Our government's blithe laissez faire attitude toward the threats of fuel shortages and grid attacks may be intellectually comforting to free market champions, but I'm willing to bet that should such events seriously compromise national security, they'd turn authoritarian in a heartbeat. . . and that includes me.
After seeing these presentations my first thought was: This is utter insanity. We need to nationalize the grid and prepare for deliberate fuel rationing ASA.
SHOOT: Sane arguments.
In his research, Munroe found a confidential report by the IEA explicitly stating that in the event of a crisis, the market should be left alone and allow price spikes to pass through to all consumers. And as recently as 1996, he says, the GAO expressed its faith in the principle by writing "physical shortages. . . are virtually impossible in a market economy."
We know something about what the market does when supplies run short. It caused oil prices to triple up through last July. In fact that outcome was actually anticipated by a 2005 intelligence exercise called "Oil Shockwave," in which nine former White House cabinet officials convened to simulate what would happen if 4 mbpd of global oil supply were suddenly lost. The predicted result was a near-tripling of the world oil price.
We can rest assured that the government won't be on our backs the next time there is a supply interruption. As long as we can pay — even if gas is $7 a gallon — there simply cannot be physical shortages! |
clipped from www.energyandcapital.com
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