Four years ago this week, Dr. Krugman published a New York Times opinion piece, “A Finite World.”
“What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices,” Krugman penned. “Conventional oil production has been flat for four years; in that sense, at least, peak oil has arrived.”
Rising oil prices, alas, would mean lifestyle changes. And quite possibly, in the Gruberian mind, government direction of those lifestyle changes.
Steve Hayward and others have recently brought Krugman to task in the current era of increasing, open-ended supply and falling oil prices. What Krugman and depletionists from the beginning have missed is the economic and business concept of resourceship, or entrepreneurship applied to mineral resources. Oil and other minerals are open-ended resources because human ingenuity is an expanding resource, not a depleting one. The more we learn, the more we are able to discover–given capitalist institutions.
Let's face it, Krugman is nothing but a modern day Thomas Malthus:
When it comes to creating a Malthusian catastrophe, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton: "It takes a government."
ReplyDeleteMalthus is still right. He just didn't see crude oil coming (no one did). Now that crude oil production has stopped growing, we're going to see what he was talking about pretty clearly.
ReplyDeleteIf we all don't melt first, as capitalism kills the erf
DeleteThanks for the belly laugh steve!
DeleteMeanwhile Krugman doesn't care about being wrong and laughs all the way to the bank. He isn't paid to be correct.
ReplyDelete