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Undertoad · 01-09-2002, 02:42 PM

What'll happen: the synfuels and natural gas and fuel cells and batteries and fuel-efficient cars and bike/Segway lanes and ALL other such alternatives will NATURALLY eke into the market. Because gas prices will rise due to limited supply, making the alternatives slowly viable.

By the time petroleum is truly in short supply, the alternatives will then be in place. The futures market will ensure that the price increase of petroleum due to short supply is flattened, so that the economy doesn't have to absorb the effect all at once.

Which is, after all, the whole problem: everyone wants to engineer solutions, which they want to implement all at once, massively screwing up the whole market activity which tends to naturally, invisibly solve these kinds of problems by itself.

01-09-2002, 02:42 PM	#9
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	What'll happen: the synfuels and natural gas and fuel cells and batteries and fuel-efficient cars and bike/Segway lanes and ALL other such alternatives will NATURALLY eke into the market. Because gas prices will rise due to limited supply, making the alternatives slowly viable. By the time petroleum is truly in short supply, the alternatives will then be in place. The futures market will ensure that the price increase of petroleum due to short supply is flattened, so that the economy doesn't have to absorb the effect all at once. Which is, after all, the whole problem: everyone wants to engineer solutions, which they want to implement all at once, massively screwing up the whole market activity which tends to naturally, invisibly solve these kinds of problems by itself.