Homines libenter quod volunt credunt
Posted in Resources on Dec 31st, 2009
Look at what has happened to the scarcity of oil over the past 100 years. Look here and here for information on oil since it was discovered in 1859. The top chart adjusts nominal oil prices to account for the general rise in prices since 1900 using a measure of the CPI’s broad inflation index. […]
Posted in Institutions on Dec 30th, 2009
Between the time the American War for Independence ended in 1781 (formalized in 1783) and the time that Connecticut ratified the Constitution – thereby creating the United States of America, what were those 13 places called? They could not have been colonies – that’s what they fought the war for – to stop being colonies. […]
Posted in Resources on Dec 30th, 2009
Look at what has happened to the scarcity of cobalt over the past 100 years. The top chart adjusts nominal cobalt prices to account for the general rise in prices since 1900 using a measure of the CPI’s broad inflation index. The bottom chart takes a different approach to adjust the cobalt data. It looks […]
Posted in Resources on Dec 29th, 2009
Look at what has happened to the scarcity of copper over the past 100 years. The top chart adjusts nominal copper prices to account for the general rise in prices since 1900 using a measure of the CPI’s broad inflation index. The bottom chart takes a different approach to adjust the copper data. It looks […]
Posted in Resources on Dec 28th, 2009
Technical/engineering notions of what an exhaustible resource is focus on the physical properties of the “resource” only. A typical physical definition would be a material which does not have prospects for increasing in available quantities over any meaningful time frame. Thus, technical forecasts look at quantities of known reserves, and look at expected consumption of […]
Posted in Resources, Standards of Living on Dec 27th, 2009
You might be thinking, yes, energy is becoming a smaller portion of our incomes – but you are just playing games with numbers and prices. If energy prices were truly reflective of its REAL scarcity, we would not see the declining importance of energy. Or would we? The following chart plots a measure of energy […]
Posted in Resources, Standards of Living on Dec 26th, 2009
We are spending more of our income on energy today than ever before, right? Wrong! Even allowing for the inflation / commodities boom preceding this recession, energy expenditures make up about 2.7% of GDP. I plotted data back to 1929. Our energy expenditures peaked, as a share of GDP, in the depths of the Depression […]
Posted in Resources, Standards of Living on Dec 25th, 2009
As children around the world open presents on this Christmas Day, some “E”nvironmentalists shudder in horror at the massive wasting of resources that such a “consumption orgy” entails. Hundreds of thousands of trees cut down just to make wrapping paper and boxes; millions of barrels of oil and other energy consumed in order to produce […]
Posted in Government Gone Wild on Dec 24th, 2009
I posted this last Christmas eve … not much has changed, so I thought a rerun was in order … I suppose I could add a few versus about Clunkers, Caulkers, Health Care “Reform”, the screwing of the secured creditors of the auto companies, the political management of the auto companies, the implementation of a […]
Posted in Price System on Dec 23rd, 2009
I once worked at a place that spent a considerable sum of money (I’ll guess over $1,000) on a rock. Oh sure it was a lovely rock, and sourced locally as well. But really, we purchased a rock with our logo on it and rolled it out front of our building. This, I would remind […]
