Reply #15: Three points, all of them terrifying: [View All]

[newswolf56]

(1)-Petroleum prices, like the prices of gold, silver and real estate, reflect the increasing worthlessness of the dollar;

(2)-As petroleum becomes ever more the equivalent of a scarce metal, there is literally no limit to how high the price may climb; my own belief is we may see $5 per gallon by autumn and will certainly see $4 per gallon by midsummer;

(3)-Totally unlike every other industrialized nation on the planet, the U.S. has steadfastly refused to build adequate public transport, the consequences of which refusal will inflict a fuel-price crisis that will be far more ruinous here than anywhere else, with massive unemployment, unprecedented homelessness and -- eventually -- precisely the widespread civil disorder the corporate ruling class seeks to provide Bush with an excuse for imposing overt (and undoubtedly permanent) fascist dictatorship.

While these projections may seem extreme, the fact of the matter is that the only way capitalism can survive in a climate of worsening natural-resource shortages is by morphing into fascism (and quite possibly overt Nazism beyond that). But the key to the apocalyptic equation is the fact the U.S. has steadfastly refused to build adequate public transport (which now forever denies it any means of coping with the Peak Oil and post-Peak-Oil crises), and the parallel fact that -- since the last five administrations have methodically destroyed the New Deal socioeconomic safety net -- there is (again in contrast to every other industrialized nation on the planet) no U.S. capability to alleviate the hardships of the economic dislocations. This means the sociology of the nation will quickly be reduced to that characteristic of the Third World: homelessness, starvation and disease on a scale hitherto unimaginable.

And that's not even factoring in the additional (and now utterly unavoidable) ruination inflicted by global warming.

Not only will life become unprecedentedly difficult. For Americans -- that is, for all of us who are not part of the tiny ruling class -- life will never again do anything but get steadily worse. The dream is ended: forever.