Martin C. Boire
www.TruthForUs.com
June 15, 2008

The Oil Ceiling

It is here posited there may be a maximum amount that can be charged for the critical substance of oil, a point at beyond which the price cannot rise, due to the final costs for all of the things that flow from its use, and which must be affordable, or else things stop. The proposition here is there is not always a higher price to which that which we must absolutely have can be raised and will be able to be paid simply because we must have it. For example, one simply must have a gallon water every day, but one cannot pay $100 a day for it because one does not have that $100 every day for the one necessary among the many necessaries.

I am not an economist. But it has been said in economic discourse that when the United States catches a cold the rest of the world catches a fever.

So it may be that everyone is on the verge of discovering we are all at a tipping-break point in the oil business, a point at which the oil producing countries or entities find that for their own sakes they have to assure that the U.S. economic engine must be enabled to continue to run and drive the sub-engines round the world. That something other than the purely free market will come to be involved in the creation and distribution of the life blood of the world’s well-being.

This is because the United States is still the economic engine that drives the rest of the world’s economy. Think of a mill town, in which everything else is driven by the activities of the mill.

The U.S. economy is the world’s largest. Even large countries which have rapidly growing economies do not yet compare. And those which are growing to our level depend heavily upon us to buy the gods they manufacture in order to continue that growth, and upon the purchasing power of other countries who buy their goods and have that purchasing power because the U.S. buys the goods from those other countries. If people in the U.S. are not spending to consume the products of the other countries, those people will have less to spend, and so on.

And while China may be booming, that does not mean that India’s population can buy enough of China’s products to keep China in business. Or visa-versa. Nor do the Africans have the money to buy it all. Nor do the South Americans.

Oil and gas prices keep climbing.

What if there is a point at which the American engine starts to sputter. That is, a point beyond which gas prices cannot go or the engine cannot internally afford to run.

As prices first began to rise, American people and companies absorbed the increases by tightening in other areas of their budget. Then those areas got used up.

Then they started to pass some of the increase to others. Airlines raised their prices. Trucking companies that haul goods to the stores shelves raised their rates. Domestic delivery services like DHL, UPS, and FedEx raised their rates. Small service companies that go around and fix or maintain things raised their rates.

But their customers had less money to spend because they themselves were paying more for the gas in their personal cars, electric bills, and companies that had already raised their rates on them. And their wages had not gone up And some 2008 presidential candidates are telling them their taxes are going to be going up.

So the customers/consumers are pulling back in. People are starting to fly less. People are starting to drive less. People are starting not to take trips. People will order less goods on line because of the shipping cost. With less travel, hotels and restaurants make less, which means people are laid off there.

As this expands, the economic engine will slow because less is happening, there is less movement, fewer goods are flowing.

As all of this pushes against the maximum limit that a person or business has available to pay to get the fuel it needs to do its thing, it reaches a point where it will stop growing. It will tread water. As the cost continues to go up, it will do less of what it is doing (because it cannot afford to even keep tread water at that current level). It will then reduce operations in other areas to be able to have the money to get the fuel it needs. It may lay off a worker. It may fail to pay sales taxes, matching tax on wages, or income taxes. If it is a business that involves driving or transport it will shrink the distance at which it reaches out to do businesses.

It is thus posited that there is a maximum amount that can be charged for the critical substance of oil. A point beyond which it cannot go due to the final costs for all of the things that flow from its use, and which must be affordable to U.S. people and business, or else things stop. There is not always a higher price to which what we charge can be raised. There are in fact maximum prices that can be charged for some things before people cannot buy enough of them to do what they have to do.

It is not the case that if and as our engine falters, others like China, India, Russia, or the EU will pick up the slack can carry the world economic engine without the U.S.. That would be like expecting the hat shop owner to carry the town entire economy when the mill lays off half of its workers. Or the subcontractor who makes a few of the parts for the mill, and is perforce dependent upon the mill, and who cannot step into the shoes of the mill and carry the entire town’s economy in place of the mill.

In our economy everything is interconnected and affects the balance of everything else. Ripple effects are involved. As people and businesses are now reaching the maximum extant of fuel costs they can absorb or pass one, things will begin to affect other things and we will be reminded of how interconnected we really are to each other and our pocketbooks in this economy of ours.

