I’m sitting in the middle of a desert. No joke.
And yet I’m quite comfortably cool, well-hydrated, and well-fed.
My son, Thomas, and I are at Las Vegas’s McCarran airport awaiting our flight back to Washington. We’ve been in Vegas since Thursday for the largest annual Star Trek convention. (Thomas is a huge Trekkie.) Perhaps I’ll write more later on the convention.
But I write now about this desert in which Thomas and I are sitting — at the moment with me blogging and him doing some math exercises in preparation for seventh grade. Every time I come to Vegas, I’m struck by how rich it is — by how much human creativity has been released and productively employed to turn this speck of the desert into a vibrant, wealthy metropolitian area that is home to nearly two million people and a vacation destination for millions more each year.
And the chief lesson that I always draw is that geography is not necessarily destiny.
Persons who say that sub-Saharan Africa is poor because its geography is in many (but certainly not all) places harsh — without arable land, lush forests, teeming rivers and oceans, and sea ports cannot be correct. Las Vegas has no naturally arable land, no natural forests, no great natural access to fish and other seafood, and no deep-water port. Yet Las Vegas supports millions of people in luxury that is historically off-the-charts high. Clearly, geography is not necessarily destiny.
So why is Las Vegas so rich? The answer is obvious: commerce, entrepreneurship, and markets that are free enough to unleash human creativity and to leverage that creativity into goods, services, and supply chains that enable people in this desert to barely notice that they’re in a desert.
It’s true that government built and maintains many of the roads, and it subsidizes much of the irrigation, that make Vegas possible. The point of this post is not to argue over the necessity or usefulness of taxpayer-subsidized infrastructure. (Such things are not inconsistent with a society being accurately described as ‘market-oriented’ or ‘market-driven.’) Rather, I want to emphasize the fact that if merely building lots of roads, dams, and irrigation channels were sufficient to turn deserts into rich cities, then Africa would be planted thick with its own Las Vegases. And if harsh geographic conditions were sufficient to make a place poor, then Las Vegas would be merely a mirage.
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The problem is Vegas is not sustainable due to limits on water resources. The Colorado river is drying up. Lake Mead is going to dry up within 10 years. Then Vegas goes *poof*. You know entrepreneurship should take limited natural resources into account. So much of capitalism’s success in the last 100 years is due to exploitation of oil which took 100 million years to generate by nature and we’ll end up using it up within 150 years. Capitalism in that sense is a chimera.
The “not sustainable” broken record has been played and replayed by the leftists and from food, DDT, birthrates, to oil they have been repeatedly wrong. When it happens, I’ll give you credit, Arrowsmith, but not until.
And, let us not let this go: Arrowsmith, you’re saying that by August 9, 2019 Lake Meade will see the last of its water evaporate? Is this right? You, like the Goreacle, have it down so fine that you can say that in ten years Lake Meade dries up? Damn, you’re good.
When it happens I’ll give you credit, not until then. Somehow I expect the snows to fall in the rockies, and springs to run, and the Colorado, the little Colorado, and the Green River, among other tributaries,to continue to fill Lake Meade to a useful level.
Besides which the real problem with the Colorado water is not Las Vegas, it is California and its need for water it doesn’t have.
Maybe we will have an Obamaflu epidemic and millions of conservatives will die, freeing up mega gallons of water for the surviving leftists? Hey, my prediction scares me more than yours does. It’s hard to inoculate against an American Gulag.
Maybe, but, if, could be.
As for the nonsense of peak oil being imminent, only left wing radicals stand between us and all the oil (energy) we’d need for the next 150 years, plus each year we get better at using what we have.
Left wingers, tsk tsk, sad specimens to be sure.
vidyoys – Lake Mead doesn’t have to completely dry up for Vegas to become unviable. Vegas is already enacting water restrictions, and it’s only getting worse. Water will be the #1 cause of wars in the next decade.
Regarding oil, at least you admit it’s running out. What would you suggest replace it? We need oil for much more then gasoline. We’ve become overly dependent on plastic to everything from garbage bags, containers to IV tubes.
Lake Mead is going to dry up within 10 years. – ArrowSmith
Lake Mead doesn’t have to completely dry up for Vegas to become unviable. – also by ArrowSmith
So. Which is it? You stated as fact that Lake Mead is going to dry up within ten years. Vidyohs called you on the stupidity of such an assertion and all you can come back with is how callous libertarians are?
Although it made me laugh, it may have been callous of Vidyohs to hurt your feelings by so bluntly pointing out the dishonesty of your statement (he didn’t do so well at the John Kerry School of Nuance), but your reply that Lake Mead doesn’t have to “completely dry up” indicates to me that you knew “… dry up within 10 years” was a dishonest statement when you wrote it.
My, how callous of Vidyohs to point that out!
Now we have two disingenuous lefties, Kuehn and Smith.
Socialists profess to have infinite faith in man and his ability to completely subvert his nature to the collective if only the right motivation can be put in his head; but, have so little faith in the intelligence, innovation, and inventiveness that is already there.
From my standpoint, viewpoint today, we have another 150 years of oil at the current pace of usage. How much do we have with coming innovations and technical developments? No one knows, maybe enough for eternity?
Mankind went from the vacuum tube to the transistor in about fifty years, then from the transistor to the microchip in about forty, went from dial up phones hanging on the wall that didn’t connect well to everywhere in the nation, to itty bitty cellphones that can call anywhere in the world instantaneously, and download text as well as voice.
But Smith and Kuehn are convinced we will be doomed in 10 years………oh the Goreacle is all powerful in his wisdom.
Water will be the number one cause of wars in the next decade, so you are coming down four square with a prediction that if a war is fought in the next 10 years, it has a better chance about being over water than differences of belief between people?
Oh yeah, Arrowsmith, you are another doozy.
Actually in areas that don’t have to do with VERY limited natural resources, I’m 100% pro free markets. I just think when it comes to water and petroleum the government should make sure we don’t just suck it all dry.
You joke about California’s water crisis, but it’s no joke to the residents there. No wonder people won’t even listen to libertarians with callous remarks like that.
I too am sitting in a desert. I am sitting in a desert an average of 10 degrees hotter, and drier, than that of Las Vegas, with just as few natural resources and without the legalized gambling. It was 105 degrees in the shade in Phoenix today, yet my house never peaked above 80. My water is neither rationed, nor subsidized and is, to the best of my knowledge, the cheapest of any metropolitan area in the country. In fact, despite being a desert, my state sells water, along with a lot of electricity, to California. My utilities, along with most in the state, are electric and most of my electricity comes from neither oil nor coal, but from the Palo Verde nuclear power plant and hydroelectric dams on the Salt River.
”
dry up within 10 years. Then Vegas goes *poof*. You know entrepreneurship should take limited natural resources into account. So much of capitalism’s success in the last 100 years is due to exploitation of oil
”
Why the sadness of “poof”
? And why the sadness of splat
? Tell me that fat cat
!
You got enough water dripping from your air-conditioner’s condenser to fill your pool + your chiller’s ice maker. Where water emanates? From hot dry air chock full water from the Pacific Ocean. Imperceptibly high dew point of hot desert air provides water by A/C running on solar panels in the hot desert sun. Although poor survive only in Jungle or on tropical island paradise, wealthy can afford the gear to survive on Mount Everest or in the desert without strong camels and a girl named Fatima.
Why mansions in Canada, but massive poverty in Honduras? That is why. That is the paradox that Professor Hayek is asking you to explain as his 11 year old son discovers that he is not truly getting his money’s worth when he solves only the math exercises assigned by his teacher but not all the problems at the end of the chapter, not all the problems he has paid for when he bought the book.
Peak oil is a real problem, whether you care to admit it or not. It’s not an endless resource.
Peak oil a “real problem”? Hmmm…
http://www.reason.com/news/show/36645.html
It’s a long one. Start reading at “Apocalypse Yesterday”.
One day, the oil age will end. As with all resources, there is ultimately a finite supply of oil. So it is not yet clear how the world will power itself for the bulk of the coming century.
Wow, 27 years to find a replacement for oil. Good luck with that. Be prepared for a massive power-down and zombie hordes.
This Reason article by Bailey was primarily responsible for making me a believer in Peak Oil. If you read it carefully, its most optimistic projection for conventional liquid depletion is within the century. I don’t mean the peak. I mean exhausting all reserves, real or imagined.
Take the 3 trillion barrel figure for granted and divide by 30 billion barrels a year. That’s 100 years assuming no increase in consumption, but the no increase assumption is not consistent with the 3 trillion barrel assumption, since this assumption suggests no immediate peak in production.
If consumption increases with population, it nearly doubles in this century. If it increases faster than population, if Chinese and Indian consumption even remotely approach current U.S. or even European consumption per capita, we have much less than 100 years left at this rate, and the peak comes much sooner than that, of course.
And the interesting times begin at the peak, not at the point of depletion, just as the interesting demographic times in the U.S. are beginning now, as financial balances tip from a rising tide of net savings to a falling tide, as signaled by the peak in the payroll tax surplus.
But facing this reality doesn’t make me an alarmist. Alternatives are out there, and a higher price of oil will prompt their adoption when the time is ripe. If anything, the demographic transition is more alarming, and we hardly discuss it at all anymore. Incredibly, we discussed it more 20 years ago, when the current predicament was 20 years in the future.
The most likely scenario (and one I’d gladly give 100,000:1 odds on if I could live so long) is that oil will NEVER run out no matter how long humans occupy this earth. If it weren’t for governments forever interfering with the pricing mechanism, there wouldn’t even be such an occasional transient phenomenon as an “oil crisis”.
Oil doesn’t just suddenly dry up one day like that large diet Coke you slurped down with a straw at lunch. Oil comes from a wide spectrum of different sources with different extraction costs. Undoubtedly some sources have yet even to be found.
So oil may gradually increase in price. And having made the world rich, the world will, when and where the price is right, GRADUALLY start replacing oil with other energy sources. That will stem the growth in oil prices. Or, it may even happen that oil prices fall to compete with new energy technologies.
In fact, it is quite likely that the day will come when oil is more plentiful than it has ever been, simply because nobody wants to use it anymore.
And all this would happen without–especially without–government interference.
vikingvista
Absolutely great post. You get it you understand unlike some of the nut jobs.
I am afraid you are not considering the history that made Sin City what it is today. You are comparing apples to oranges with your comparisons to Honduras and Africa. Vegas was a railroad hub and mining center in the middle of nowhere, but West of a thriving economy. The Hoover dam and legalized gambling allowed it to thrive in the middle of a godforsaken desert. It is a Shrine to waste and is quite appropriately coined Sin City. For all the extravagance on dislay, I would assume Las Vegas has an extremely high standard of living. Would anyone care to research and post?
The history of Las Vegas is irrelevant to the point of this article. Of course opportunity spured Las Vegas to grow to it’s modern day significance, your analysis of that part of Las Vegas’ history is rhetorical. Free enterprise, as always, allowed for this spec of land to overcome the natural barriers to desert hospitality. Aside from oppressive governemnt stiffling economic growth in Honduras and Africa, there’s really no reason these areas couldn’t foster their own desert oases, with their own histories.
The history is completely relevant, unless you think Vegas popped up like a mushroom in the middle of a desert due to the fertile soil composed of commerce, entrepreneurship and free markets. In the midwest we have a name for that type of soil, synonymous with manure.
“history that made Sin City what it is today”
I believe it was Moe Green.
Silly Lake Meade Argument
The South West has a large swing in water supplies. There is a only a record of water flow from about the 1920′s I think 1922 on the Colorado River. What one learns looking at the flows of water is that it cycles in annual cycles as well in multi-year cycles. If I remember correct one is a 14-year cycle and one is 22-year cycle. And anyone living here in the SW US for more than a few years has seen series of wetter than normal years and series of dryer than normal years. These larger cycles were in part why the dams were built, to store water during good times to be available on a planned a basis for agriculture. Also the Colorado River is a monster when not tamed and cause many problems when let run freely. It water is fast running and come in gully washes (SW term of art) as opposed to the more or less reliable flows of the Mississippi – and even that floods.
So if we look at the dams up and down the Colorado River and the lakes they create, one needs to know that Mead was constructed for 3 Purposes, Flood, Water, and Power. There are dams and water supplies both above Mead and below Mead. According to BOR – the lake levels as of today are POWELL 66%, MEADE 40% MOHAVE 91% AND HAVASU 94%. So if the BOR wanted to fill Meade it could lower Powell, but looking at anyone of these dams and lakes as a stand-alone item is incorrect. They all work together as part of a system to store water when the times are good for when times are dry. BTW Mead was at it all time high water mark in 2000.
As I have been told the 14 and 22-year cycle have been working together and are hitting their low spots. Some of the reservoirs in the SW can be filled from half empty to full in one or two storms or a good winter of snow.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/02/10/20090210water-dam0210.html
So when looking for Mead to go dry, you’ll be dead long before that. So will I.
Short answer.
When you sell what people want, what is in hot demand, what they can’t get at the corner convenience store, it doesn’t matter where your shop is located.
You might say that is why street corner thugs in Harlem are selling drugs to high dollar customers who drive in from the suburbs to buy their smack or horse.
Location can be very meaningful in many ways, but it is overridden by the desire for what one sells.
And I’m sure there are places in the world that are extremely lush but are extremely poor.
And Ted Kennedy also shows that there is lush and rich.
To the west of Nevada is California, and to the East, Utah. Neither place had the foresight to unleash the engine that propels Las Vegas.
Gasp, gamblin’ is seriously evil and sinful.
Wow!
Been catching up on the collection of your letters at Market Correction.
You are way ahead of anyone else on the Net, whether Daniel Keuhn likes it or not.
For those of us with short attention spans, all of us, those short, pithy commentaries are perfect.
Publish them as The Sayings of Chairman Don.
And keep ‘em brief.
Long tomes can be for another volume, the one that won’t sell.
I am sitting in the middle of a desert too. In Kuwait. We are drilling for oil.
Interestingly, when I took a taxi from the airport, I noticed advertisements painted on the bridges as we drove under them. I asked the driver why the government allows these companies to put ads there. The driver said “The companies paid for the bridges.”
The point isn’t that you are sitting in a pool of oil, peak oil has definitely happened and we are on the decline now.
http://www.peakoil.com for all the gory details
Also read James Howard Kunstler “Clusterfuck Nation”, “The Long Emergency”.
We’re never going to run out of oil.
In what way Unit?
1 – You and your descendants be driving your 12-cylinder F1 McLaren well into the 22nd century as we alway have enough oil?
2 – There’ll be blobs of oil sitting at the bottom of spent oil fields that are too expensive to get while everyone’s driving electric cars?
3 – Guvmints will screw everything up and we’ll all be back on to inefficient family farms worring we’ll die in the next flu season whilst there’s plenty of oil left but no one no longer needs and the occasional farmer who stumbles upon bubbling crude whilst shooting for some food will see it as nothing than a filthy, smelly, worthless brown sludge that serves no purpose?
John Singleton already explained it: prices.
As oil becomes increasingly scarce, prices will continue to rise. Competing technologies will become affordable and will then replace oil.
The world has not run out of whale oil.
