I keep hearing the talking heads on TV talk about the importance of "Energy Independence" and they make it sounds like a good idea. The problem is that it is totally stupid and clearly not worth it. The only reason that they keep talking about Energy Independence is that our stupid voters don't understand economics or simple logic. This may sound like a repeat, but if it takes a repeat to get the message thru, I guess I have to do it.
When most people think of energy, they think of oil or gas for their cars. Oil is a world wide commodity that is "fungible". That mean that one barrel of oil is equal to any other barrel of oil, no mater where it originated. Further, the price of oil is determined by world wide demand and availability. The price of oil or the supply of oil is not just a function of what happens here in the USA. What determines if you will have oil or not, is a function of whether or not you can pay for it. If you don't have the money to pay for the oil, it does not matter how much is available or where it originated. If there is a contest between two countries over oil, the one that will get the oil is the one that can pay for it. If you follow this, then you would want to be the country or person who could pay for the oil. Now we are getting to the answer for peoples concerned about energy independence.
The answer-----Rather than being concerned about energy independence, people should be concerned about figuring out how they are going to pay for the oil. You can still buy whale oil, but most of the people who believe in global warming can not afford it. It was not the Greenies who save the whale, it was John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil. Read your history.
If you owned an oil well and the oil was worth $100 per barrel, would you sell oil to your neighbor for $50 per barrel because that was all the money he had? I don't think so. Simple isn't it?
