[code_biologist]

There are obvious charitable interpretations of OP's meaning, but you ask for effort without any yourself. Could you explain what you're unclear about? Could you explain if you ask for clarity at all, or because you have an underlying unexpressed disagreement? Is it about the definitional existence of "excess consumption" or is it the precise details you quibble with?

[sangnoir]

A definition of Excessive consumption would be in order, because it suggests that there's a "right" level of consumption other than what the market settles on, gp did not quantify what counts as excessive, or why. This concept is new to me and warrants more than a single parenthetical example that raises more questions.

[lazide]

So high that it bankrupted a huge number of producers. What is so confusing?

[sangnoir]

On what basis can the bankruptcies be blamed solely/mostly on consumer behavior, versus the viability of many fracking companies being staked on an impermanently high oil prices? The oil industry is notorious for boom-and-bust cycles.

Who's culpable for the bankruptcy of businesses that were only viable under a Zero Interest Rate regime? Should we blame consumer exuberance - or excessive consumption - for pushing up interest rates and causing bankruptcies?

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

The Fed dropped the ball by keeping rates low. Their choice to keep them artificially low created mountains of problems that we’re still suffering from.

[lazide]

Notably at least partially due to political pressure from Trump - including threats to fire the chairman of the Fed - to avoid higher interest rates and even defaults on his and his families extensive real estate holdings.

[https://apnews.com/article/2a21e92ed9129e91e713495c9ef50050] [https://www.hindustantimes.com/business-news/kushner-compani...]

[Red_Leaves_Flyy]

In the Antithesis of a trump supporter but don’t make it seem like Obama couldn’t have done anything when he benefited from the low rate environment too.

[lazide]

What does that have to do with the original statement?

[sangnoir]

Consumers are not responsible for macro-economic changes that make a subset of businesses unviable. I was likening Shale Oil companies that could only be profitable at >$95 a barrel to companies that were only viable when capital was cheap - both groups should have known and planned for the respective numbers changing.

[lazide]

Again, what does that have to do with the original statement?

[roenxi]

My dude, people are allowed not to know what phrases mean. It regularly happens to all of us. And it is normally unclear what someone means on HN; usually we're all stirring the tea-leaves from 1-2 paragraphs of text and there are a lot of misunderstandings.

In this case I think he meant that government is taxing people who would avoid using oil and giving money to people who do use oil, distorting the market to use more oil than it would in a counterfactual world where policy was consumption-neutral. But given we're talking about government policy that is far from the only interpretation - in context he might mean a specific area, for example.