On the issue of peak oil, I have seen what seems to be a lot of hype concerning what will happen as we run out of oil and claims that we are running out of oil faster than we really are. This is of course quite natural; claims that are more dire will always receive more attention and be repeated more often because they are more interesting.

We may well be running out of oil, even running out fast, but that isn’t really a problem. As we run out of oil, we will find other sources of power, and they will eventually be better and cheaper. The faster we burn through the oil, the faster this will happen. The market of human desires and innovation will provide the sources of energy that people want, provided central authority does not stifle innovation.

Laissez fair capitalists are quite happy to have breaks on their cars, so long as the choice to apply them is left to the individual drivers, rather than having a button that gives some central authority the power to remotely lock breaks wherever and whenever they think it is best for their job security to abruptly stop all traffic.

But then there are also the people who have been steadily claiming that there is no energy crisis at all and that there is plenty of oil around to keep things moving as they used to who have been grabbing the most authoritarian power of them all, introducing a war on an abstract concept, claiming untenable executive powers, re-introducing torture and the detaining of people without a fair trial, lining the pockets of their cronies with tax dollars while letting the common infrastructure go to hell…

So as far as the real world is concerned, it is actually people who say everything is hunky-dory on the energy front who are the most visibly authoritarian types…

You note that the libertarian solution to your “bathroom” problem works fine but breaks down if resources are decreased. I don’t disagree, the market will definitely fail when trade is not producing the resources people need. However, I disagree that the authoritarian solution works better as resources are decreased. I believe it breaks down even faster - that is, does more overall harm. But it will certainly look like an attractive solution to those that believe that they can muster the necessary force to steal what they need.

The moment the market breaks is the moment where one group decides that the best move is to seize the resources from others, whether they wear bandit masks while doing this or do so openly by claiming right of some greater authority. The longer everyone can continue to play fair, the better the chances that the situation will improve before serious damage can happen to many.

Furthermore, you note that innovation is the way out of a decreasing resources scenario. Well it is authoritarianism that stifles innovation.

Any innovation that might increase resources is actually a threat to existing authority that is justifying its power in “this time of emergency.” Claiming that there is not enough to go around (and that someone else is trying to get more than their fair share) is a classic way to get people to accept authority, and innovation that creates more real wealth is therefore, often the enemy of authoritarian thinking.

Do you believe that we are in a shrinking resources scenario now? If so, could it be that you have been convinced of this by people who want to claim authority over you?

It doesn’t matter as all groups are merging into a world communist state anyways so they are getting their wishes.

Oh and putting Hillary on the right? The map is such bs propaganda. It even puts Huckabee closer to Hitler then Mccain.

The economic arguments you are making presume that the actors are powerless: That they cannot find a better place, that they are glued into this situation. That is a horrible characterization of human nature.

We are able to get up and do something else. Creativity trumps scarcity.

PR

Those who follow a more egalitarian philosophy say, we don’t care what you do with your life and how successful you are as a result, we give you as large a bathroom time slot as everyone else. We don’t require you to conform to other standards as long as you conform to your bathroom time alotment.

That’s because most people have an innate idea of fairness. It just takes into account different variables to determine what is fair. George Lakoff is great in explaining the differences between these polarly opposite ideas of fairness.

Authoritarians, on the other hand, would claim that it’s up to whoever is in power to distribute the bathroom time as fairly or as arbitrarily as they choose. That works better and better the fewer bathrooms are available and the more hopeless it becomes to allocate what little bathroom time is left into a meaningfully useful time for everyone anyway.

And libertarians are the people who say that whoever gets to the bathroom first gets to choose for how long they remain inside or when they choose to sell or lease their possession of the bathroom to others. That worked fine when there was and abundance of bathrooms and bathroom times available and works more and more badly the fewer bathroom minutes there are averaged over people…

The whole issue can be sidestepped only by finding ways to build more bathrooms, preferably inside more apartments, or alternative ways to go potty. (That would be where the oceans come in or space elevators into the vastness of geostationary orbit and beyond or other ideas of expansion…)

The fact that most politicians either want to control your economic activity, or your personal habits, but not both, does not seem explainable based on the idea of us not being able to “having our cake and eat it too”, since the different freedoms being offered are in no way related. However, it seems very explainable by the idea that those who seek political office like to control people, that people will only allow some degree of control over them, and that different politicians and people will have different ideas about which liberties seem the most importent .

I will use what I call my bathroom metaphor. Two people live in an apartment and there are two bathrooms, then both have the freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want, and stay as long as you want, for whatever you need. Everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the Constitution. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang at the door, “Aren’t you through yet?” and so on.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Isaac_Asimov

This may be the reason why so many politicians fall on that diagonal, believing that giving people freedoms in some respects means that they will lose freedoms in other respects. It may be an entirely realistic way of seeing things, and it may be completely unrealistic to think that you can keep having your cake and eating it, too, as it used to be like when the limits of growth hadn’t been reached yet in a comparatively recently discovered country, with lots of natural resources and a lack of human resources…