If I may jump into this long non-sailing discussion late, I would like to make a couple of points that seem to have been left behind in the flurry of thoughts going off into numerous interesting directions.
Capitalism versus Socialism: I don't think you can get away from a basic truth that the more you want someone or something (government, for instance) to do for you, the more freedom of independent action you will give up. Any good society will take care of its vulnerable citizens; even barbaric societies did this to differing extents. But the more these support programs proliferate, the more people will be happy to depend on them; not everyone is motivated by the work ethic. Way back, Benjamin Franklin said that we should help the poor, but not make them so comfortable that they want to stay in that condition (I'm paraphrasing). The beauty of Capitalism is that it appeals to human being's self interest, which is more reliably stronger than human being's altruistic instincts. Since Capitalism is basically amoral, it must be coupled with a strong rule of law to reign in excesses. In support of the above very brief theme, I offer some general statistics. US economic growth rate is consistently higher than Europe's. US unemployment rate is way below Europe's (Europe varies from 6 to 9% while the US is under 5%). Opinion poles show Europeans much less optimistic about their future than US citizens. This attitude may be why Europe's birth rate (among ethnic Europeans) is not sustaining itself. The gowing social support payments necessary from years of social welfare and the aging baby boom generation is creating an impending economic crisis more dangerous than our "boomer" social security crisis.
If government gets out of people's way (except for enforcing proper rules of fair play, so to speak), one sees the inventiveness of people unleashed. Ireland's economic boom over the last 20 years serves as a good example. In the US, I am constantly amazed at seeing how people will find the smallest need and find a way to make a living filling that. The inventiveness of these entrepeneurs never ceases to amaze me. Now, before I get slammed with examples of how this idea is perverted or corrupted in the US, I didn't claim it was perfectly functioning here, just better than in many other places in the world. We have many distortions of the free market here and some lead to real economic problems. In general, though, barriers to entrepeneurism are much lower in the US than in Europe and that's a good thing.
Regarding oil: The Alberta (Canada) oil sands contain more oil reserves than currently exist in Saudi Arabia. At $2.50 a gallon, it is now becoming economically viable to extract and market. We have in the US vast deposits of shale oil under ground. It can't be accessed by open pit mining like the oil sands, but there is a commercial test operation (to test on a commercial scale) going on out west whereby steam is injected into these deposits and the oil is "cooked" out of the shale. When deleted, the deposit is back filled with water and the whole operation occurs underground. These deposits are vast, close to the level of Saudi Arabia. Last, but very much not least, we have, at current consumption rates, enough coal in the US to fuel our fleet of vehicles for 500 years. This is from methanol extracted from coal.
The US should mandate that the auto makers achieve flex fuel capability on their fleet within 2 to 3 years. It takes only a sensor to determine the composition of the fuel and adjust the mixture accordingly and a protected fuel system (methanol and ethanol are corrosive). This mandate should require flex capability for both methanol (from coal) and ethanol (from corn, etc) which is harder to accomplish, but well within current technology. By now everyone's seen the E85 ads, so the ethanol lobby is in full swing, but we need full flexibility.
The point of all this is to not have a world economic crisis regarding the oil economy while the world economy has transitions beyond its complete dependency on petroleum. We need 50 to 100 years for this process and its readily available. The other, maybe more important point, is that we need to stop funding the Islamic terrorists. Much of the money all countries send to the mid east is used to fund Islamic fundamentalism which is the source of inspiration for Islamic terror activities. As a business man I marvel at cost of goods for a barrel of oil, $5; selling price fob mid east, $60; profit $55 or 1100%. This dependency also coops the western world from properly reacting to terror activities or terror supporting states.
To summarize (and therefore, oversimplify), we should support the vulnerable; create a minimum safety net for the poor, but not one that makes them too comfortable; drive the poor back into productivity, get government out of people's lives as much as possible; enforce fair laws; unleash the inventiveness of humans in the economic sphere; develop alternative fuels quickly, especially the technologies with good return-on-investment capabilities; send less money to the mid east and keep it in our own countries; and sail more rather than burn fossel fuels.
Davidn
H20 781
If Winter's here, can Spring be far behind?
