What is there of ourselves in an article
When we read an article we are opening ourselves to ideas that we need to be very critical of. If not, we are putty in the hands of others. That is not where I want to be.
I read an article today (it is now a few days ago, I have had a problem getting this article out, even I have a life outside this effort) that on the surface is just bland status quo material. In the world today, that should be a warning flag. One need to place our own interpretation over what we read. New information should always be made into a form of irritation. That prompts us to defend against ideas of self harm and gives us a chance to put our mark on it first. There must be something of ourselves for every article every idea. This has not been an easy process for me. Years of unfounded trust I have developed, with external help, has made me less sensitive to how much information is just to keep ones attention on the status quo. Note, I have not said anything about truth or lies. Value judgments aside, there is a step before, some might call it innate paranoia, others, a developed habit of how information must, at the onset, be weighed by ones internal compass. If they align, you will have at least placed your mark on the information before enshrining it as a part of your internal universe, for better or worse. If an alarm is triggered, more work needs to be done. Which is what happened with this article
As I looked at it more, I started to realize that it was not bland at all. The blandness is a function of where I am in the world today, and, my sense of entitlement. In most parts of the world, what is in this article is the height of entitlement of the the empire, it is also the cause of much suffering to my brethren in much of the world. To get a sense of this artificial situation, one needs only to see that the others are the majority and despite unfair practices, some of them are becoming ascendant, a real threat to the corrupt and decaying empire.
So, I read through it a few times and found myself slipping out of my comfort zone and became aware of my own shortsightedness. I also started to see, if only partially, with the eyes of the majority of the world. I became upset in myself and a little ashamed in my ignorance, by accepting so easily the tenants of this article. I woke up, just a little.
I will share my small awakening. I am fully aware that we are suppose to embrace the ultimate virtue of greed in the official church of the empire, and, the god of “capitalism” will lift his magical hand and fix all things and benefit as many people as possible.
The problem is, I have fully distance myself from this doctrine. It is not that, I have transcended greed, it is that, I know the dark side of greed and will not give it free reign of my actions.
To me, all these political, economic and social models are just generalizations. At most they are useful end points for discussion at worst they are excuses for bad behaviour, to the determent of many and the benefit of a few.
Many articles seem to come from a viewpoint that all actions that empire takes is justified, because, it sees the rest of the world as necessarily subservient to the interest of the empire. This is not so different from most of the empires of the past, that I have some familiarity with. However, in the past, this depends on an overwhelmingly strong military to control its vassals, driven mostly by superiority of technology both physical and/or militaristic. Timely application of brutal means to bring on fear is another well worn method of control. When vassals try to look after their own countries welfare, the empire screams unfair trade practice. Take a look at the first sentence of the article I mention in the beginning and see if you can spot this behaviour
Saudi Arabia stopped being an ally of Washington the moment it began the 2014-2016 Oil Price War with the specific intention of destroying the then-nascent U.S. shale oil industry
First of all, if the shale oil boom is such a good source of energy, why can’t it compete with other energy sources? Why are the profits of the tight oil/gas companies so poor? Of course they tell you the profits are just around the corner. I think, that will happen, if oil prices go through the roof. It’s not as if the shale industry was allowed to flounder on its own to survive. Which is how most other nascent smaller businesses would have to do. The US has been very free with the cash to back this technology at near zero interest. I would argue that most of the shale oil boom is a debt driven one with very little real return to the companies and the public in general. However, I also recognize that the empire needs controlled energy, at almost any price, to counter any pressure its out-sized military tentacles over the entire world needs. The shale companies will comply, since free money is hard to refuse. To say that 2014-2016 was the beginning of the shale oil industry is a bit of a stretch as well. To see how competitive shale plays are compared to conventional hydrocarbon plays, I will recreate a graph, along with data, from PeakProsperity, the relevant section can be found in the prior link. I strongly recommend a look.
The first chart shows the story of how much surplus energy we get back from oil plays. It shows the amount of surplus or net energy we generate per unit of energy we expend to get it. Note when we hit 1:1, in other words, when we use up one barrel of oil to generate one barrel of new oil, we will have hit bottom, there is no surplus energy generated at that point. In that case, we have stopped bring any surplus oil energy to the world. And without this form of surplus energy we will stop growing and our complex society will quickly simplify. The other energy sources are just not ready to take the place of hydrocarbons for the foreseeable future.
Just in case you feel that simplification sounds good, remember, its the complexity that differentiates the life style of our current society to our cave-man ancestors. There is nothing wrong or right about a simple society; however, we have struggled hard, with many working against the effort, to bring humanity to its current state of sophistication and complexity. I would hate to see all that reduced to a low energy survival based existence. In any case, the fact is clear, that, growth requires energy. I wrote about this in a previous article, so I will not elaborate on this here. If you look at figure 1, it shows the percentage of surplus energy (in green) you can use, in any way you choose, for the functioning of a society. It also shows the percentage energy expended (in red) to generate the surplus. I have placed the amount of surplus oil based energy generated over time per unit energy expended as yellow lines on the chart.