It would also help if you read Russ’ book “The Invisible Heart”. I believe it is Ch1.pp 3-6.
Can’t miss it.
One word, Arrow:
Prices.
Learn about it.
Wasn’t it Dr. Friedman who said – in effect – “If natural resources were the source of a nation’s wealth, then Sierra Leone would be filthy rich (with diamonds) and Hong Kong (with nothing worthwhile to mine) would be dirt poor”?
But of course it’s just the other way around.
And Rhodesia was once the breadbasket of Africa. Since it became Zimbabwe a few decades ago, its people are starving to death, and inflation runs at many thousand percent a year.
Funny thing, but our leaders never seem to learn from others’ mistakes.
I the other interesting story about las vegas is that it was started by gangsters, by murderers and thieves.
But now days, Las vegas is straight. It is no longer ran by organized crime. businessmen realized they could make more money by going straight. Plus, wall street bought vegas out, so it had to be straight in order for that to have happened.
Yup – markets, institutions, and liberty (which I think is especially important here – would Las Vegas be what it is if the state were more morally authoritarian than it is?). I am a big, big fan of your parenthetical statement in the last paragraph – I very much appreciate the shout out that the two aren’t contradictory, even if we may disagree over when each is appropriate.
OK… now it’s time to me to sit back and find out what I’ve said that’s “disingenuous” this time.
Thanks for the post Don!
You can rest easy, DK, suggesting that the words “not inconsistent” have the same weight in the marketplace as the words desirable, preferred, or optimum is a good place to look for your disingenuous presentation.
“Not inconsistent” is a default setting, a fall-back position, a last-ditch action.
“not inconsistent” is all we have available when the discussion remains vague, abstract, and concise (as I think Don hopes it will stay).
The use of words like “desirable, preferred, or optimum” in this situation demonstrates a great deal of hubris and assumption, although obviously when the discussion starts getting more specific those words start taking pride of place, on one side or the other.
No Hoover Dam no Las Vegas. No matter how free your markets are. Thanks for good planning, good governance (democratic governance) and markets. You need them all. Denial of this is nothing more then outright denial.
For once I have to agree with muirgeo. Without the socialist Hoover Dam, no Vegas.
Whatever, but could he please learn how to spell? And the difference between “than” and “then”?
Tell that to muirgeo.
Socialists hate the fact that Government altered the environment by creating damming up the water.
Well, without an authoritarian nanny-state (NO GAMBLING! well, unless it’s with us via lottery… oh wait we need tax money…ok some card rooms too…) that prohibits free activity in the rest of the country, Vegas wouldn’t need to exist at all.
Good example.
Yet some may claim the world can afford only so many “entertainment centers” like Las Vegas.
Better examples are places like Singapore and Hong Kong for trade, and South Korea for sheer industry. Isn’t South Korea just an amazing example of the work ethic?
Arrow Smith is your tipical Goron moron. We laugh about them in Tennessee and Gore laughs about them all the wat to the bank. He is going to be the first carbon billionaire made from idiots. Arrowsmith and his pals are nothing but eco nuts no Nukes no oil for anyone but them. There is plenty of oil and plenty of natural gas. We need to start building nuke plants as safely and quickly as we can just as Lamat Alexander has stated. These nobs still think that we cause the ear4th to warm. I remember when it was global cooling was going to kill us all. These people are hopeless.
You don’t know anything about me. So shut up. Just because I oppose the reckless use of water doesn’t mean I’m an eco-nut. I totally support nuclear power!
I know all I need to know you did not just mention water. Your a nut It is a free speech thing. You also do not have a damn clue about any of it or any answer. Going to run my Exploerer up and down the road in your honor. Everyone wants clean plentiful water. That does not make you special. Just the fact that people like you are never the answer just the problem. Now go admire your picture of Al Gore.
I, for one, am really concerned about peak oil, but not for the reasons mentioned.
