I don’t know much about the greens, but the -other- half of the EPA was efficiency to reduce FF consumption. There was concern going back to the 50s about running out of oil and coal. The main vein of the good anthracite coal in the eastern US ran out in the 80s. Especially back in the Nixon era, the lower level of emissions is equivalent to saying higher efficiency.
What screwed it up for the US auto industry, is they added safety standards which adds weight, then the laws were poorly written with unrealistic timelines. You had manufacturers selling small vehicles at a loss to avoid fines, and detuning vehicles to make sure they could meet the incremental improvements. There was no reward for exceeding the standards it was really a penalty. To top it off, the laws didn’t apply to imported vehicles.
It was the the car itself.
There was a point when the car as it was intended became something different.
The car was a machine that would make the city cleaner.
Think about all that horse shite, it had to go someplace HA HA.
It made use of an otherwise useless product light distillates ( gasoline ).
It was even cheaper to operate than a horse.
Where did we go wrong?
We wanted clean safe efficient transportation for the masses and we got the car…
Car begot SUV and truck and somewhere a long the way we lost sight of the idea we want to safely efficiently move people around.
I own two cars and two motorcycles plus several other machines that garden and move snow too!
I even have a couple of mechanical gasoline powered goats that chew up the vegetation around my home without all the fuss of caring for a real goat.
The argument for a cleaner city didn’t come about until well after the introduction of the car, and really it was a snobby “those dirty, smelly poor people”. Prior to that they were luxury toys. You had to be a mechanic to get one to run, and they were expensive. A lot of them were solely used for sunday afternoon drives to show them off. They were a fashion statement, much like the fancy carriages that came before them. I don’t think that has changed since the inception of the horseless carriage.
Because gas vehicles were so unreliable, electric cars had like 50% of the marketshare in the teens, and were dubbed women and doctor cars because doctors needed something reliable without fidgeting trying to hand crank the thing for an hour trying to get it started.
Lots of places. Catastrophic failures don’t typically occur from just one thing, and decisions made weren’t necessarily bad at the time. For instance in the US, we had at least 9 presidents in a row say we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Oil prices have contributed heavily to 5 recessions. All commodity prices literally have a cost basis which includes oil. If you want to tank the economy, you create a upswing in oil prices. Because it is a globally traded product, it can be anyone in the world.(everything beyond that like refineries are heavily regulated.) But because we standardized on it, it eliminated the free market competition.
People created a stigma around using alternative fuels, and in fact, I believe it was illegal to use them on federal roads for a while. Then we have folks that go, OMG I have 12 gas powered things, if we switch, I can’t afford to replace all of them, which adds to the backlash. There was literally no incentive for development.
To top it off, you have various factions creating circular arguments. We can’t do x because of y, and we can’t do y because of x.
You have a whole host of monetary arguments like the US keeps track of the cost of all alternative energy, but then hadn’t updated the list since 1980 because the 200M budget was cut. It is used by countries and banks around the world, so you couldn’t get loans or if you could get them, they were extremely high interest. You have investors who piled all their money into FF for steady returns, and you have people who have jobs in the industry.
It literally was just a tangled knot. There wasn’t a simple solution, and in order to get any real free market competition, you had to unravel multiple layers that have been piling up for at least half a century. It isn’t an easy task to sort through them all muchless try and find a solution to the issue. If you can manage to find a solution, now you have to sell it politically.
That is just one issue, there are a multitude of issues with similar if not more complexity. There is just no easy button for a lot of this stuff.
This has turned really political naming names and parties. I don’t think this is a good idea. I’ve always avoided that here.
I WILL tell you how we got to where we are. First, I want to address the title of the thread. We have to go back to the time just after the gold standard.
The banks stole our purchasing power. As we got poorer, the women had to go to work. This destroyed the nuclear family. This destroyed security and mental health.
OK, the banks stole our money through currency inflation. A one-person income could no longer support a family. Women went to work. The nuclear family collapsed,along with mental health. Everybody has gone crazy with insecurity.
“Loneliness, public-health experts tell us, is killing as many people as obesity and smoking.”
