U.S. in the sixties?? Some of you guys were around..
sex, drug and rock 'n roll is what happened... lots and lots and lots of drugs
after my first hit of purple blotter acid I lit a match and the universe literally exploded before my very eyes... it was so fucking groovy man!
Interesting interview - thanks for sharing. Check out Nigel Turner's "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" for another perspective. There are two mini-series' ten years apart, the latter one was yanked from shelves as it struck much to close to home to the Johnson family (criminal) estate.
Unbelievable what people have been carrying around inside of them, and fearful to disclose -- the fear of real truth. Perhaps Wikileaks can be of "theraputic" value and offer people an outlet for this fear -- truth heals as much as it destroys. That's what makes it even more dangerous.
They planted a lot of what is being reaped today.
The Truth is classified
"we refuse "
There's no we about it,..it's the fuckers in congress and in control of this country.. (THE BANKS)..
no matter who we vote in.. they will not change the path we are on.. Congress stopped caring about what voters want a long time ago.
Exactly. Whatever 'we the people' want is ignored, and TPTB keep dishing out heaping plates of ignorance and irrelevance through all the MSM.
A minor quibble with the article...Please don't tell me what I want, or how I feel about things. I can do that my own self, thankyouverymuch.
Politicians always move slowly unless there is a crisis and there is only a crisis when people in large numbers start yelling and screaming. Between the guvmnt and the bankers the have kep enough people stupid and comfortable so that in spite of what is going on, the majority of the public either does not know enough or care enough to do something about it...and that's the way it is.
Not sure exactly when, but no question americas 'all is well, nothing bad ever happens here, let the good times roll' mentality is about to be shattered.
DIE ZEIT IST FAST VORBEI
DIE FREIHEIT IST NICHT MEHR FREI
STILL IST UNSER HERZ
UND KURZ IST UNSER TOD
DER MENSCH LIEGT IN GROSSER PEIN!
DER MENSCH LIEGT IN GROSSER NOT!
DIE ZEIT IST FAST HERAUS
UND UNSER SPIEL IST AUS
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
WAS ENTSTANDEN IST,
DAS MUSS VERGEHEN!
WAS VERGANGEN IST,
MUSS AUFERSTEHEN!
WO DER BOSE IST
UND WAS IST GOTT?
WER IST ZEITLOS
UND WER IST TOT?
WAS ZUSAMMEN IST
MUSS IN STUCKE GEHEN
UND WAS ALLEIN IST
MUSS SICH MULTIPLIZIEREN
WIR DER BOESE SIND
UND WIR SIND GOT
WIR SIND ZEITLOS
UND DU BIST TOT
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
RAUS, DAS SPIEL IST AUS!
Good Stuff!
Is everyone here supposed to be speaking German? Fortunately I do :-) Actually I personally prefer the lyrics to Rammstein's 'Mehr'
On second thought I'll just have a couple of brats and a beer. And a pretzel. When does the putsch start?
and as my grandma always used to say,
I don't take any green-person seriously that still drives a car on a regular basis (well accept maybe if they live in it) It's not rocket science to figure out cars as an every day form of transportation aren't sustainable.
Nissan Sentra 2006 1.8L ULEV
ULEV = Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle
It's called a "trade-off", the subject of this article.
The Sentra was a better choice than a hybrid, at the time of purchase.
The "E" part doesn't speak to its consumption which is higher than cars made in the early 90s
I get 27.9 real mpg driving in mountain secondary roads.
Someday I'll make my biodiesel from palm nuts & steam power. I made an investment that will allow me to do so with one of these:
http://www.tinytechindia.com/oil.htm
and one of these:
http://mikebrownsolutions.com/20hpse.htm
Trade-offs, bitchez!
as I said, this car gets lower MPG than the equivalent model from the early 90s. Nothing you write can change that fact. The levels of emissions from the tailpipe does not change the increase in consumption of the car.
Additionally, your gasoline 1.8 will not burn biodiesel.
Yeah, I get slightly less MPG than my 1.6L 1991 Nissan Sentra. It's a much better car, though--especially the front end & handling. I drive much less than before nowadays, so it evens out. My car has 43K miles so far.
Hey, the biodiesel is for farm machinery & an Unimog.
That doesn't make it sustainable. What do you think the price of a new car will be when the entire supply chain is running on steam-made-nut-diesel?
Is your forest big enough that it can sustainably give you enough wood for the steam? Are you adding the energy from the wood into your mpg? Are you adding in the energy it takes to cut the trees ups?
Steam is sustainable, without a doubt, especially with modern storage batteries and efficient appliances. Steam is the way to go.
