By JT Roberts: On Resources and How the World Really Works

I don’t know who JT Roberts is but he is very bright and is an excellent writer. I stumbled on some comments she made in a recent post by Tim Morgan and I thought they were so good I’ve copied them here.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2017/10/27/111-a-spike-to-puncture-the-bubble/

In the 70s just as US domestic oil production peaked Nixon made some unusual but very interesting moves.

• Opened China for trade
• Established the EPA
• Created a Petro-Dollar deal with Saudi’s
• Took the Dollar off Gold

I have a very difficult time believing that he, or his cabinet, or congress had any clue of the significance of those particular moves. I think that in particular they would not have understood the Limits to Growth reality, since they decided not to give ear to the findings by Meadows and Forester. US wealth had been built on abundant easily accessible energy and mineral resources. The US was the manufacturer to the world up until 1970 not because of innovation but because the world couldn’t compete on price. ( The Battle of Somme was the effective killing machine it was because of the cheap steel rails that had been supplied by the US, these latter became the light gauge system in the UK ) No other country had the combination of resources at the volumes that the US had. As these became depleted it hampered growth because of affordability. Had it only been a matter of raising the price to meet increased cost of production why didn’t that happen? Affordability is the real driver of growth not supply and demand.

By opening China it gave the US access to offshore its energy intensive industries like steel production, and mining. As well as labor intensive industries like clothing. ( A population living on rice is far less costly in energy terms then one living on hamburgers) Establishing the EPA created additional pressure to move manufacturing elsewhere. The suspension of Dollar-Gold convertibility was a necessity as there wasn’t enough gold to cover the dollars in circulation. It also hampered the ability to create currency. The risk was that dollar demand would collapse but that was countered with the Petro-Dollar arraignment effectively giving the currency a place to go rather than returning to the US to be inflated away. That move calmed the markets, because they felt that at least their dollars could now be converted to oil, which is of higher value than Gold.

Saddam Hussein, and Qaddafi threatened the stability of that system. Saddam had boycotted sales of crude to the US in 2002 and started selling his oil in Euros. For 30 days he stopped all exports in a show of force that he had control of their national petroleum system. What he didn’t understand was he was threatening to limit access to what the US needs most, energy and resources. The war was the answer to that threat. Now Iraqi oil is safely in the control of the international oil majors. Qaddafi had made a similar error since his interest wasn’t to allow the state owned system to be controlled by the oil majors. He also threatened the the Petro-Dollar by creating a competing gold currency that was being used in Africa. The French were particularly at risk as it was replacing the Franc still in use in there former colonies.

If we look closely at NAFTA we see that much of it revolves around access to resources. In exchange for easier economic trade with the US, both Canada and Mexico have agreed to unlimited access to their oil and other resources. When the USSR fell we saw the same pattern. Anglo-US corporations rushed in to gain access to whatever resources they could. Putin the patriot didn’t play ball like Yeltsin. So now he is vilified. Canada and Mexico have peaked in oil production, and now NAFTA is at risk. The UK joined the EU just as it had oil to sell and promptly left when it didn’t.

What we see is a common pattern that is larger then any political system.

Capitalism is a dissipative system out of equilibrium, as all dissipative system are. Like hurricanes Capitalism requires energy input to exist, anything that threatens that will collapse the system. It must grow or die. Within the structure, like hurricanes, there can be self organized subsystems. Tornado’s, Micro-bursts, and other elements that feed off the core. With Capitalism these are corporations and governments. In order for the core to survive the entire system must grow in aggregate. As the net energy driving the system declines the structure weakens, like a hurricane on land or cold water.

Not only is it impossible to return to a local agricultural existence. It is also impossible to decouple the elements of the system. We see that with Trump. His platform was isolation, and now its war. He has no choice he’ll make similar moves as Nixon did, but it can’t work because there is no more sweet spots to exploit.

Just as the shale play is a high cost desperate act of a dying industry. (Shale was well know in the 70s but as uneconomical as it remains today) The US will attempt to turn back time with it’s military machine as it has in the past. The problem is they can’t return affordability so the system will simply grind to a halt.

I guess Adam Smith was right about an Invisible Hand.

Without energy to drive real growth all you have left is moving money around. I think most mistake the symptom for the cause. The lax regulations are needed to increase debt which increases money supply. So strangely the corruption is part of the system.

For example it has been documented that the primary money laundering economies are US and U.K. So for all their show as the bastions of freedom and democracy the reality is they benefit from corrupt dictators that stuff their ill gotten gains in the western banking and real estate system.

With Trump it’s just irrelevant he’s neither good or bad. He is no different then any other elected president. He is limited to the resources at his disposal and won’t accomplish anything beyond that. Basically a symptom not a cause.

The Appolo success if we so call it really needs to be considered in context. If you compare the energy production of the US with the USSR it becomes clear that technology wasn’t the key to the space race. In actuality the Soviet rocket engines were 20% more efficient and more powerful. They dared to pipe oxygen rich exhaust from the turbos into the primary engine. But it was done because of necessity they couldn’t afford to waste the fuel. It also constrained their ability to test run the engines. Instead they choose to test them at launch.

The arrow all points in the same direction. Without the resources that the US had access to the USSR could not compete. But it had nothing to do with technology because they were winners with technology.

AK 47 is another example.

I sum it up this way. If you have wood you cook with wood. If you have coal you cook with coal. If you have oil you cook with oil. If you have gas you cook with gas. If you have a lot of it you have trains, planes, and automobiles. I might add rockets. With a little of it you cook.

Technology is a function of abundance not the cause of it.

It’s interesting to note the Roman Empire grew in wealth through military conquest. Then it started developing schools of higher learning in imitation of the Greeks.

Education has never preceded empire. So the thought that education or technology are the source of wealth is false. It has always been resources. It will always be. So in that regard it is no coincidence that the US military is larger then the next 10 militaries combined. So the military industrial complex was also a necessity.

Ironically the competitive economic system, communism thought that they could only find success within a highly educated society. Lenin targeted Germany for that reason. But educated people make poor soldiers. Ignorant religious zealots make far better soldiers. Which system promoted religious freedom and zealotry? For God and Country. God save the Queen. In God we trust. One nation under God.

So in many places Americans are hated because of their ignorance. But perhaps their ignorance has been their strength all along. In this regard we might want to watch closely the current US administration.

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength