Thursday, October 16, 2008

Putting the Fun in Fungible

You know, I hate to invoke Henley's Law for the umpteenth time, but this "foreign oil" thing makes me totally nuts. I mean, here you have a highly fungible, eminently transportable commodity. All it takes is to ensure that Crude A arrives at Point B is a basic market and some big boats. The Obama line that we should stop borrowing billions of dollars from SCARY CHINA to give to EVIL SAUDI ARABIA for their MUSLIM OIL is perfectly indicative of the political bankruptcy at the heart of the Democratic project. The idea that we should cease purchasing oil that originated in this or that country as a kind of economic sanction to punish governments we don't like for being Muslim and Scary and Evil is right on par, morally and intellectually, with the idea that we should invade them, kill their leaders, and convert everyone else to Christianity. The reason we should seek to reduce consumption of all oil is that it's a non-renewable, dirty resource of declining recoverability which has deranged millennia-old patterns of human settlement and habitation for the past hundred years. Its point of origin is totally not germane.

Posted by IOZ at 11:35 AM | email »
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18 comments:

Justin said...

McCain strikes me as someone who has bought into imperialism and American exceptionalism. He can suggest that Obama is tied to a domestic terrorist without the thought ever entering his mind that one of his advisors is Kissinger, he bombed Vietnamese peasants or supported and still lauds "freedom fighters" like Gulbodon Hekmatayar. He'd probably sputter in anger if questioned on these points.

Obama strikes me as someone who has probably entertained critiques of this system and its baseline of hypocrisy and thought he could change things by getting involved. And then he discovered that when you dance with the devil, it ain't he that changes his steps to match.

I could see these dynamics in play when talking about Columbia. Obama would likely sign on to whatever free trade agreement came along, putting aside his reservations about labor leaders. McCain doesnt give a shit, or even accept the facts such as they are.

I am rambling.

Point is, in my view, the choice is essentially whether or not you want the Joker or Hannibal Lector running the imperium.

12:33 PM
Anonymous said...

But if we stop using oil, what will all the cars run on?

12:49 PM
NutellaonToast said...

Hopes and dreams.

12:58 PM
Cüneyt said...

Aw... Does this mean people are going to have to live amongst their extended family again?

As far as Obama, point taken on his adoption of the "foreign oil" meme, which frankly makes me sick. Still, one would think that if it was all about "big scary Muslim oil," he'd be going for the offshore drilling fantasy more whole-heartedly. "We're sitting on seas of oil! And it'll be all ours, because I've forgotten how international trade works!"

Definitely, Obama's being callow here, and he's doing the usual Dem triangulation. A little offshore drilling, just to tide us over. What? And end our dependence on foreign oil, yes I will, you little xenophobes, but don't worry Prius drivers, I'll invest in this or that potential future energy source.

It's discouraging to say the least, and it doesn't make him any less responsible for the stupidity he abets, but I do think it's not quite Big Bad Muslim syndrome.

1:00 PM
McDuff said...

I don't think it's particularly obtuse to suggest that if some particularly unpleasant people - and let's face it, while the general mass of the Middle East is pleasant they are run by some delightful religious crackpots - are being funded because we're pouring money into a resource that they control huge swathes of, that a side-effect of us not burning as much of the stuff would be less money for these unpleasant people.

The argument that oil dependency is bad for us in general for all the reasons you describe is, of course, a good one, but The American People in their add-them-up-and-divide-by-three-hundred-million wisdom aren't really good at listening to arguments that don't come with a side-order of OMG SCARY FOREIGNERS!

1:33 PM
McDuff said...

Please note, I'm not saying that the western world is not run by crackpots, religious or otherwise. If I could work out a way to not funnel money to them, perhaps by taking away their war machines and financial instruments, I'd be in favour of that too.

1:36 PM
Anonymous said...

If we leave our oil in the ground, and buy everybody else's with our worthless currency, won't we be better of when the Great Kunstler Oil Gone Where? Armmegeddon comes?*

*Setting aside environmental concerns since they are, by definition, just an externality that can safely be ignored. The sun's going to fry this place anyway. What's the big deal?

3:46 PM
Frederick said...

But if we stop using oil, what will all the cars run on?

Jim says: glue and tar.

6:53 PM
Cüneyt said...

Weirdly enough, I'd rather buy oil from, say, an independent and crazy oil sheikdom than our tax-funded oil sheikdom. Of course, I hate the Saudis in their own right, too. I have no problem with Iranian oil, but that Saudi oil really burns my britches.

7:42 PM
Anonymous said...

I have no problem with Iranian oil, but that Saudi oil really burns my britches.

Burns your britches? What are you using it for, lube? Astroglide is much better.

7:53 PM
Montag said...

iawtop.

i drink Venezuelan gasoline for lunch. just to get through the day.

8:48 PM
CSTAR said...

The oil is consecrated dude. It's the blood of Christ. Or somebody, for sure.

11:10 PM
Cüneyt said...

Ovicide, actually. Those feminists want us killing sperm, but I'm smarter than that. I go after the egg; works every time.

11:26 PM
Dunc said...

I don't think it's particularly obtuse to suggest that if some particularly unpleasant people ... are being funded because we're pouring money into a resource that they control that a side-effect of us not burning as much of the stuff would be less money for these unpleasant people.

I might be persuaded to buy that argument if "we" weren't also funnelling vast quantities of money and guns to them directly anyway, because "we" regard them as essential to "our national interests". The primary reason that the Middle East is run by despots and mass-murders is that "we" set them up.

Then there's the minor fact that oil is a fungible commodity. If we buy less oil from Country X and instead buy it from Country Y, then the people who were previously buying from Country Y will have to buy from Country X, because Country Y can only supply a certain amount no matter who the buyer is. Both Country X and Country Y still sell the same amount of oil for the same amount of money. I can see that you could an argument that it's morally better someone else do it that us, but it doesn't make any practical difference when it comes to the funding of Country X's despotic government. On the validity of the moral argument, see my previous paragraph.

7:43 AM
nit said...

Monsieur,
"You know, I hate to invoke Henley's Law for the umpteenth time" is clearly a lie. It is obvious that you just luuurve Henley's Law. In fact the only reason you don't marry Henley's law is because marriage is a parochial institution of the vanilla orthodoxy of Western Civilization or somesuch.

12:26 PM
mistah charley, ph.d. said...

In the PeeWee's Playhouse TV show, Pee-wee or another character would say that he or she loved something, to which someone else would reply, "Then why don't you marry me/him/her/it?". In the "Pajama Party" episode, Pee-wee finally did marry a bowl of fruit salad in a formal ceremony.

http://tinyurl.com/66k46b

http://tinyurl.com/5t5f5q

1:27 PM
Inkberrow said...

Sure, Dunc---the "primary reason that the Middle East is run by despots and mass murderers is that we set them up".

If you meant this particular crop of despots, fine, but then you would have been saying something inconsequential instead of something stupid. My guess is that you're following that grand tradition of casting modern Middle Eastern Muslims as automatons or wind-up toys, with Bad America the responsible moral agency for whatever they haplessly do.

Yea, if the West had simply managed to mind its own business last century, the Middle East today would be a land of milk and honey, with popcorn-ball bushes and gumdrop trees. The Shii would lay down with the Sunni; women would exchange their burkhas for gavels; "despotism" and organized anti-infidel violence would be exchanged for a return to the history and natural orientation of Muslim nations, viz., consitutional democracy, universal suffrage, and peaceful relations with neighbors.

Bush and Cheney had the rights ends in mind, but flubbed the means....

11:16 AM
Anonymous said...

Millennia-old patterns, etc. Would this be the nomadic Arab tribes, or the American Indians? Just asking, because either way their derangement is obviously not to be desired.

9:00 PM

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