My grandfathes's coffee plantation was mule & steam powered.
I have a degree in natural resources, whereas my grandfather had only third grade. Given the fact that I learned from him & have higher agricultural education, I should do better.
Steam yes, although with todays population surviving I don't know. Automobiles no.
I did not junk you.
It wasn't me.
Pretty obvious if you're paying attention. It's not just America, it's anyone that can get away with it- we just happen to be able to for now- just ask the Irish, Greeks or Spaniards.
I look forward to the collapse of the big top. America as a small top has some exciting possibilities. We may just stop killing internationally. We might focus on domestic production. Our money might develop real value. Our communities might be reborn.
You can attempt to do too much with too little, but not for long. (hope apple is paying attention here).
Every since we nuked a bunch of japanese civilians in the war I think our position on trade-offs and where we're going to draw the line is pretty damn clear. If we owe money you better hope damn well we decide to repay it with money and not something else. It's their fault for loaning it to us.
"It's their fault for loaning it to us." I know, those rape victims should have never dressed up. (I hope that was sarcasm)
It could be a realistic statement on the US mindset.
sad but true. Our Vice President said it was "not negotiable." Unfortunately for him (and everyone else) reality is about to negotiate it for us
War has been happening ... right where the oil and gas is (Iraq,
and Afghanistan where they want to run a pipeline through) ... Iran
has a lot of untapped supply and it's next into the woodchipper.
I think the article refers to the moment when oil extraction no longer yields enough to support the scheme, no matter how good willed the oil exporters are.
It is not so much a question of making tradeoffs, it is more related to planning horizons. The long term planning horizon of the average American takes him roughly to tonight's six-pack. That's why he tends to live paycheck to paycheck and doesn't deal with problems until they are acute.
it isn't just Americans.
The ROW is populated with the same type of people. Basically, you are describing the vast majority of the human race.
The future is the undiscovered country, an abstract concept. Most people do not do well with abstract thinking. But they still get to vote.
The failure in society at the peak of the curve is that the voice of a moron counts as much as the voice of a genius.
"The failure in society at the peak of the curve is that the voice of a moron counts as much as the voice of a genius."
What do you propose as an alternative? I am sure you can see the inherent problems with a system in which the "genius" group is chosen by any human determined process.
If you try and explain to people what is going on- the answer I get 80% of the time is- "Well, they(the government or some other benevolent group in their mind) just won't let that happen!"
Everyone wants all the benefits- none of the costs- crap, those idiots in Congress are still dreaming up NEW programs.
I find it offensive to suggest that alternative sources of energy
technically infeasible. If it were the case, Chevron for example
would have left GM holding their "worthless" electric car patents
rather than purchasing them to end the EV-1 program--and that
was just energy storage and delivery, not actual production.
The list of methods of producing and delivering energy that are
languishing at the moment is nearly endless, and include Bussard's
fusion polywell (Navy's got one, but they took the budget over to
the black side), ammonia as a motor fuel (infrastructure is already
in place and more and more engines are being run on it for various
purposes, including as airport tugs and pump stations), LENR-CANR
(f/k/a "Cold Fusion") which is coming along nicely, and oh, I suppose
all those breeder reactors powering France are a figment of everybody's
collective imagination? India's physicists must be smoking something
to be staking their nuclear future on Thorium, which everyone knows
won't work as a reactor fuel and is just a mining by-product so
plentiful it gets in the way of pursuing minerals having an actual value.
The use (or non-use) of an energy source has less to do with its technical
and economic merit, and more to do with the poltical, economic and marketing
power of entrenched producers. Consumers willing to demand better--will
receive better. But the demands of the early adopters will of course be
viewed as "childish" ... after all, isn't the Tesla roadster just an expensive
plaything?
The great thing about scientific and technical ignorance is that it leaves you free to believe anything.
Don't confuse government created or sponsored markets like ethanol with true free markets where the costs and efficiencies of various options must be weighed. Lots of businesses, particularly the car business chase where they think the government will go and what they will favor through regulation or subsidy. Those Chevy Volts have a huge $7500 government subsidy/rebate in each unit. Government is favoring electric over hydrogen and other ideas.
I'm pretty sure you have made a very similar comment on another article, specifically regarding the use of ammonia as a motor fuel and I was interested in it and I did a little research. The information I found suggests that it has numerous characteristics which makes it pretty infeasible as a subsitute for oil.
No one ever needed a 5 bedroom mcMansion, with 2 SUVs and a timeshare....it'll take time to rectify our crimes against the environment and smaller less developed nations. Over time, people will learn to share their 5 bedroom mcMansion with their boomerang college grad children....and will sell their SUVs in Venezuela where gas is cheaper than water...for now....
