[Peakoil] gem of a site

[POLLARD,Sandy]

I discovered this marvellous site on the complete and dangerous
silliness of (most, especially neoclassical) Economics: 
 
The Anti Economist League (AEL)
 
http://www.tasman.net/ael/index.htm
  

Here's a sample:

GOLD

Gold was once the foundation of the monetary system. Countries backed
their currency with stores of gold. It is now just another commodity
that people buy and sell in the hope of making a profit. There is some
industrial use of gold, but most of it is stored in vaults.

It is the most bizarre thing to do. Most of the easy gold has been found
so now miners seek out ore with something over 5 parts per million to
extract gold from. This is now done with large scale technology; great
drag-lines and vehicles which gather the ore and transport it to a
crushing plant after which a chemical treatment extracts the gold. It is
not at all labour intensive but is capital and energy intensive. The
rapidly depleting resource of petroleum is consumed to extract the gold
which ends in effect as money, to be stored in vaults, without crating a
corresponding equivalent of goods or services to buy with the "wealth"
created.

When the productivity of oil wells declines to the point when demand is
not met, its price will rise, and can do that without limit. All the
gold in the world will not be able to reconstruct the oil and other
energy consumed in producing the gold. There is no reverse alchemy that
can turn gold back into the energy that went into the extraction of the
gold.

It would be better to assay the ore and print gold certificates
representing the gold to remain in the ground. People can then buy and
sell the certificates and store them in vaults. In the end, the energy
they would have wasted would still be available for essential uses.

--

A particularly good site piece on oil resources and economics nonsense
is at:

http://www.tasman.net/ael/matter.htm


Sandy Pollard

PS - How was Syriana?

--



Notice:
The information contained in this e-mail message and any attached files may
be confidential information, and may also be the subject of legal
professional privilege.  If you are not the intended recipient any use,
disclosure or copying of this e-mail is unauthorised.  If you have received
this e-mail in error, please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail
and delete all copies of this transmission together with any attachments.


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://act-peakoil.org/pipermail/peakoil/attachments/20060222/7bbb6eea/attachment.htm