If we start to run out of oil, the market will provide price signals as the market always does. But instead of the natural reaction – individuals conserving oil and developing new technologies – the government will insist that the high oil prices are due to the actions of “speculators.” Politicians will seek to restore cheap oil by restricting the access of said speculators to the oil market. When that fails to work, oil subsidies and gas tax holidays will be all the rage in DC. The price of oil still won’t fall to the politically-preferred level, so now our fine public servants will declare the oil companies to be “systemically important” and instruct them to sell oil at below-cost prices with the US government making up the difference. Before you know it, no one will have any idea what a barrel of oil _really_ costs, only that gas at the pump is $1.99 per gallon and Washington is just selling more Treasury notes to make up the difference.
Then one day we really do run out of oil, and the peak oil doomsday crowd basks in their correct predictions.
We got to drill baby drill. there is plenty of oil. We also have to start converting our cars and trucks to run on natural gas more than enough to run cars and other equipment for 500 years and still not see the end of it. Also Ford is running as we type five cars fueled by hydrogen and speculators do artificially run up the price of oil that was proven in the last debacle. Drill baby drill.
The thing that makes Las Vegas wealthy is its special status. When the rest of the country decided that gambling needed to be illegal, Nevada did not. Same with prostitution. Entrepreneurship? Well, yeah, but that is far from the whole story. As many new casino states are now learning, you only get rich off gambling if nobody else allows gambling. Aren’t some of the big-name casinos in Lost Wages in bankruptcy?
It is also the proximity, shared language and currency with a rich country that allows Las Vegas to thrive. Africa might be better off if it shared a land border with the US. Or Europe.
The notion that Las Vegas is somehow interesting for succeeding in a desert is true, I suppose, depending on what one finds interesting. But it is not quite right to hint that the thing that tipped Las Vegas into wealth was the right-minded entreprenuers who populate it. Monaco does OK, too, without the benefits of a desert.
Very good comments all, however I have not seen one topic discussed. That is the production of Diesel/kerosene/jet fuel from algae. Careful selection of algae results in the production of lipids essentially identical to kerosend-like fuels produced from petroleum, but without the sulfur compounds. The production is proven, the only problems remaining are volume and collection. One researcher is on record as saying that greenhouses covering 5% of the land area of New Mexico would completely supply the nation’s need for jet fuel. If we would provide greenhouses that would cover 5% of the desert areas of New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas we would be providing jet fuel and Diesel at prices so low that clean Diesel would be the preferred engines in American cars.
But then the tree-huggers would block it in court: “Oh, you can’t build that here, it would upset the breeding grounds of the short-tailed blue-nosed ground dwelling tree squirrel!”
Over 100 years ago people were predicting catastrophe from the coming end of coal.
Wow, 27 years to find a replacement for oil.
There’s more than twenty-seven years worth of oil just in Colorado shale.
Hey! Since the Colorado River’s going dry, maybe we can use the empty channel to send oil down to Vegas. Imagine Hoover Dam backing up a reservoir of oil!
You know about a thing called EROI? Shale is very inefficient oil…
Of course you would favor going after methane hydrates which could trigger runaway global warming…
I believe two hundred years ago they were predicting catastrophe from the coming end of… lumber.
lol
So I claim people predicted the “end of coal” well over 100 years ago and you come back with– “Of course you would favor going after methane hydrates which could trigger runaway global warming…”
I’ll take that as you conceding the point that people often are very wrong in predicting energy related global catastrophes.
brotio, do you really hink there is an endless supply of potable water? Crops are suferring from irrigation with increasingly salty water, water tables are falling and desalination plants are becoming increasingly common. Sure, quality of life can be maintained under deteriorating envirnmental conditions, but at what cost?
brotio, do you really hink there is an endless supply of potable water?
Endless supply? Practically speaking, yes. But, you answered your own question. At what cost? The problem isn’t whether there’s enough water to serve two million people in Vegas. Two million people living in Vegas right now is pretty conclusive evidence that there is.
