It wasn't me. You can't prove anything.


2008-08-11

Business of making money

All businesses are in the business of making money or being lucky. Anything else they make is a side effect of that goal. Any business no in the business of making money, or being lucky, will soon be out of business.

All this talk of punishing oil companies with windfall taxes is bullshit. They don't care how much you tax oil, as long as they have a level playing field with their competition. Every nickel of any tax on oil will be passed straight to the pump and end consumers. I guarantee it. The minute oil becomes unprofitable, oil companies will pursue other means of making money.

Oil company executives are right when they say they are held, by law, responsible to make the best investments for the stock holders of the companies they represent. Congress would love to aim a howitzer full of lawyers at an evil company and fix the problem. That is not the problem.

No one is going to make a silver bullet that fixes the energy crisis. It is going to take a huge investment and a long time. For some reason, four dollar a gallon at the gas pump lit a fire under the average citizen to do something about their situation. You have heard of the industrial revolution. You have heard of the information revolution. Well, we need an energy revolution.

Taxing the existing system is not going to work. Telling people they need to conserver is not going to work. The very balance of all things in commerce need to point to the new way of getting things done. That is, we have to change not just the way things are done, but the what has to be done, why, if.

The industrial and information revolutions came about because they made sense at the time. The technology came first in both cases. The change made sense because technology made it cheaper to do it the new way. The same thing must happen with energy and carbon or whatever evil elements pop up next. The change has to make sense at the time.

Tree huggers need to stop trying to punish someone for making money at what they do or build and put some serious effort in to making what they want the most profitable way of getting everything else done. Ultimately, no one cars if their car runs on electricity or petroleum. They want a way to get around. They want an exciting drive, they want something that carries what and whom they need. They want safety (really).  They want something reliable, dependable. They want something they can drive across America on that whim between opportunities. Or, at least, they want the option. They want something that looks cool, is cool, feels good.

With the exception of changing materials around, are we not still at about 1925 technology when it comes to batteries? Where is the money? I suppose Fuel Cells are really a kind of battery. Maybe not. Haven't Fuel Cells been around since like 1925?

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