The Oil Situation

EVERYONE AND HIS ASSISTANT are warning us of an imminent shortage of energy, because oil is becoming more expensive. I find myself unconvinced. Presumably, the people in the Middle East have not suddenly decided to start drinking their oil. Are the wells actually dry, or is pumping just getting more expensive? Have the oil-owners really looked around – for instance, in wells that they abandoned a few years, or decades, ago? Have they thought of looking further – perhaps, in the sea off our coasts, or in all those parks full of spotted woodpeckers? Presumably, a subterranean lake of oil can be under water just as easily as under dry land – and under public property just as much as private property.
Also, has anything been done to avoid wasting oil? One use for oil is as motor vehicle fuel, and vehicle fuel is taxed. Therefore we see governments everywhere striving to force fuel consumption up. There are exhaust emission limits which exclude efficient, high-compression engines. Quite often, you will see a highway where most of the traffic is going in one direction, but the number of lanes in that direction is the same as in the other direction.
The fuel tax has a strong tendency to gravitate to the lowest level, the Congress, which is utterly unscrupulous in diverting it to purposes other than maintaining the highways. The fuel tax does not serve the – justifiable – purpose of balancing supply and demand; tolls could well do this, if the drivers knew they could count on the toll being raised or lowered to keep the traffic running fast. The 24/7 tolls which we see today net only trivial sums of money, but create extravagant delays.
Again, it is the rule rather than the exception for states to sell very expensive license plates which give access to any highway at any time – whereas privately-owned car parks charge so much per hour (if the highway did the same, there would be an incentive to save, not waste, time.) Consequently, the state and inter-state highways regularly run freely out in the country, but slow down to their minimum speeds and stall within cities. But intra-city traffic could quite well be sold plates restricted to local, “surface” streets – if county and state governments were prepared to sacrifice part of their revenues from fuel and license taxes.
Nowadays, a great deal of oil is burned in the heating systems of buildings; if the vehicle fuel tax were eliminated, the vehicle operators could quickly bid the oil away from the building occupants – who could easily burn low-density propane or another natural gas. Once again, it is government policies which are creating the appearance of a scarcity.
This conclusion should not be news to any American. For what purpose did the states create the Congress, the president? To protect them from “invasion” – a word which, once upon a time, implied armed forces, not unemployed individuals – and “domestic violence.” These are missions that need only an army and a navy – and for which the citizens can well be expected to pay taxes. Yes, the Congress was allowed to claim the territory beyond the boundaries of the several states for itself – but no-one would ever have expected a “popular” government, one which can act by mere majority, to be competent to manage property; any owner of land quickly seeks to share its crops with a farmer.
The historian John Lukacs pointed out, in The Hitler of History, that the very nations that defeated Hitler have now adopted his Fascism, private ownership but public management. (It is, I trust, obvious that this is just the opposite of a system that will actually work, profitably; it is management that is expected to watch what happens every day, and take care to respond quickly and appropriately.)