The question is, would Vegas sport a population of two million if the residents had to bear the cost of bringing water to the city. I think that Vegas only has two million residents because people in water-rich states, like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Louisiana; and not-so-water-rich states, like Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah are forced to subsidize water delivery to Las Vegas.
Vegas is already enacting water restrictions…
Vegas’ water policy is a useful analogy of Leftist medical delivery. Leftists want subsidized medical care, which will lead to increased demand for medical care, which will lead to government-imposed restriction of medical care.
Sooner or later, the doomers have to be right.
Shale is very inefficient oil…
I know that advancements in extraction technology have made it more efficient than it was twenty-five years ago.
Who knows what will happen in another twenty-five years? But I’ll bet oil will be extracted from shale at market price before Lake Mead and the Colorado River dry up.
Not really.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34766.html
“Someday, of course, oil production really will peak, either for geologic or economic reasons, or most likely a combination of both. Instead of a catastrophe, Lynch expects a relatively smooth transition to new energy sources. And history bears out his optimism. Oil crisis mongers make the mistake of thinking that “markets are so myopic that they cannot foresee future supply trends; that markets won’t realize when a resource is running out.”
If demand for oil begins to outstrip the supply, prices will rise, signaling companies and consumers to use less, develop new technologies, switch to other fuels, increase their insulation, and so forth. “Demand for energy is going to move away from heavy hydrocarbons,” Lynch predicts. “Coal is first, oil is next.” He expects that our old hydrocarbon friends will be replaced in our affection by natural gas, nuclear, and other forms of energy as those technologies improve. “It will be much like the transition in the 20th century from coal to oil in the residential heating and transportation sectors or like the transition from horses to cars,” he says. The Oil Age will end, not with a horrific screech leading to a destructive crash, but with a barely perceptible, well-lubricated, smoothly braked halt, one that is merely a prelude to moving smoothly and rapidly forward again.”
brotio, I assume it will be fine with you to suck drinking water from your air conditioner condenser, since you’ll be using the Colorado River to transport oil. Then the liberals will have to clean up your Colorado Canal’ and you’ll be grousing about your taxes going up.
I assume it will be fine with you to suck drinking water from your air conditioner condenser…
What gives you the idea that I live in Vegas?
However, if two million people choose to suck the water out of their air conditioner coils (and are willing to bear the costs to do so) just for the privilege of living in a city that allows you to play poker, and to buy booze at 4:AM, why is it any of your business?
Then the liberals will have to clean up your Colorado Canal’…
Why will it need to be cleaned? ArrowSmith says it’s drying up. I figure we may as well put the dry channel to good use. I’d rather leftists just mind their own business, and then my taxes won’t go up.
brotio,I believe you miss the point,(points). You seem think natural resources exist to be used and abused to anyones liking as long as they are willing to pay the going rate. I don’t believe that is a rational view, since a number of other parties are going to be affected negatively. Regarding the use of the Colorado River as an oil conduit having no environmental impact? Please.
Regarding the use of the Colorado River as an oil conduit having no environmental impact?
If ArrowSmith is right, and the Colorado River does go dry, you’d be worried about the environmental impact of using it as an oil sluice?
Hippie, please.
I believe you miss the point.
No, you miss the point. Natural resources do, indeed exist to be used – and if users pay the cost to use them, then there’s not going to be the kind of abuse we see when Las Vegans pay a subsidized rate for water. If water costs a buck-a-gallon in Vegas, and somebody wants a pool? I’m not going to tell them, “no”. But, you sound like a Leftist, so I’m sure you will. After all, Father knows best.
You are the true hard core libertarian -me me me me me. Abuse of water resources occurs in ways other than waste, hence the Love Canal analogy, that can’t be controlled by removing subsidies. I agree that water subsidies encourage waste and should be reduced, but running oil down the Colorado river bed is certainly going to have an adverse effect on a lot of things. That is why we have environmental laws in this country you have chosen to live in. Start with the name now,I sense it is coming.