For instance this writer’s local Daytona Beach gas station owner already ran out of his reserve and working capital to purchase the gas to fill his tanks to sell to his customers. He doesn’t have the $36,000 working funds to buy the tanker full of gas to fill his tanks, just to make a penny or two a gallon for himself. For weeks signs have been on the pumps that he does not have gas, and is now just a convenience store. This writer recently found another such gas station in Tampa.

The bulk of the world oil is owned a produced by entities outside the U.S. OPEC. Venezuela. Russia. They need our economy going strong to be able to keep theirs going strong. While other nations’ economic engines may be growing (India, Russia, China), they won’t carry the world decades. And they don’t want their economies to be depressed for decades waiting. I bet they believe they need to keep us going to get to their economic destination. So they will want to keep things sort of the way they are right now, at least until they have grown to be mostly our equal.

In economics, it may be that domestic security is largely found in maintaining the economic status quo. People love it when things are booming and money is easy (our U.S. population is spoiled and ignorant in this regard), people whine when things slow down a bit (to cope with this one 2008 U.S. presidential candidate is telling people not to worry because those costs will be shifted to the government as if the means it costs them nothing), but people go crazy when the economy stops and they can’t readily get what they need (and in this situation a point arrives at which revolution is discussed).

So it may be that we are at a system-break in the oil business, a point at which the oil producing entities and countries realize that for their own sakes they have to assure that the U.S. economic engine must be enabled to continue to run and drive the sub-engines around the world.

That is, perhaps oil is the one unique substance that regardless of the usually supply and demand market forces, must be artificially controlled in order to assure the economic stability of the world. To avoid economic implosion or chaos.

That is, regardless that another country or hedge fund may offer to pay more per a barrel of oil, it will not be sold to them because it is not in the world’s best interest.

Or perhaps a point at which oil is removed from the things upon which speculators may speculate in the stock market. Like not bidding for the blood supply. Like not bidding for body parts and organ donors. Such things are pegged on standards like first-come first-serve, greatest likelihood of survival, likelihood of greatest benefit to others.

Consider that if, for example, the U.S. is country A, and country B is willing to pay twice as much for oil as A, it will not be sold to them for that because if A is out of business everyone is out of business.

So the producers will sit around and dish it out. It is unlikely they will turn control of their property over the UN or some other such silly entity. It is their product. It is a natural resource that comes from within their borders. They will set their own standards and make their own judgments as is their right.

When there is a shortage of a critical substance, i.e., not enough to go around, it is rationed according to some standard. In a disaster medical care is rationed according to likelihood of survival, importance to others, availability of time, and the like, and called triage.

If the oil producers want to treat everyone the same and not have to made distinctions, then they may first hand it out in accordance with the percentages with which it was being previously taken. Maintain the consumptive status quo. Tell the consumers to make up the difference elsewhere and elsewise.

If the oil producers want to prioritize, then they may hand it out based on who is most important to the economic health of the rest. Keep the U.S. economy going as a first priority. What a barrel of oil cost yesterday, it will cost tomorrow.

This is a dangerous time for internal U.S. politics. Possibilities loom of a great depression, or of the disastrous economic decisions of the 1970s, or of a large scale financial restructuring. And this writer muses that there is now an undercurrent of socialism at play under other names in national politics, and the some 2008 presidential candidates will seek to use this situation to make people Dependant upon a socialistic American government to pass out what is needed and return votes in exchange.

What happens with fuel has remade and reshaped many societies thru history. And how this plays out will dramatically affect ours.

mail@TruthForUs.Com
© TruthForUs.com. All rights reserved.
Excerpts of this material may circulated by email with reference to www.TruthForUs.com, but permission is required for re-publication, broadcast, rewriting or posting on other sites.

