"Hey you, look around can you hear that noise it's a rebel sound!" the radio blasts in my ear as John Rzeznik points out, "we've got nowhere else to go." My thoughts are momentarily distracted from the ideas and facts put forth in this recent article published on The Atlantic, "What If We Never Run Out of Oil?" As a resident of the near East I spend a lot of time thinking about the impact that fuel has had on this part of the world. Living in a country that has not drilled significantly for it's own fuel but still is significantly influenced by it's neighboring fuel producing countries I have often wondered why the locals haven't started harvesting and selling their own resources to themselves and the highest bidders.
As I read through Charles C. Mann's article I was surprised to come to a conclusion about US consumption and supposed dependency on foreign oil that was not mentioned in Mann's article. I spent a good hour working through the article and consumed the information thinking about the policies of the United States government. The more I thought about reasoning the more I realized that we are not dependent on foreign oil, we are rather employing the J. Wellington Wimpy philosophy of macroeconomics. When we move from the practice of paying first and using our earned resources we are instead opportunistically using up the resources of countries more willing to part with their resources for global favor. The favor of those perceived as strong in the present political and cultural setting is the only intangible in a world of concrete services, products and materials.
The United States while seeming to be the gluttonous and lazy fool, willing to disregard its future for the sake of its present comforts, comes across instead as the very "Spirit of Opportunism" that demon which motivated our forefathers to immigrate, explore and innovate. The interesting dichotomy is that the opportunistic spirit is one that flees the general concepts of favor. Let me give you an example. My brother and his friends in college were too poor to pay the dues needed to join a prestigious social club in college. Instead of getting a job or borrowing money, they fled the spirit of favor choosing instead to form a new social club. Now four years later the social club has a status that is autonomous of the other social clubs at his university. That is a microscopic example of the large scale spirit of opportunism that motivated the immigration of millions of our forefathers. The dichotomy is that we who were the innovators escaping the shackles of favor seeking have become those promoting favor seeking in the world economy today.
"And why not?" I can hear you asking yourselves. Why should we not benefit from the position of our country. It is understandable that we allow the fleeting whims of favor seeking to bless our country while we still have our national day in the sun in the annals of history we'll be judged to have been on par with every other great empire, nation or kingdom. It is therefore expected that we would allow other countries to empty their store houses for us while we continue to sit on hundreds of other kinds of resources. I believe this is wise and right. The problem is we're reinvesting our favor earned resources on things that put nothing away for the future. There was a frightening statistic in the article by Mann that showed the disparity between the amount of research and preparation of infrastructure of Japan and that of the United States. Granted need is a great motivator, our preparations towards the national harvesting and use of these alternative fossil fuels should be funded by our opportunistic use of the resources of favor seeking countries. Presently we receive the favor of countries eager to part with their resources for payment on a Tuesday that may never come.
As long as our credit is good we will spend and when the resource runs out it is our intention to file for bankruptcy what fool would expect us to do otherwise. The only question is what are the other countries doing with our favors? No one can sing with such resolve what Rzeznik claims in the chorus of his Rebel song but it does seem to encapsulate the philosophy of a softening group of opportunists, "You can take everything from me, Cause this is all I need."
What are you buying with your favor?
As I read through Charles C. Mann's article I was surprised to come to a conclusion about US consumption and supposed dependency on foreign oil that was not mentioned in Mann's article. I spent a good hour working through the article and consumed the information thinking about the policies of the United States government. The more I thought about reasoning the more I realized that we are not dependent on foreign oil, we are rather employing the J. Wellington Wimpy philosophy of macroeconomics. When we move from the practice of paying first and using our earned resources we are instead opportunistically using up the resources of countries more willing to part with their resources for global favor. The favor of those perceived as strong in the present political and cultural setting is the only intangible in a world of concrete services, products and materials.
The United States while seeming to be the gluttonous and lazy fool, willing to disregard its future for the sake of its present comforts, comes across instead as the very "Spirit of Opportunism" that demon which motivated our forefathers to immigrate, explore and innovate. The interesting dichotomy is that the opportunistic spirit is one that flees the general concepts of favor. Let me give you an example. My brother and his friends in college were too poor to pay the dues needed to join a prestigious social club in college. Instead of getting a job or borrowing money, they fled the spirit of favor choosing instead to form a new social club. Now four years later the social club has a status that is autonomous of the other social clubs at his university. That is a microscopic example of the large scale spirit of opportunism that motivated the immigration of millions of our forefathers. The dichotomy is that we who were the innovators escaping the shackles of favor seeking have become those promoting favor seeking in the world economy today.
"And why not?" I can hear you asking yourselves. Why should we not benefit from the position of our country. It is understandable that we allow the fleeting whims of favor seeking to bless our country while we still have our national day in the sun in the annals of history we'll be judged to have been on par with every other great empire, nation or kingdom. It is therefore expected that we would allow other countries to empty their store houses for us while we continue to sit on hundreds of other kinds of resources. I believe this is wise and right. The problem is we're reinvesting our favor earned resources on things that put nothing away for the future. There was a frightening statistic in the article by Mann that showed the disparity between the amount of research and preparation of infrastructure of Japan and that of the United States. Granted need is a great motivator, our preparations towards the national harvesting and use of these alternative fossil fuels should be funded by our opportunistic use of the resources of favor seeking countries. Presently we receive the favor of countries eager to part with their resources for payment on a Tuesday that may never come.
As long as our credit is good we will spend and when the resource runs out it is our intention to file for bankruptcy what fool would expect us to do otherwise. The only question is what are the other countries doing with our favors? No one can sing with such resolve what Rzeznik claims in the chorus of his Rebel song but it does seem to encapsulate the philosophy of a softening group of opportunists, "You can take everything from me, Cause this is all I need."
What are you buying with your favor?
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