Hard-core libertarians don’t seem to understand the concept of negative externalities. You’re right it’s ME ME ME ME ME ME ME like a child.
They don’t seem to understand the natural resources belong to the PEOPLE, not to them.
I have no intentions of calling you names, but I can’t resist pointing out that you share the trait of many Leftists of being unable to understand sarcasm.
I (unlike ArrowSmith) don’t think that the Colorado River is going to dry up, so I don’t imagine eeeevil capitalists will be using it as an oil sluice.
hence the Love Canal analogy
What do you know about Love Canal?
They don’t seem to understand the natural resources belong to the PEOPLE, not to them.
This ranks right up there with Lake Mead going dry by Aug 9, 2019.
If I buy a gallon of water, then it belongs to ME ME ME ME ME ME ME. If I buy 100,000 gallons of water, then it belongs to ME ME ME ME ME ME ME and I’ll swim in it, or shit in it and flush it away as I choose.
A natural resource is only a resource because it’s useful to humans. If it can’t be used by humans, then it’s not a resource. Oil didn’t become a resource until some humans figured out how to put it to productive use. That nylon that comes from a barrel of oil belongs to DuPont DuPont DuPont DuPont DuPont DuPont DuPont until they sell it to you you you you you you you.
Because liberal politicians act selflessly? It’s our interest in our own self-interest that gives us the insight to see beyond the cheery horizon of liberal policies and see the greed and power thirst on the other side.
So let’s not have government ration our resources, or whatever you meant when you said “belong to the people”
… it’s ME ME ME ME ME ME ME…
You’re right.
The problem is, that instead of being concerned about yourself, you’re also all about me, while I don’t give a flying f*** about YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU.
But what if big government keeps subsiding the price of oil and other natural resources, as is happening in countries like India?
I’m a noob and this ain’t a rhetoric q.
Why limit yourself to water and petrolium? Why not food, clothing, houses, roads, health care, computers, high-speed internet, reference books, exercise machines, cars, shoes, and many other “critically important items”?
What metric do you use to differentiate oil vs clothing (to pick any one pair), and decide which one should be government controlled and which one should not?
If water, etc., run out, it is likely because people resorted to political power to prevent market forces from disciplining economic behavior.
Lake Meade, as an example, allowed the expansion of Las Vegas into the current metropolis. A similar problem plagues California where farmers, developers, and politicians used political power to transport water hundreds of miles through desert.
Who knows how much petroleum our government has expended to secure sources of petroleum when there was no need for such activity.
Whatever you think can be preserved by government, you can be sure it will be wasted.
Actually most of those things are dependent on oil. JIT delivery to supermarkets is dependent on abundant, cheap gasoline. So are the plastics that go into various products you buy. It just boggles my mind that you won’t even think that deeply about it.
Food is required even more so than oil. No food, no humans. No humans, no production.
It just boggles my mind that you won’t even think that deeply about it.
You realize that most industrial farming uses nitrogen fertilizers made from petroleum? We couldn’t get current crop yields without abundant oil. God, you are so ignorant!!!
Farmers need food to raise those crops. God, you are so ignorant!!!
Or maybe, just maybe, you haven’t actually answered my questions, and instead have resorted to needless ad hominems.
If your gallon is the last gallon of dririking water available (after you have polluted the entire region’s water table with crude oil) do you still have the right to own it and where would that authority come from?
That scenario would make a good episode of television. I submit post-apocalyptic conditions aren’t amenable to free market ideas…
It is not a situation I believe likely to occur, but a rhetorical question yiu choose not to answer.
If you don’t like the Love Canal analogy try replacing it with Tar Creek or another Superfund site of your choosing. It is your tax dollars at work.
I understand, and some of the worst site are government related, such as various military bases.
probably so,but the idea was that removing subsidies alone isn’t going to ma