OR , WHY THE LEFT-ELITES ARE GRADUALLY TURNING BEDFORD FALLS INTO POTTERSVILLE
Martin C. Boire
www.TruthForUs.Com
August, 2005

I was channel-surfing the evening of August 12, 2005 and came across the last couple of minutes of a taped presentation of Bill O’Reilly and Pat Buchanan discussing something and Mr. O’Reilly off the cuff asked Mr. Buchanan why he thought the leftist American intellectual elites want to tear America down and put it back together differently. Bill O’Reilly said he did not understand why they are bent on this, and queried Pat Buchanan if he knew why. It was a sudden question and Mr. Buchanan considered it, made some suggestions but did not arrive at a conclusion, although he did say he thought it might tie into Rousseau. He was very very close.

Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote The Social Contract in 1762 in France.  The short of his argument is that orderly, meaningful civilization is the result of a contract of rules built up by man, rather than a system of rules derived from God and implemented by man. Over a century or two the European left-elites (let’s call them the Eurelites) have gradually and carefully eased religion aside and reorganized Europe around a a social contract as opposed to principles in the Bible (aka Natural Law, universal rules derived from God).

One explanation why leftist American intellectual elites (let’s call them Amerelites) are bent on this is that they do not understand the fundamental reason behind why American grew to be so great. They believe that people are driven more by greed than altruism, that America was built on greed, and that people need to be controlled for their own good.

Another explanation is that Amerelites are stupid and have no idea, they just want to be in control.

Another is that Amerelites are simply jealous that the plan in effect is not theirs, and want to replace it with their plan to satisfy their ego.   One can see a micro-scale of this type of jealously in workplaces, social clubs, scout troops, churches, and schools.

Another is that they are of a organically fundamentally different mindset that those who built America. I approach this in my chart titled The Great Divide, posted elsewhere on this site, which attempts to outline the core characteristics and core basic motivational differences between the conservative mind and the liberal mind. For example, one tends to seek adventure, the other safety and predictability, and one prefers self-employment or business-building, the other working within the comfort of a business someone else has built.

Another explanation is that they actually do know what made American great, do not believe in it, have actively worked against it for generations, want to remove it from America so that people lose faith in the Why and they end up in control of a new program governing the American acreage on this planet.

People rarely do things with only one isolated feeling inside them. Usually there is more than one motivational force or feeling at play within us. Consider the complexity of love.

In my opinion the behavior of the Amerelites and the Eurelites is explained chiefly by the last three, these several motivations occurring together within them.

First let’s examine why America is great. Why is America great? Because of each individual’s strong, visionary, Christian belief from the first day of history in this nation. The first Americans were attempting to create utopia in the image of God. That is why they came here. The colonies were every and all Christian experiments, expeditions, enterprises. Each organized themselves around their interpretation of the New Testament and what God wanted of them, and how to lead the best Christian life possible here on earth. The Pilgrims, Quakers, Puritans, Maryland Catholics, were all driven by a religious vision of utopia. [i] The laws and policies they set up were based soundly on what they believed God wanted and through the Bible instructed.  The whole reason they left the control of those then in charge in Europe was to come here to America where they could set up societies — colonies – modeled around their Christian beliefs. [ii] They prayed and went to church a lot more often than we do, and discussed what comprised a proper Christian life a lot more often than we do. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either unaware of history or intentionally wants to deceive you for the gain of their cause.

The Christian values planted in this American soil have structured the framework within which everything has since developed. Within our tolerant framework of protestant Christian values and the legal system and social construct which it produced and reflected for the first time on this planet, other very religious peoples came to America, mainly as minority pockets within this dominant yet tolerant societal construct. For instance Jews came and defined their own unique American practice of their faith in God unlike that found in Jewish cultures anywhere else. Christianity and religious belief built America, with a strong belief in God and the fact that all of this earthly activity is not waste effort to pass the time, but is in fact leading to some ultimate conclusion of vast importance to each of us personally.