As can be seen, the amount of surplus energy over time is decreasing. Towards the right hand side of the chart the green area (% surplus energy) is quickly decreasing and is taken over by the red area (% energy used to find the surplus). This zone has been called the energy cliff. It is obvious that our oil finds are heading deeper into the cliff. No amount of forcing others to provide energy for less, or, forcing them to increase/decrease their production will fix this problem. Eventually, even the expensive sources of energy will have to be used. The current place for shale oil in the chart above is around 2:1. To see where this fits, we ill expand the x-axis of figure 1 to arrive at figure 2 below
Figure 2 above shows that more and more energy is required to get less and less surplus energy over time. This equates directly to oil is getting more and more expensive to bring to the market. Now if you have a country that has more oil than you need internally, I am sure you will look to sell the excess or hoard it for a rainy day. If you choose to sell it, knowing it is costing more to produce over all, would you not naturally want to get a good price for your product? Now if another country comes along telling you how to do your business in order to protect their shale oil industry that directly competes with you, would you be predisposed towards that strategy? Of course there is a lot of back room dealings that occur, like one country is militarily stronger than you are and can take it from you if you don’t comply. This would be a strategy that would benefit the stronger party, however, it works only if there are no other players that has interest in the oil. It is my opinion, that, we are quickly moving from this uni-polar moment in history and many countries are starting to realize that the tyranny dished out by the empire is no longer the only game in town.
To make the decline of surplus energy more clear, I have created figure 3, where I just took the percentage surplus of oil from the figures 1 and 2 and plotted them at the time they were realized. Then, I fitted a 3rd order polynomial to the points to show one possible model of how the surplus energy could develop over time. It is not difficult to speculate that in a reasonably short time period we could be extracting some very expensive oil. I will also note that none of the green agenda plans will fill this energy void. Again I have discussed this before.
I think that is sufficient discussion about the first sentence. I will consider the next hilighted text from the same article.
Last week’s Saudi-led shock two million barrels per day (bpd) collective crude oil production cuts shows that MbS personally has nothing but contempt for the U.S., so it is little wonder that key figures in the West Wing of the White House are taking it so personally.
It is strange that an empire that has had so much contempt for so many parts of the world would find that during an energy crisis of its own making in Ukraine, the empire feels slighted by a Saudi oil cut. It is even stranger considering that since this action would increase the price of oil. That surly must be a boost to the shale oil industry in the empire. If shale oil industry is a great business model and can be realistically scaled up this would be an opportunity for working towards, what we keep hearing, energy self sufficiency. The empire would no longer be subjected to the whims of the likes of Saudi Arabia or Russia. But, that is just the fantasy we are prompted to believe. The reality is the shale oil industry is not the horn of inexhaustible energy. It will become more and more expensive as time goes on. The curve in figure 3 will not suddenly have a magical turn around without a lot more debt being pumped into it. This debt at a time when it is no longer fashionable to hold onto the empires debt. The outcome would be inflation that will likely become hyper-inflationary.
The rest of the article glorify strong arm tactics as the height of diplomacy. Here is one quote that shows this.
The first of these was the threat of the complete removal of all U.S. military assets that had protected Saudi Arabia since the core 1945 agreement struck between then-U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Saudi King at the time, Abdulaziz
This is not a new or even a locally popular idea. The 9/11 bogey man, Osama Bin Laden, was known for his desire to rid Saudi Arabia of the US influence more than anything else. Again, this strong arm tactic would be workable, even if morally repugnant, if the empire still enjoyed a uni-polar moment with no challengers. The reality is that a multi-polar order is challenging this and is quickly overtaking the corrupt and decaying uni-polar empire.
Another quote that shows the extent of entitlement expressed in the article follows.
The second highly effective method that Trump’s West Wing was able to use to stop Saudi Arabia from damaging the economic and political interests of the U.S. and its allies, was to threaten implementation of the ‘No Oil Producing or Exporting Cartels’ (NOPEC) bill.
This bill that threatens other countries that forms a union to maximize the benefits to these countries from its own resources. The empire wants to dictate the rates these countries must produce at and the prices it feels they should sell the same. We have all seen the blow-back from the sanction war on Russia. This would be an order of magnitude even more disruptive, since the empire is not able to strong arm the rest of the world as it once did. If the empire tries, the escalation may mean a world that will not require oil as we freeze in our radioactive hovels and caves. That is if there is anyone left that cares.
I think this is enough of my current relationship with this article. I think there is a lot to think about in it, and I am getting too lazy to deprive the reader a chance to put part of themselves in this article and any other.
All information given to us has a part that is unwritten, a part which we must write for ourselves. When we unravel some of these, we gain the chance to see a larger picture, a picture which complements the worldview that is truly ours, a worldview from which we start to see how the information is relevant to us, and things that, on the surface, seem to be happening to others, is going to be impactful to us and those closest to us.
This is the hidden text which we need to do our own homework on, there is no easy way, the easy way is the blind incorporation of ideas from others. The danger is the information is false (only determined by our analysis, it is an internal thing) or truly the product of ideologues that seek to indoctrinate others. We need to build this defence against external influence. For once incorporated as a part of our internal universe, can alter what we are capable to discerning as true (for us) and in accordance with our own internal compass.
The value judgment of true or false is an internal thing, the truth in the real world has almost nothing to do with it. The real world truth, or, objective reality calls to us because we evolved alongside it, but the inner world, from which our choices and actions emerge, is what we must nurture and guard from harmful external influence. We need to observe and analyze, for ourselves, all input potentially objective, or, distillation from others, and, make a more and more conscious effort to have that personal relationship with our internal compass to align more closely to the universal song that we are but a small voice in its chorus. Others can help us to be attuned to this music or deafen us by imposing noises of chaos. Keep on guard, keep exploring and we may yet create a society worthy of being a part of.
Articles found after this note was written
Uni-multi-polar world (1)