[Cowperson]

He hates hypocricy, not the marketplace.

If Chomsky hated hypocrisy, he wouldn't have wasted years denying the holocaust crimes of his friend Pol Pot in Cambodia.

I don't think its capitalism that gets Chomsky's goat, its the corrupt corporate-friendly regulation. He hates hypocricy, not the marketplace. It just so happens that the largest and most obvious forms of hypocricy take place in the (heavily regulated) markets.

I have no idea what you meant by that. It reads like a political statement versus fact.

You seem to be implicitly tying low energy prices to technological/efficiency development. I'd wager that regardless of the oil prices, _oil-extraction_ technology will continue to develop and improve.

I demonstrated without ambiguity that energy efficiencies resulted in a declining oil price environment. Chomsky appears to say its only possible in a rising oil price environment. I said both could be the case, as you did. We both disagree with Chomsky.

High oil prices will drive alternative energy reserach (and increased oil efficiency, yes), and low prices will remove the impetus for improving efficiency in energy sectors.

Yes to the former, no to the latter. We have clear evidence of efficiencies developing in a falling cost environment.

What you should be arguing is that higher input costs for things like labour have forced companies to drive for efficiencies in areas they can better control, like technology that allows for greater energy savings.

Not a Nader fan then?

I have nothing against Nader. He did some great work that's benefited us all. I merely remarked on his impact in driving for increasing environmental regulations that may have forced greater energy efficiencies on industry looking to reduce costs.

As I said twice, what I'm trying to tell you is that Norway will get on fine without oil revenues. There are many, many European nations that do just fine with no oil reserves.

France and Germany are going slowly broke and being forced to pare back their social structure to conform more closely with British and American standards. Norway would be no different. You can decide if that's an "impact" event or not. It certainly would look like a big deal to me.

Norway/Russia could take the hit MUCH easier than the Middle East could.

I said that in one of my first posts. Its a 100% killer in the Middle East if you remove oil. Its a modest pain in the butt if you're in Norway but serious nonetheless. I don't discount the impact. You do.

No, we don't. I've addressed this issue twice, but you don't seem to want to get involved in it. You seem stubborn about refusing to recognize my thoughts on this issue, I guess I'll have to live with it.

Well, I must have missed something because anyone saying Muslim states have some other commodity or product to sell besides oil isn't living in the real world. You can't remove hundreds of billions of dollars in revenues from a country with limited industrial capacity and a basic economy and say it won't impact something. That's plainly obvious.

If you think oil is free to go up and down based solely on the free market (which doesn't exist), thats your opinion.

Since oil is probably about $20 higher than it should be right now, I guess that IS my opinion. And also the opinion of the Chairman of Imperial Oil judging by his comments in the paper yesterday.

Cowperson