And eventually, over time, everything will even out...I guess the hard part will be to enjoy oneself during the inevitable unwind...
Deflation is painful, ask Japan, in 1987 the Nikkei traded at 39,000, today it trades at 9,500...that's a lot of pain, and their bubbles were residential and commercial real estate...just like us.
Amazing, one of our largest trading partners, the biggest consumer of our debt (until very recently) yet we learnt nothing from their experience. It's true, history has no better teacher than a harsh lesson...and I think we are getting ours...slowly, as the bubbles leak their toxic seepage all over our economic miracle. We actually thought an entire country designed to move mortgages around, upgrade kitchens, and bathrooms...was a formula for sound economic growth!"
Back in 1990, the US was telling the Japanese that they needed to let zombie banks fail, and purge the system of bad debt or they would be stuck in a deflationary spiral. Ring any bells ?
Seems like the same shoe on Wall st bankers and DC politicians feet doesnt fit so well. Bunch of hypocrites.
+ 1
I recall that like it was yesterday. The real-estate bubble took a little longer to burst. My company was named exclusive distributor for the US for a top selling product line in Japan. The extras that they gave us to do the job were incredible. Free Rent on a 2500 SQ foot warehouse, Consignment inventory, national advertising, guaranteed 20% gross margin, technicians and a base salary for me to handle all their advertising and placements. I was in a state of disbelief. I had originally proposed distributing the products, but I never asked for those terms.
I was , to put it mildly, a little on the disbelief side like I had just bought some Ginsu knives or something, when my contact came to town. I asked "aren't you losing money?"
The yen was at 135 then and they were still manufacturing in Japan.
The response: "ahh Mr. (Japanese Name) has buildings worth over 300 million US and can borrow against them at virtually no interest. Money not a problem. "
Me: under my breath "WTF?"
and out loud: "well that's just terrific , when can we get this started?" He asked me to place a good size order for the consignment inventory. It was well over $250,000. I was nervous for the 30 days it took to get there because the funds to pay all the expenses were to come from the sales of the inventory. I still could not get my hands around it. It was a dream. I played it down to everyone there as in "lets wait and see". Then one day my warehouse manager knocked on my door and there it was boxes and boxes of product with Color Catalogs and our logo on them.
Oh yeah, this was a start-up wishing it had bootstraps when I made the proposal. The bubbles in Japan pushed people who were well off into super high net worth individuals who quickly got bored blowing money. That's when they started buying trophy properties here on low-interest bank loans with signature loans or collateral that had less of a future than a CDO. The less than billionaires did things like hand a start-up the keys to the Maserati.
Wow, was that disappointing when that bubble blew.
Excellent. very revealing. The problem is the optimism itself; but of course it's perfectly legitimate to play the game. I remember when someone told me one square block in Tokyo was worth more than NYC; I told them no it wasn't; they want'd to debate; but really it was obvious what was going to happen next.
Bubbles are nice on the way up. That's how Las Vegas waitresses owned five to fifteen homes here, too. Everyone plays by the dynamics and rules of the game at the moment. Even if it has a bad ending, you don't know when that ending will happen...if you even believe it will happen at all. When all seems well infinitely into the future it pays to bend an ear toward the naysayers to evaluate the contrarian ideas. But, bubbles are just too much fun!
"No one ever needed a 5 bedroom McMansion..."
Actually, Asian immigrant families in my old neighborhood do very well with those. Then again, they fill them with several kids, the sibling's family, and two sets of grandparents in a converted garage. Those McMansions become quite affordable when it's funded by six or seven incomes. It's still a vast improvement over dirt-floor shacks.
What a heartwarming story. Vienna is looking better every day.
"crimes against the environment" ? what a lOOn!
Yeah, exactly. it's a knee jerk reflex; you have to include a reference to "the damaged environment" in every comment you make about anything; mass broadcasting propaganda really does work. I wonder when people are going to wake and up and look around themselves and realize that there's not a fucking thing wrong with the environment; they're the ones who are getting fucked over. How do you like the German Solar Electricity program ? Mass hypnosis; it's just wonderful.
In other words, we must revert to living in caves and grunting to communicate! Now that sounds like a plan we can all learn to love!
WTF is it with you people and your false dilemma fallacies?
It's either pretend that we can grow forever and continue to consume like crazy OR grunt in caves. There are simply no other options in your binary world, eh?
BTW, if nature has in store for us to grunt in caves, if it chooses the least attractive outcome, whether we LOVE IT or not is fucking immaterial. Reality does not do us the favor of conforming itself to our wishes, no matter how strenuously we make them.