And that is why America is great — because, in short, we believe that we are about something much larger than ourselves. We’re on a mission from God. For the benefit of ourselves and of all mankind. [iii]

Second, the Amerelites want for average Americans what the Eurelites have done to the average Europeans.  In short, Eurelites have sucked the life out of Europe and snuffed out the inner personal spark afforded by protestant Christianity. They have destroyed the religious institutions of Europe, even though one hundred years ago a Chinese philosopher pointed out that the religious institutions were the chief and greatest pillar of our Western success. [iv] In its place the Eurelites have put solely the “social contract” [v] Man is God. Average European people have little hope in their ultimate future, and therefore little hope in the general future. They therefore do not quest for big things. They therefore do not have the hopeful faith necessary to bring forth many happy children. Their populations are thus decreasing, and their cultures fading.  Europe is dying. People are fatalistic, cynical, and without positive virtue.  A citizen’s life is a hopeless exercise of passing the time in self-gratification because one only goes through life once and this is all it is about and all one can hope to get out of it. Cynicism abounds. Few have any belief they are building toward a shining city on the hill or building toward meeting God and His expressing pleasure in their work.  Individualism and the satisfaction of self-reliance having been displaced by the paternalistic state, socialism has taken over to provide the citizens’ needs. Socialism belittles God, so that the state may be important. [vi] And the coup is complete. The few are in control of the many, who are without the inner spark of something ultimately larger and so content to do the bidding of the system of the few, as if to give meaning to their lives. It could almost make one think of the idea of legal positivism (that is, to find what is ultimately Right, one need not look beyond the law; there is no higher universal Natural Law, just the legal code of man, and what that man-code defines as being Right, Ethical, or Moral).  As long as something is consistent with the man-code, it is correct.

America is one of last strongholds of protestant Christianity and positive belief in an active and merciful God. [vii] The Amerelites are the intellectual kin of the Eurelites. The Amerelites want for Americans what the Eurelites have done to Europeans. They want the death of God. They want man to be God. They want socialism to control, and to be the controllers of that socialist structure. They share similar ideas, run in the same circles, equally disdain the beliefs and abilities of their average citizens and democratic forces, and both arrogantly assume that they have superior knowledge than those who harbor silly religious beliefs.

The danger is that in the end with the death of the driving force of innovative protestant Christian vigor, inventiveness and creativity in America, progress will grind to a crawl. In many respects America is to the world what Microsoft is to America.  The rest of the world may gradually over many years come up to the level of achievements America has to date built, but absent the driving engine of American protestant Christianity, the world in many respects will not advance scientifically with the leaps and bounds it did when America was a strong, adventurous, inventive, boldly protestant Christian nation. Innovation will recede and we will gradually enter another long stagnant era as preceded the Renaissance. Socialism has never produced innovation. [viii]  Socialism breeds  stagnation.

But this is what the Amerelites want. Why would they want this? Why would anyone want to destroy such a beautiful creation as America and gradually make it into a different creature though under the same name?

For the reasons aforesaid. The Amerelites are jealous that their kind has been outnumbered, that the plan in effect is not theirs, and they want to replace it with theirs. They do not believe in people being left to their own devices; people must be brought under control and management for their own  and the common good. Some of them do know what made American great, don’t believe in it, and act as forces of the dark side endeavoring to destroy that which is good and beneficial, the eternal battle of evil against good, dark against light.

Some smart people outfox themselves. They are fooled by their ability to engage in complex thinking and come to think that they can reason their way out of God - that they can discard Him and rebuild better in their own image. Some are stupid and misguided. Some are atheists. Some are Judases ready to betray for some misperceived advantage to flow to them from the new power without thought  to the long term cost.

In the end, Amerelites know that just like in Europe once they destroy the faith of Americans that they and America are on a mission from God, they can be in control because with Americans’ Leader gone, Americans will look to them for everything.  Just like the great society welfare system replaced self-sustenance with dependence upon those who controlled and dished out the monthly food stamps and housing.  Like a dog and its keeper, like the slave and the master, Americans would then come to obey and avoid anything that would interfere with the arrival of the food: How did you want me to vote? Who’s going to give me the most?

The elites who believed in top-down centralized control and were deposed in the American Revolution have worked to regain control ever since. But the elites do not now take the form of kings and queens.  Their castles are the television studios, foundation offices, and media headquarter buildings.   The elite is now in the form of secularism, Man as God, and socialism as provider of everyone’s needs, vs. the precious individuality of success and failure that God sparks in each of us. “Just don’t interfere with my benefits until I die; I don’t care what happens after that; it’s the next generation’s problem.”

