[roenxi]

If they had cheap oil, we'd be seeing people using more energy, a stable and improving political climate and rapid improvements in the quality of life of individual people. Like we see in China (or the rest of Asia) as they gain more access to energy. None of those things are evident in the US - it is a country that is seeing reduced access to energy.

Cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade.

[JumpCrisscross]

> they had cheap oil, we'd be seeing people using more energy

America produces more oil than ever [1]. (We also produce more energy than we consume [2].)

Your argument that waste equals production is flawed because energy doesn’t turn into production at a fixed rate [3]. The fact that per capita energy intensity falls while per capita real production rises means the economy is becoming more efficient.

> cheap oil in the US has been extinct for more than a decade

American crude is among the cheapest in the world [4]. (Bonus: look at Canadian and Mexican crude prices. Cheaper still.) Production costs aren’t Arab, but it’s way cheaper than what China pays, even before transport [5].

What makes this fantasy particularly stupid, beyond being trivially fact checkable, is that it mistakes China’s strategic weakness for America’s. The weakness that pushed Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor: their energy comes in from abroad, mostly by sea. The United States can strangle their economy from thousands of miles away by interfering with their shipments of seaborne coal and crude.

This is why the South China Sea is militarising. This is where Belt & Road comes from. The Russia dependency. It makes sense. It’s a weakness Beijing is working to buttress. One which America doesn’t suffer from on account of its geography and geology.

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/crude-oil-product...

[2] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/

[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity

[4] https://oilprice.com/oil-price-charts/

[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/748207/breakeven-prices-...

[roenxi]

Now join the dots together - the largest oil producer and one of the relative cheapest has run out of legitimately cheap oil. Domestic consumption of energy showing signs of serious stress. There isn't any external provider of cheap oil that they can import from - in fact, the global market is in such a state that the US is exporting!

It is hard to say exactly what that entails. Maybe the world gets lucky with a fission/fusion breakthrough of some sort - maybe even a political breakthrough to let us use proven-good nuclear tech. But in the interim it isn't easy to say that the US stock market will mirror its performance in an era where it had unchallenged dominance of a global network of easily available oil shipments. And it certainly isn't safe to say things will happen slowly. Things could start breaking and move quickly.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the largest oil producer and one of the relative cheapest has run out of legitimately cheap oil

You keep saying this despite it being wrong. America hasn’t run out of cheap oil. Americans pay less for oil because we produce oil cheaper than most others, and that will be true relative to e.g. China for fundamental, structural reasons. All while the economy uses less oil [1], year after year, per person and unit of production. (Adjusted for inflation, WTI is about where it was in the 1980s, and lower than it was in the 1970s and most of last decade [2].)

Unless your argument is now peak oil. That we’re running out of oil, as a planet, i.e. that oil will cost more as we extract less. Something we’ve known for decades and are actively re-structuring our economy for. If that’s the case, then your comparisons to Southeast Asia don’t make sense—they pay more for oil, are less productive with it and thus will experience price increases more painfully than America will.

> Domestic consumption of energy showing signs of serious stress

This is a brand new plot point that is also entirely wrong. Total energy consumption is at an all-time high [3]. We’ve even recovered from the pandemic [4].

[1] https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=M...

[2] https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices...

[3] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/

[4] https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/energy-environment/

[roenxi]

1. Seems like you're not going to contest the idea that we're running out of oil.

2. Just a few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too.

The US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance, let alone objectively good performance in line with historic figures. Depending on how optimistic we are about the communists continuing to adopt sane policies, it may even be unlikely based on the current trends.

Fortunately those trends will likely change as the squeeze the US is going through right now gets more pronounced. But the conditions we see now are simply not the conditions of the past 60 years, putting strategies based on the last ~150 years of data into a suspect light.

> America hasn’t run out of cheap oil ... all while the economy uses less oil, year after year

So cheap you can't afford to use it? I don't want to be exposed to your version of cheap.

[0] https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/China/electricity_prices/

[JumpCrisscross]

> you're not going to contest the idea that we're running out of oil

Why would I? Everyone knows this. It’s just not a catastrophe for America.

> few hours ago you referenced a link [0] showing that China has electricity prices sitting at half the US's. India too

How did you misread “China pays more for power than American industry” as China pays less?! Look at the national price for business in China. Now look at our states’ industrial prices. Lots of variation, because e.g. New York has different policy preferences than Texas.

> US has lost access to a cheap form of energy and is likely going to be forced to rely on electricity going forward. I put it to you that it is by no means certain that the US market is going to be in a position where it can sustain even relative out-performance

This is a real argument. Thank you.

I agree it’s uncertain. The point, however, is that this won’t happen to America in a vacuum. And as it happens, it hurts others worse and first. I’d also challenge the assumption that we’re out of cheap energy [1], but that’s a separate discussion. My point is that in a world running out of oil, nobody is better positioned than America, with its domestic reserves, co-located industry and cheap electricity.

> cheap you can't afford to use it

You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?

Hint: it’s the same reason Chinese and Indian power prices are anomalously close to America’s.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_sourc...

[roenxi]

Are you sure you posted the right link? I didn't realise there was a toggle between household and business prices and the business gap isn't as large; but even then for me it says China 0.092 and US 0.136 of electricity, so power in the US is ~50% more expensive than them (and ~36% more expensive than India).

I don't see individual states.

> You really can’t think of another reason we won’t use our fossil fuels?

The price rockets upwards and people start using less of the stuff. There are a lot of possible explanations beyond that, but it is safe to assume the obvious one that is most likely.

I'm sure you already know about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox but I'll link to it anyway.