" Reality does not do us the favor of conforming itself to our wishes, no matter how strenuously we make them. "
+1000
Life would be a lot easier for more Americans if we would keep this in forefront of our minds.
A failed article imo.
Here's why:
Point taken.
But here:
This destroys the previous argument.
Letting others foot the cost bill is a sure way to increase profits. So gas will endure the same profit pressure. Fraccing can be performed safely but done unsafely, it rewards more.
Another point is that oil supply lines have not been disrupted in decades.
Nothing childish in the US behaviour. Something more thoroughfully thought. Even though it leads to nowhere but looking for repeating the pattern of finding volunteers to foot the costs bill so that profits could be increased.
I don't know if child like is as accurate as lemming like. We have even institutionalized it.
How many people say that you shouldn't fight the Fed? In other words, since your only focus is to make money, it's up to the Fed to be moral or reasonable or even rational and sane. If the Fed is going to drive off the cliff, I must follow suit or lose the game of checkers. We lemmings....er....investors are just following the leader.
Here is the real question. Since when must we abandon all questions of morality, legality, social good etc in our pursuit of the almighty buck? What insanity has come over us that we would follow insanity without question? Why would we possibly expect our leadership to exhibit any sanity when we won't? Are we just 5 year old children following the body in front of us across the playground? Or are we the lemming following the insanity over the cliff?
Thats what gets me about it all, seems to me most of them who say 'dont fight the FED! Buy da dip!' would invest in Thai child prostitution rings if they deemed it could make them a buck.
Does that child prostitution business trade on the Shanghai? Is it still a good deal? What's the ticker symbol, thanks.
Too many imitators, not enough innovators. However that does not describe the acute problem: too many imitating the imposters pretending to be innovators.
Oil has been trapped in a trading range for months.
If it can get over $89 and push up into the 90's, then that is signalling a global economic boom of epic proportions.
All its going to take is for the FXI to turn up off the lows, then it's off to the races.
If not, then I was wrong, and we'll head back down to the lower band of the trading range again.
the only thing oil's higher price could signal "is economic boom of epic proportions?" what the?
@Robo
Yes, the "boom" will be one of epic proportions. Similar to the one witnessed after oil reached $147/bbl.
Ok, so when the last barrel of oil is sold for a gajillion USD that will signal the economy is running super hot without oil?
Makes perfect sense...
Until the engine siezes. ;)
Another thing it "might" signal is a head fake spike and a bull trap.
Operation Wet Diaper continues.
But why is is that the trade-offs always, whether in the short term or over the long haul, favor the wealthy and screw the middle class and poor?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2hCk5zokE0
turn off the electricity and it all evens out.
Money printing would stop
trade would all be local
Tv time would now become "creative + productive time
folks would once again face and talk to each other
real values would be found again
folks would realize they need one another.
Money would lose importance over critical needs.
This just to establish a different point of view as we complacently enjoy what many cannot. Merry Christmas to those of you who honor traditional holidays
You're describing the Amish. Personally, I would miss zippers too much.
"folks would once again face and talk to each other"--gag. to horrible to contemplate. "money would lose importance over critical needs" WTF? whatever money don't buy, I don't need it anyway. You need a different acid dealer, that's some bad stuff you been dropping.
I remain convinced that benign dictatorship is the only solution for the Western developed countries. Anything else has no chance of working, since the decisions that need to be made now will not pay off within one, two or even more electoral cycles. How can we expect to make the right decisions for the future, when we frame the questions through the narrow prisms of short termism and holding onto power ?
Benign dictatorship? Yea, and socialism would work to if it was just implemented correctly.
I was ony being partially sarcastic. Unfortunately, there are very few humans alive who have the necessary combination of far sightedness, incorruptibility and strength to be an effective benign dictator. Humans are far, far better at being malignant dictators, the list is endless...
"For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best." -Alexander Pope
The challenge is to create a system that limits the damage bad people can do while leveraging what the good people do. The Constitution gave us that ... until we ourselves lost the plot.
A++. Well said.
Even a benign dictator will be faced with poor choices. Therefore remaing benign would require force to stay in power Counter productive.
But we as a public can reeducate ourselves to look at consequences of our action and words before we commit ouselves.
Even then a moral code must give direction. Living, being for the greater good must take precedence over personal gain. Fair exchange rather than mere profit.
Self discovery , dominion over ones mind and emotion should begin early in life and not be abrogated by a set of unquestionable beliefs.
Man is more than merely a smarter animal but has yet to prove it.
how could someone junk this!?
Interesting Grasshopper.... you are indeed thoughtful, but the journey of Yin and Yang is a long one, and still, far there is to go...
