It Ain't Magic. You Paid For It!

I have just had a very interesting realization. By and large, the majority of people accept the Argument From Design for the existence of an intelligent creator, but in contrast, when they consider the state of our world, its poverty and its war, they attribute no primary movers, and instead think of it a a chaotic jumble of unregulatable fractionary (and ungodly) forces. But this later view point at least is greatly nieve. For people to be truly impoverished means they lack the means to sustain themselves in a reasonable fashion. This means they either don't have the knowledge to do so, or they do not have enough land off of which to provide food and water, establish shelter and community. Men need little more than this to maintain diginified lives. Just ask the Amish. Yet billions do not have this. How is that possible? People have been existing without modern means for thousands upon thousands of years and now suddenly billions have no idea how to do so any more? Quite obviously, at some point in their heritage these people were deprived of their traditional way of life. they were discourged from learning the ways of there forefathers, or were dislocated from their lands. And examples of this abound. The most obvious are the American Indians, the African slaves, and the Palestinians. No matter how you slice it, that's the bottom line. When it suits them, the powerful displace the less powerful to gain their lands and/or destablize their traditional livelihoods for a cheap source of labor. How ironic it is then to consider Christian missionaries who sought to bring salvation, but who are in actuality the pawns of the powerful and hairbringers of social down fall. Yet who can blame them? Are they not like the the modern American tax payer? If you do not pay your taxes you are breaking the law, marked unpatriotic, and will go to jail. But if you do, then your tax dollars (not to mentoin you debt payments) are filling the cofers of the powerful and still spilling blood.

Riding Camels

I have done a little research and by almost all accounts the oil and natural gas production of the world will peak sometime in this decade. Once this peak is straddled, oil and gas prices will begin to rise indefintely. Since the demand for oil continues to increase, prices will soon begin to rise rather rapidly. Then a drastic transition will begin to take place. Having not sufficiently pursued the development of alternatives we will have to turn to old standbys, mainly coal. Given increased demand for coal to offset the loss of oil and natural gas, we can expect about fifty more years worth of coal before the same phenomenon of peak production occurs to it. yet coal is is not as efficient, clean, or as versitle as oil. Therefore coal can only provide a partial offset. The bottom line? The global economy will suffer a major set back as transportation costs begin to sky rocket. Since no government power is willing to embrace this reality and actually prepare for the future, we can only expect a major world wide economic depression --a depression the likes of which we have never seen before. The Saudis have a saying:

My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet plane. His son will ride a camel.

Here's a sample of some of the shorter, but still informative, articles I read:

• The True Cost of Oil


• Fill'er up: The Hidden Cost of Oil

Government, Inc.

The distinguished linguist Noam Chomsky has a good bit to offer in way of understanding the Current State of American Economics. This is a brief write-up on a presentation he has been giving.

Another short write-up, A Primer on Jobs and Joblessness, provides some fundemental information about economics that most persons, including government representitives, simply do not understand. Now, I will say that I think Mr. Block is taking things too far, as he seems to support a completely unchecked free-market. To the contrary, there do need to be some basic reigns on the free-market, least we all have our souls sold to the company store. But beyond such constraints protecting us from monopolistics servitude, he is fully correct. Government has climbed into bed with corporate interests, and it is imperitive that it be stopped.