mircea_popescu: when i say "You see ? The capitalist found the externality, made his item certainly cheaper and arguably "better" at the expense of unknown things not in his charge." i am not being facetious. the derp's actually being a good capitalist in that example. which is the broader point there : one can't pull himself up by own breeches, "capitalism" is not a cure for stupidity, merely an instrument for smart people.

mircea_popescu: trinque the important point about "externalities" in a discussion of money, and by extension capitalism, is that they're never anything other than a power play. (much like appeals to "science" in a social setting, notwithstanding the libertard's hollow pretense to the contrary).

mircea_popescu: it's true that oil ~futures~ did top 100 for some time some time ago. this is a different sort of "price" than the "price" of interest in the reasoning above, and a different sort of signal.

mircea_popescu: anyway, to round the matter for the readership, oil is not 100, but about 35 atm. was 40 last year. in this interval of time, about two thirds of the cost of the barrel comes from various royalties paid to governments, both directly and indirectly in the form of "compliance" with myriad idiocies. the cost of refining, owing to technological advance entirely unrelated to government, is under a cent. transportation around a cen

mircea_popescu: this is a prime something to cleave, somehow. it is a major limit of our world, much moreso than "carbon" blabla or gravity. its unyielding pressure creates the necessity of the harem, for instance, and many things. ☟︎

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform it's not a matter of "deny". energy economics is a proper field, which you're welcome to learn if you care, or not. the behaviour you briefly engaged in is not unlike 15 yo alf trying to learn math by busting into brin sr's class and yelling "all functions are convex! prove me wrong!" really loudly. ☟︎

mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo the substance of the dreamer's dream is always dreamy! and of a creamy consistence!

mircea_popescu: i eagerly await article explaining how $100 petrobarrel << i dunno what you think this sort of nonsense achieves. what in fact it achieves is "oh look, alf has nfi what stuff costs, but he wants to derp about how it works". it's a bad habit. ☟︎

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform> and it ~is~ a cost. << so far, it's "alf got drunk one day, went on an abstruse rant".

mircea_popescu: trinque i'd be happy with a boyhood tax. to quote the classics, three pennies to the gossip ; two to the lie and one for every two stupidities.

mircea_popescu: there isn't "the cost of there being such a thing as saudi arabia". this isn't how costs work. and in general, this isn't fucking fiction.

mircea_popescu: this isn't going away just because alf had a weird day.

mircea_popescu: again : the 2 dollars paid at pump for a gallon of gas are split : $0.25 covers the entire economic process involved ; $1.75 goes to usg to pay for random idiocy du jour

mircea_popescu: dude. the cost of hiring a woman to scrub my floor is not "whatever plus the cost of keeping her from going to college and also running of to cuba w3hen she was 17"

mircea_popescu: i doubt it'd be effective. you'd end up with a nine ton car.

mircea_popescu: out of every gallon burned, car eats a quarter and usg seven.

mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-07-28#1511123 << not for a second. without usg, gas is ~25 cents at the pump. it FEEDS the usgolade, not eats from it. ☝︎☟︎

mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-07-28#1511097 << he doesn't know why he wants it ; but the larger thing that he's trying, unknowingly, to be, ie "mainstream media" thrives on anonimity because then greenwald, ie self-appointed derp of no value or importance, can ride on "anon" back all the way to the bank. it's a mental model that gets all the journawhores wet. ☝︎

mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-07-28#1511085 << there still isn't. this is like saying "before emperor took a shit in the soup bowl there was no turdsoup." sure, now there is, technically, but it still ain't soup in the sense, "i'd want to eat that". i dun think at any point the notion that if you tape many cellphone batteries together you get A LARGER BATTERY/firehazard. ☝︎☟︎

mircea_popescu: funny how there's always a "legion in the sky" at every powerless derp's beak and call. "THE REAL WORLD". orly ? what real world ?

mircea_popescu: watched them paint it a garish blue once. they ran out of paint, leaving a footlong section down the middle.

mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-07-28#1510902 << this is a good point, actually. gotta be looked into, sealing gotta seal all the crevices. ☝︎