If all good people insisted on sacrificing themselves for the greater good, there would soon be no more good people left to carry on. That makes the good people bad for robbing the world of their goodness. Blind self sacrifice is against the nature of man and beast alike for good reason.
Intentions don't count, only the results. And the results are consistent and crystal clear and show that there is only one path that produces the greatest good, and it's not socialism.
The true moral path for the greatest good is that each man be allowed to follow his own self interest, Grasshopper. He will benefit everyone else all his journey, doing far more good just following his own self interest. It requires no coercive energy by the state and is Darwin approved for diversity. And it's simply immoral to force a man off of his own path and onto the path of others less certain in the name of "greatest good" because it always turns out to be selfish and arbitrary.
Who gets to decide what the greatest good for the people of Ireland shall be now? Apparently the EU, and all the other countries are going to be similar victims because there is no diversity from the central planners.
The EU will now confiscate the property of the people of Ireland, and then others, for the "greatest good." But it's all for the greatest good of European banks and the EU. Fewer resources and lower standard of living for everybody in the Eurozone shall be the result of their blind self sacrifice for "greatest good"
I say bring the full on neo-fascists. I say give people the ultimatum of, 'you either fight for freedom or you live and die a slave'. Perhaps that would finally wake the masses. We all must be vigilant, and I do mean everyone. It doesn't work when only 2% of the population cares or even knows about the constitution. I too, am only being partially sarcastic.
This puts me in mind of the pathetic "free energy" permanent magnet motor freaks on U-tube, who "just need to re-arrange the magnets a little".
Abandoning diversity is the first necesssary part.
Second, IQ-index vote weight along with a wealth component. Basically, give the voting reigns over to the smart and the productive rich.
this would create a situation of VAST "disenfranchisement" for diversity and the "poor." But as much as we complain about the low quality of our politicians, they are driven by the reality that pandering to idiots and diversities is the way to get elected.
who gets to design the test?
ZH Captcha. Congrats, you passed!
we already have a couple dozen which will do
To rely on intelligence alone is folly. Besides, as Davey said, who decides what intelligence is? We all have our talents, we all have our deficits. For example, you seem smart, but you might be an ugly motherfucker. You could be very productive as an accountant, but not very efficient at finding a mate with whom to pass on that raging intelligence.
I assume that you would be in our leader class under your scheme. What then, for you, if you are driving in your automobile and get into an accident that causes head trauma, in turn, halving your intelligence?
You don't get to be a leader anymore but are now a problem for the leader class to deal with.
Hopefully it isn't the policy of the smart, productive-rich to terminate the 'unproductive'.
I agree that diversity is bullshit. However, what you're asking for is a scientific dictatorship. That would likely prove to be bullshit as well.
(btw, no sarcasm here...)
LOL...relying on intelligence is FOLLY?
What kind of crazy mindfucked BS is this?? See, the problem is that you've been TOLD for your whole life that relying on smart people to be smart is FOLLY! That is the claim of morons, and a perfect example of the Downing Effect.
As for deciding what intelligence is, we have a couple dozen standardized tests, both of IQ and scholastic aptitude, that would do just fine. The smart will decide how to measure intelligence, as the smart are CAPABLE of doing it.
Note at NO POINT did I say any goddamned thing about LOOKS having any implication with DECISIONMAKING. WTF did you go and introduce looks into the discussion for? Cognitive dissonance?
If I get into a car accident and my intelligence is halved, I no longer vote. If my children happen to be below the bar, they don't vote either. TRUE meritocracy where the intelligent can do what they are good at doing, reasoning, and excercising intelligence.
As for termination of the dumb, nature is going to terminate US ALL if we don't start making logical and rational decisions. This may be a bitter pill to swallow for the cretin class, but without the daily activities of a lot of really sharp guys, you would DIE. Our behavior as a species is like bacteria in the aggregate, consume and replicate. The intelligent can see that but the nonsmart lack the capacity to do so.
As far as whether the intelligent would terminate the stupid, the intelligent tend to be liberal socialists as a group, so I really doubt that would come to pass.
Your proposal makes more sense than the socialist mantra of 'lets give every last moron on earth a chance to prove they can contribute, no matter how small the contribution is'. Encouraging people to believe that everyone should be treated equally and have the same vote, regardless of background, is misguided, and leads to the entitlement lobby thinking they're getting somewhere. Goddamn hippies.
This would mean some members of my immediate family, and some of my friends, would not qualify for being alphas in the Brave New World that would follow. To which I say, good. Some of them are real idiots...
duplicate
Unsustainable. It was tried ~200 years ago, and it got us...here. The idea of giving power over to a community who accepts that its primary responsibility is to nurture its wards is a beautiful one, to be sure, but those communities haven't proven to be solid for very long.
Lots of experiments in new forms of government are going to be carried out in the next generation. Going to be interesting times.
yes, because at some point people got consumed with acquiring voting blocs of the stupid in order to self-aggrandize.
we enfranchised voter after voter, and now look what we have...bloc votes who cannot even articulate what the fuck the candidate stands for for whom they are voting!
I'll take a reset to what we had 200 years ago then deal with this problem again in another 200 years.
Yeah, okay; everyone in a certain small class knows this; but you're not supposed to say it, because it makes the other 99% of the population very nervous and upset.
I never really acquired a taste for mincing words and am prone to saying what everyone else is thinking but is too chickenshit to vocalize.
I'd go further and make an IQ bar on reproduction. Yes, if my kids fell below the bar, the law applies. If we were concerned with looks, we put up a survey or start doing golden ratio facial analysis. The problem is not insoluble, it's just that the outcome doesn't sit well with most people.
I've read that some foresee a Sulla in the future for the US. At this point I would welcome it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Cornelius_Sulla
God forbid if a Sulla came along....the Gracchi Brothers would be a more welcome addition....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gracchi
Agreed
The difference between that and what we have now is honesty. It is too difficult to work on a problem if illusions get in the way.
Waterson puts it into cartoon perspective,
http://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=http://pactiss.org/resources/media-articles-cartoons/Ethics.jpg/image_preview&imgrefurl=http://pactiss.org/resources/media-articles-cartoons/Ethics.jpg/view&usg=__Jv3TQRsMr--TAkBCsTvmwSwHXdo=&h=282&w=400&sz=65&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=IotwSLakpDBBVM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=179&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcalvin%2Band%2Bhobbes%2522ethics%2522%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26rls%3Dcom.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox%26biw%3D1899%26bih%3D1029%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=122&vpy=111&dur=2360&hovh=188&hovw=267&tx=195&ty=121&ei=P5EPTfn5A9SrnAf_wdjjDQ&oei=P5EPTfn5A9SrnAf_wdjjDQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=60&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0
Heh
Tells it all.
Did he say that in Ernest? :/
He said something about the importance of being so.
I'm pretty sure he said it in London.
Actually, I believe Wilde was in Rodger when he said it.
Risk implies creating the greatest advantage while minimizing the loss of something valuable. The natural gas industry is inefficient and does not utlize the resource with relative few practicle uses and a neglegent infrastructure. To remove NG from the ground in it's natrual state, only to store it for reserves back underground in caverns creates excessive risk for little return. Tie in polluted water, (or even the potential for shattering rock that supports aquafers that supply a nation clean water) and blatetent disregard for the clean water act and you've got a recipie for burnt pea soup when the attempt was to serve a roasted filet. Or was it?
Terrific article. Indeed the Day of Reckoning approaches. Unfortunately, I see the possibility that my country will lash out somewhere like Rome did. I also think that the EU's Day of Reckoning will arrive far sooner than our own.. unless they drag uour banking system down with theirs, which is a distinct possibility.
Most likely event IMO is another war between europeans and the US getting involved after their entire productive economy's destruction is assured.
Its a great way to be competitive again and get rid of debt.
You can't review these problems without reviewing the propaganda. The root problem is that the only way to pursue an undemocratic (if one put the policies to a vote and the population was asked to pay the costs they would refuse) aganda like globalization and military Empire is to do it subversivly. So what they did was borrow the money so nobody has to pay for it, when that reaches its limit print the money and so on. Now since we are not willing to table globaization and Empire for discussion (we still deny they exist and the visible effects are causal in nature) the only thing you are left with is the propaganda and that is where a lot of these illogical attitudes come from. This is bcause the propaganda is designed to be internally coherent iff (if and only if) one accepts the propaganda as fact. Until that changes none of the other stuff will. As an aside the energy crisis and peak oil problems have been solved at MIT. They figured out how plants do photosynthesis and can now generate massive amounts of hydrogen from sunlight for really cheap. In 30 years most of the world (not here because of our political problems mind you) oil will ony be used for lubricants and thermo setting plastics.
yes, MIT solved everything...in total secret.
Hydrogen from sunlight via photosynthesis...wow, just wow.
Well, you know everyone has their usefullness; maybe we can sell him a permanent magnet motor?
Yes they have refined such a process, I am somewhat familiar with the technology. Here is the catch, you need Platinum catalysts. It's cute but it ain't scalable. Likewise for CIGS technology.
All the fancy shit in the pipeline requires a resource base that is not feasible.
