Re: [Marxism] Perfect storm?

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

rrubinelli wrote:

> Oh yeah I know the "drill," so to speak, and the drill bit, and like
> stocks on the stock market, oil is a commodity so whatever the physical
> origins, biotic or not, what the markets respond to, what drives capital
> to war is encased in the terms of capitalist production, and not
> theoretcial depletions projected out 10, 20, 30 years from now.

i've never argued for a direct  connection between the Iraq war and oil,
so maybe this is a disagreement you have with someone else.

> Is the supply of oil finite?  Of course.  Do we know what that finite
> number is?  Of course not.  Even Hubbert's followers have revised upward
> that finite number since 1996.

yes, this is a model that requires constant revision. its not as simple
as Newton's law. correct.  but don't say Hubbert's is bunk just because
it requires revision. as i said, i know you know how
models-with-cofficients work.

> Maybe, just maybe, we might be able to get a good grasp on that number,
> but only years after a socialist revolution.

i have mixed feelings on this one. the geophysicists i talk to tend to
accept the model even though the curve shifts around. from what i
gather, most geophysicists don't even talk about Hubbert, they stick
with finite resource and damn, its getting harder (more costly) to find
the stuff.

> If stocks of labor start dropping, Bush and company will institute
> national health care like you can't believe?  You wanna bet?  Because
> just the opposite is happening in the developed countries of Western
> Europe where population growth rates are dropping and the govts are
> doing their best to follow the Thatcher model, privatizing,  reducing
> pensions, lengthening working weeks, and capping health care benefits.

i meant if stocks of labor started dropping __everywhere__, which is
obviously a rhetorical argument, not current reality. Marx 101 says to
me that capital will labor to reproduce the working class for its own
needs. right now, they can afford to let our health go down some (in
spite of all the newspaper articles we read on how illness X costs the
economy Y dollars), and "suddenly" they got labor elsewhere.

les schaffer


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism