The Politics of Oil

The politics of oil is simple: We want oil. We need oil. And lots of it. But not everyone realizes this. Especially those rich elitist Hollywood liberals who fly around in their private jets decrying global warming and telling middle and lower class folks to stop consuming. Arrogant bastards are so out of touch with reality. And you have liberal demagogues, mostly the democratic politicians, who take advantage of people who don't know Economics 101 and lie about how Bush and his oil connections are to blame.

The liberals called for ethanol pretending it would get us off dependence on oil and that it would become a viable source of alternative fuel. Foolish delusion. Now we have a global food shortage crisis because everyone's growing corn and only corn! It's like the war on drugs: as long as you have cartels controlling the supply coupled with an continually growing demand, prices will rise. Plain and simple. The only way to alleviate the price spikes is to manipulate the supply. And that means drilling. Lots of it. We have plenty of oil on our soil.

Now what about the apparent bubble in the oil markets? There is indeed a bubble. Speculation is caused by commodity traders who "predict" what the price of oil will be tomorrow. The markets react and is why we see daily volatility in the price of oil. This is not rocket science.

But everyone is rationally ignorant to some degree and on some issues. I have very little interest in what goes on in Hollywood and the latest greatest popular culture. Therefore I rationally decide to be ignorant about it. No big deal. It's a natural way for people to be efficient and allocate their intellectual resources to topics and issues they truly care about, enough so they are willing to invest the time and energy to bone up on it. The politics of oil is a prime example. This creates a ripe opportunity for demagoguery. Listen to a democratic politician talk about oil and you'll see a perfect example.