BTW, I do hedge my bets by having a diversified portfolio of producers of strategic minerals: REE, PGM, cobalt, indium, niobium, tellerium, copper, gallium, germanium etc....
This is not only happening in America,
the whole fucking world has gone fucking mad !
(everyone except the Germans and Angela Merkel of course !)
it is all a fucking huge comedy of errors
ever since the french revolution and that megalomaniac Idiot Napoleon.
And if you really analyse it,
you will come to the conclusion that it is all the fault of the English !
many Americans are English of course,
even though they try their best to hide it!
just a bunch of miserable old poms
sent the whole place falling apart !
Oh, this must be the self-destruction phase of democracy.
Mr. Smith,
I don't have much time to comment on your essay because I am still in recovery from the Earnst & Young article Tyler put out, and my synapses have not yet recovered in order for me to properly asses what you have said here. If you read that same Earnst & Young piece, then you would have noticed a video clip which I would warn YOU SHOULD NOT WATCH for the brain damage that will result from watching it if you, like me, embrace a "Y" chromosome...but I digress.
I just wanted to answer one question that you asked:
I just wanted to say a big, fat "NO!" to that. I want to be unequivocal about it, too. But I am kind of odd, as I'm sure some ZH folk would attest to, and I do not like the idea of trying to fry bacon with a solar panel. Now, so people don't get the wrong idea, I like certain micro caps stocks that conserve energy, including one solar company, but that does not change my answer to your question.
Anyway, and maybe after my synapses recover from the previous disaster of the attack of the killer "X" chromosome [which I have too, by the way...and I don't think it is fatal or anything] maybe I can write a more complete note explaining why I like both oil and gas...but strangely am short both right now...which is a whole 'nother story.
[freakin' thanks again Tyler]
P.S.
By the way, Steve Grasso on the Blow Horn [which is what I call CNBC] just said to buy coal stocks...which is just great because now that that lemming has said that, I'm also going to have to find a coal stock to short because that guy...well, let's just say that I hope he signed up for one of the free hockey helmets I donated for NYSE floor traders who are not the brightest bulbs on ye ole' Christmas tree....if you know what I mean ;)
If you wanted to front-run Nathanial Rothschild into Phelps-Dodge, the time to have done it would have been sometime after Obama's election since he was talking about bankrupting coal... I think Grasso's a little late on this one. Maybe a lot late.
Export Land Model is critical to understand for anyone studying the oil peak.
Nobody says mankind needs to collapse, but the technomiracle of free cold fusion power or any of the other cornucopian solutions may not come on the schedule you like. Do not be surprised or upset if reality does not do you the favor of conforming itself to your wishes.
Even if historically, we transition from oil to unicorns over the next century, the transition period will be but a blip to future historians. However, it will be all of our ENTIRE LIVES.
Those who talk about "Rome's collapse," as well as those who talk about the magic substitution of coal to oil or other transition points would be wise to remember that history took a lot longer to play out than the time it took to read the sentences describing it.
It is easy to spot people that have a clue: EROEI, Export Land, what the crackspread tells us. 99.8% of people don't know the difference between kerogen and low permiablity oil fields and these are the same fucking clowns that say "Drill, Baby, Drill"
i find your suggestion that unicorn-based energy sources are technically unfeasible to be highly offensive
I never implied techically unfeasible, I mean not scalable to the levels we are accustommed to. Do you know what muon-catalyzed fusion is?
You're pretty funny.
With unicorns, the offensive point comes by playing leap frog.
http://www.energybulletin.net/image/uploads/5104/holmgren_energy_futures...
The blue line is the best I see for us. Hopefully if we get our shit together we can at least sustain trains through the bottoming, although some, more well read than me have said it's too late to save those even.
Transitions can be shockingly fast (which is not to say they will be, just that they can be if the circumstances warrant it). Unicorns (if we are defining them as a source of limitless, cheap, clean power) would be one such transition. if a single $300 6'x9' solar panel could power a home, every home in the country would be sporting one in the time it would take the factories to make and ship them.
I'm not saying that unicorns have necessarily been hidden from us by the big bad oil companies, the Department of Defense or anyone else. i am saying that the DoD would view our strategic interests as greatly enhanced by a power source nobody else has got, and oil/coal/gas companies would find themselves destitute if certain technologies advanced at anything like their natural rate of adoption if unhindered by efforts to hinder them. So there are some people around with interests that run counter to the consumer's interest, and they have things like secrecy oaths and lots of cash to throw around as a means of protecting those interests.
nonsense.
If the magic technology existed, Exxon could buy it and go from a company that is DYING (yes, DYING; they know about Peak and they are facing sustained and unabated reserves decreases into the future) to a company that could rule the world through unicorn power.
Also, it is IMPOSSIBLE to supress a meme. Even a true GOD like Isaac Newton could not stop the Calculus from being outed as others were on the same track. Relativity, Evolution, Quantum Theory - ALL had groups of great minds simultaneously working on the problem, even GR was essentially anticipated by Lorentz's work; for reasons unknown, he left it to others to carry the ball the last yards to the endzone. Leibniz can lay claim to some of the first publications of integral calculus; it only became known after Newton released his work that he was actually lightyears ahead.
The Wrights took Paris by storm, but they were half a decade - no more - ahead of contemporaries. It wasn't as if they alone showed up with powered flight in a world that didn't have the wheel.
There is NO WAY to suppress unicorn power. The truth outs by its nature. In fact, the oil majors are DESPERATE to find some raison de etre as their remaining reserves dwindle. If this is biodiesel or solar, whatever, they want to be in on it.
You're discussing an idea or body of knowledge ... (which I agree is impossible to suppress) versus a technology, which in today's world requires investment, intellectual property rights, know-how, a regulatory framework in which it can operate, and public acceptance.
Even if it's known--I can't do it without the patent--nobody will invest, and courts will stop me.
Even if it's off-patent--there may be a lot of know-how needed to actually build it as a viable commercial product, and I may not be able to get the investment to reach that point if it's off-patent.
If the regulators are hostile, it isn't going to happen--and last i checked, money could get you anything on K Street--including the kibosh put on a promising technology.
Meanwhile the public is fickle, and a few scare stories on Dateline about battery fires would put Tesla out of business ... even if there were no battery fires but the ones Dateline caused themselves. But since the major automakers have at last bought in, that probably will only be necessary if Tesla and Fisker get too frisky.
It's likely all these strategies are applied, alone or in combination, to keep certain things from happening. We have the Great American Streetcar Scandal and Who Killed the Electric Car to show us EXACTLY how it works.
A patent? LOL. I'm relatively familiar with patents as I am a member of the PTO bar.
A patent swaps right to exclusively practice the embodiment in exchange for DISCLOSURE of it!
Meaning if you HAVE a patent, everyone knows the PRECISE details of your invention.
Get the eff out of here with this technology suppression crap...if WE didn't produce it, someone OFF K STREET would, as in Japan or Germany or ANYONE.
If the product is useless, nobody will want it...wow. Nobody else is producing electric cars. It might surprise you to know that there are incredibly major car companies in other nations...yes, it's true, hard to believe I know. VW is out there and THEY didn't produce the electric car either!
Exxon does not have enough money to bribe someone away from a product line that could make BILLIONS.
You guys and your potent directors fallacies need to start being logical and accept evolution.
If you can't tie up a great technology where's my SED tv?
this is an EASY one.
SED isn't being tied up by anyone! Canon and Toshiba are major companies who pioneered this technology.
SED cannot cost-compete against LCD, simple as that. Even PDP is imperiled.
The only technology that looks to be promising for the future is OLED. SED is a ferrari TV, no question, but it won't be better than OLED so that is where the future is going. You can't ink jet deposit a SED substrate or make it on flexible materials.
SED is like PDP on roids and PDP only has a home anymore in large TVs. LCD's cost footprint has driven out all other technologies.
By the way, it was David Hilbert who was 4 months behind Einstein on the field equations. Derived using minimization of the action, very elegant. Einstein was special because of his physical intuition.
Einstein was first, so was Newton. But if you erased those men from history, others were right on it.
Even in liquifying helium, reaching close to absolute zero, there were a couple of teams trying it. Major discoveries cannot be suppressed.
If there were revolutionary new power sources out there, there isn't enough oil money in the world to bribe them away. Because if you marketed one, you'd be the new Rockefeller
Einstein was special because of Mrs Einstein. Mrs Einstein was a poor genius student wiht him and gave him all of it... he took it dumped her and the boy child and her wrecked hip from birth... he was an arch creep slimeball.
(to say zero of mrs T.S.Elliott, he stuck her in the loony bin after whe wrote the poems he published under his name..
or that creep Edison. Tesla arrived with a few dollars, worked for 1 year for Edison expecting to be paid at the end of the year but Edison gave him zero.)
A the ever-so-brilliant Lord Keynes said: “In the long run, we're all dead.” and Obama fits this other quote of his: “It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong”, too bad team O has been precisely wrong.
"We want everything and we want it now, and we don't want to sacrifice anything to get it."
We know about sacrifice - we sacrifice millions of lives - people who stand in the way of the machine. You think there's no cost? Wrong.