Globonannies Lament Cheaper Oil
The WSJ either initiates or piles on (I'm sure this theme got started elsewhere, but this is the first I've seen it) the latest inanity that lower oil prices are bad. Apparently, when a remarkable technology that improves our lives and raises our standard of living to previously unimaginable heights becomes less expensive to use that is something to lament. I didn't know this. Henceforth I will pine away for semiconductors, fiber-optic cables, laproscopic surgical instruments, pharmaceuticals, and electric arc furnaces to double, triple, even quintuple, in price so that regular people like me will have more limited access to their benefits. Yes, yes, let's all go back to the eras of leaching and bleeding, one-phone households and the Encyclopedia Britannica.
OK, in all seriousness. When the price of oil was higher it made sense to seek substitutes and it still makes sense to explore competitive technologies, because hey, you never know, one of these technologies just might be economically viable and not require massive subsidies mandated by our politicians with our money. The market is merely regulating the flow of capital into the energy sector and at the present time it is tempering the flow into alternatives to one form hydrocarbon energy, oil. It may yet resume signaling a need for more progress on alternatives. But the market price of energy is a mere sideshow for the globonannies. What the enviro-nannies and their fellow travelers, phony and otherwise, are now lamenting is that the market is now not doing their dirty work. When oil was at $80, they were happy with the message that the market was sending and they could avoid having to intervene ever more aggressively on the way we live with bans, subsudies, and higher taxes. However, with oil at $50 and some counting on it going lower, the market's message is not so appealing to our putative betters. Now they will actually have to come out into the light with their massive taxpayer-funded subsidies, restrictions and mandates on the way we live, and run the risk of being seen as exactly what they are by the rest of us.
People like Rich Wagoner shouldn't be bitching about how lower oil prices will inhibit his company's ability to sell alternative fuel technology to us, he should be developing compelling technology that appeals to us regardless of the prevailing price of oil and figuring out ways to market new technologies to the car-consuming public. That inability to forge ahead with one's own smarts and gumption is one reason why GM is a mess. Not so Toyota and Honda.
OK, in all seriousness. When the price of oil was higher it made sense to seek substitutes and it still makes sense to explore competitive technologies, because hey, you never know, one of these technologies just might be economically viable and not require massive subsidies mandated by our politicians with our money. The market is merely regulating the flow of capital into the energy sector and at the present time it is tempering the flow into alternatives to one form hydrocarbon energy, oil. It may yet resume signaling a need for more progress on alternatives. But the market price of energy is a mere sideshow for the globonannies. What the enviro-nannies and their fellow travelers, phony and otherwise, are now lamenting is that the market is now not doing their dirty work. When oil was at $80, they were happy with the message that the market was sending and they could avoid having to intervene ever more aggressively on the way we live with bans, subsudies, and higher taxes. However, with oil at $50 and some counting on it going lower, the market's message is not so appealing to our putative betters. Now they will actually have to come out into the light with their massive taxpayer-funded subsidies, restrictions and mandates on the way we live, and run the risk of being seen as exactly what they are by the rest of us.
People like Rich Wagoner shouldn't be bitching about how lower oil prices will inhibit his company's ability to sell alternative fuel technology to us, he should be developing compelling technology that appeals to us regardless of the prevailing price of oil and figuring out ways to market new technologies to the car-consuming public. That inability to forge ahead with one's own smarts and gumption is one reason why GM is a mess. Not so Toyota and Honda.
posted by Donny Baseball at 9:13 AM
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