The shocking rise in ‘deaths of despair,’ charted | Advisory Board Daily …
Mar 14, 2019 - Deaths from alcohol, drugs, and suicide—so-called “deaths of despair”—in 2017 hit the highest rate since CDC researchers began collecting …
Ok, how did we get here?
The first thing to understand is; we have a 2-loop economy. We have the workers / producers.
We have the speculators who rent out their money.
You put your money in the bank. The bank as, at a maximum, a 10% reserve requirement. The banker takes 90% (at least) of the depositors money and invests it. He goes to the futures market and, buys pork bellies ON MARGIN, effectively multiplying his purchasing power. He goes to the real estate market and buys up houses for rentals.
The number of owner-occupied homes has only barely risen in the last 30 years.
The banker takes all your money, multiplies it and FRONT-RUNS you on everything that you buy. A barrel of oil is sold 48 times before it is consumed. You buy EVERYTHING from a speculator.
As a contrast, the egg business goes through the ECI. If you buy a load of eggs, you MUST take delivery or, pay a 10% penalty. Ypou can se how much difference this makes to price.
The real clue is the Glass-Stegal act in Great Depression one. It forbade investment banks from acting as savings banks. That way, there wasn’t near so much hot money circulating, pushing up prices.
Slick Willy came along and, together with Greenspan, pushed through the Graham-Leachy-Bliley act that let them combine again. This ensures that the investment banks have LOTS of money to speculate with. Not happy with this, the TARP money (as a start) pumped up the bankers coffers.
No matter what you buy, you buy it from a speculator.
America was a high-wage & high-price economy. China & India, combined with containerized shipping now enforce a global-mean wage. We must revert to a low-wage & low-price economy. All this QE pumped in is just an effort to maintain a low-wage & HIGH -price system that benefits the money renters. Why do you think that QE can never end?
China and India would like to escape the global mean wage but, Bangladesh and Viet Nam, et al enforce it. Bangladesh claims that they need to add 60 million jobs a year.
All this QE is an attempt to support valuations / prices that wages just can NOT support. There is no going back on automation so, the world is just out of luck.
Prices in America have risen <846%> since the 70’s
Wages in America have risen <649%> since the 70s
Since the money renters are always pumped up with free money courtesy of regulatory capture, You will never catch up.
Reportedly, this isn’t an accident. https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/03/14/deaths-of-despairr
Yup, they did.
Now the worm has turned, sadly its taken a virus to bring this all to a head but now its come to a head.
I am waiting for the bankers to start going splat on the side walks up and down wall street but those dam circuit breakers keep tripping before they lose their minds and do the world a favour.
Now friends if we stick to our guns and stop letting them extort bail out money…
Things are gonna change.
From what I gather, that’s too late. I understand the feds kicked in 1.5 trillion last week to cover their bad bets. Given past practice, I’m guessing Trudeau pitched in 10% as our effort. Last night they elected to lend public money to private institutions at zero percent. Today it melted down to a "circuit breaker " limit.
So instead of going splat, it seems like I hear the gentle sound of golden parachutes settling, with cashing in on bonuses and stock options. They say the best way to rob a bank is to own a bank.
But this time I fear their mismanagement has fundamentally broken the system. These books will never balance, that breaks the fundamental rule that they hold us all to.
Another one I just lifted from the Manchester Guardian…
"You may have heard about the 13‑year‑old schoolboy from Leeds called Oliver Cooper who, it has been reported, was sent home after selling precious squirts of hand sanitiser for 50p each. Cooper’s scheme was rumbled when he recklessly tried to sell a squirt to one of his teachers, although not before he had made £9: a windfall that, according to his mother, is being invested in “a multipack of Doritos” and “a kebab”.’
As Warren Buffett put it “be greedy when others are fearful”
But I say be ware the pitch forks.
Yes there be pitch forks in those sheds and barns…
Beware the masses with their masks, latex gloves and pitchforks…
The madness that is upon us now is simply the passive of greed.
Capitalism as we knew you, rest in peace…
