Juan Garofalo wrote:

> Very funny. But of course the joke does not address my point. Do you call
> that 'changing the subject' perhaps ? 

No, I call a joke a joke. But it also has a very relevant point (more on
that further below).

What I call "evasive" is that you answer to my message, raise a few
secondary points, comment all upset about a joke without getting it, but
fail to respond to the very clear questions that I asked. In case you have
just read over them and missed them, here they are repeated:

- What is the "reality" that any price should reflect? 
- What/who determines whether any price is real?
- Now if energy prices don't reflect that claimed but still obscure
"reality", how come that a gold price, derived through the same mechanisms,
would reflect any more "reality"?
- What are "'green' leftie regulations"? 
- And what are "'green' voters"? 
- How do they hamper the claimed "production of energy"? 
- If whatever they want suits them, and they are so many that this makes a
difference, what is wrong with that?
- Still don't want "common" oil fields? 

> To recap : The enviromentalist, green engineer asserts that oil is too
> cheap and that it 'should' (morals!) be more expensive. 

The "morals!" is your interpretation. Mine is different. 

For me, oil is taken out for free (or too cheap) from the common goods. I
don't think anybody should get anything for free from the common goods. So
taking oil out of common goods should be more expensive. That's one.

Burning oil pollutes the air that I breath. The ones who do that get to do
it for free, without reimbursing me for that. I don't think that anybody
should have the right to pollute the air that I breath, and even get to do
that for free. We may be able to cut a deal, and I grant you a limited
right to do that, and you pay me for that. So burning oil would be more
expensive for the ones who use it that way. That's another one.

I simply don't think I get compensated enough for the negative effects that
burning oil by others has on me. This is forced on me. I think I "should"
(no morals, just opinion) be compensated for that. You don't seem to take
your libertarian credo seriously enough to not want to force that on me
either.

> What this means is that the preference (higher energy prices) of a few 
> should be forced upon the many. I call that authoritarianism.

What you seem to want is to be able to explore common goods for free (that
doesn't mean "free for the end user" but "free for the one who takes it out
of the common goods and puts it into the assets of his oil exploration
company") and force your use of common goods on everybody else. How would
you call that?

Start talking about what you really mean with "production of energy". You
thought that was a not very funny joke, but maybe start thinking... What
you mean with "production of energy" is that somebody can take out oil from
under other peoples properties, incorporate that into his own assets, and
should be allowed to do so for free. Or at least without having to buy that
oil from the people that have it under their property. Or not? How's that
supposed to work without common goods? Or how's that supposed to work with
common goods? That's where the problem with the logic kicks in :)

Gerhard

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