If the Amerelites can gradually succeed in controlling people, then through futility of life and loss of hope they can destroy people’s faith in God and steal many souls.

And that is the ultimate victory.

mail@TruthForUs.Com
© www.TruthForUs.com. All rights reserved.
Excerpts of this material may circulated by email with reference to www.TruthForUs.com, but permission is required re-publication, broadcast, rewriting or full posting on other sites.

---

[i] A great book to read is Zachary Karabell, A Visionary Nation 2001.[ii] And what a marvelous success the colonists created. This soundly refuted in concrete example Rousseau’s theoretical assertions in his conclusion of The Social Contract (Book 4, Chapter 8): “[Christianity] does not have any assignable point of contact with political society.” “A nation of true Christians would long since have ceased to be a society made up of men.” “Besides failing to tie the citizen to the state, [Christianity] actually cuts them off from it.” In a war “[Christians] know how to die but they do not know how to win.” “Your true Christians are born slaves.” This is all music to the ears of the Amerelites and their Eurelites counter-parts.[iii] If the Chinese had originally settled American instead of European WASPs, do you think it would be like and behave in any manner which it does? The Muslims from the Middle East ? If Nigerians or Congolese had figured out how to sail over here and settle America ? People from India ? No. They would have produced and entirely different culture here. America would not exist. The buildings would all look different. It would have a different name, be something else, and would likely be several patch-work counties like the rest of the world, not a single large entity. There would be no Constitution, no Bill of Rights, no three-branch form of government. American would not have been available for the major events of world history. And everything would be entirely different. Like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, except George Bailey is replaced by the United States (and except that at the conclusion of the movie France and others would have come running with money to repay the many good deeds done instead of refusing to pay for their costs of WW1).[iv] Sometimes when one is in the middle of a situation, a view from an outside observer can helpfully shed light on what is going on within the situation. K’ang Yu-Wei was one of modern China ’s most eminent scholars and statesmen, and their last great Confucian. His belief was that Western nations owed their strength and vitality to two things: (a) their organized religion, and (b) their specializations in studies. See Baskin, editor, Classics in Chinese Philosophy, 1974, p. 623.[v] Rousseau: “The man who makes bold to undertake the founding of a people should feel within himself the capacity to … change each man’s character … [and] to substitute for the independent physical existence each of us has received from nature one that is moral and that we share with others. And: “He must … strip each man of the resources that are his alone.” And: “The founder’s handiwork is solid and perfect just to the extent that the individual’s natural resources are reduced to nothing, i.e., snuffed out of existence….” The Social Contract, Book 2, Chapter 7.[vi] Rousseau: “The sovereign is entitled to fix the tenants of a purely civil creed, or profession of faith.” And: “as for the man who, having committed himself publicly to the state’s articles of faith, acts on any occasion as if he does no believe them, let his punishment be death.” And: “the man who makes bold to say ‘Outside the Church there is no salvation’ should be driven from the state.” Book 4, Chapter 10, Rousseau’s final word.[vii] Although Pentecostal, Evangelical, Baptist, and Charismatic American Church congregation programs are periodically bringing out throngs of European youth to rallies, and there may be hope that this sparks the next evolution of protestant Christianity across Europe saving it from the clutches of its plotting leaders.[viii] The collapse of the Roman Empire brought about the Dark Ages in Europe, and the rise of the Muslim power and crusades from the Muslim East across Europe pushing to the Atlantic . Eventually Europe regained itself and then drove the Muslims with the European crusades back into Middle East where most of my generation always thought they always were, our liberal educators not wanting us to consider that non-Christians might be aggressors. Perhaps with the rapidly rising China , and the dilution of the glue holding America together, history will find that America collapses, the West falls into the Second Dark Age, and during this stagnant period China in the East enters its heyday of world dominance. They’re certainly building more naval vessels that anyone else right now. But unlike the Muslims who disdained the heathen infidel Europeans to such an extent that they returned home and tried to manage Europe from afar (which left Europe able to regroup over a century or two), China is unlikely to recede, but send waves of its people to populate and inculcate us with their culture and communist military control like they have done to wonderful little Tibet. Also, much different monitoring technology exists today.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »