An easy prediction: As oil becomes ever rarer and/or more difficult to extract, its price will climb ever higher, higher and higher till the oil countries of the world, especially in the Middle East, are awash in cash beyond belief. And all sorts of things will flow from this imbalance, one of them: Awesome architecture and all manner of technological advancements. Sad, but true: Progress often happens in fits and starts, leaps then long periods of nothing. And if the super rich oil kingdoms of the Middle East keep pushing the architectural envelope, then their breakthroughs will be everyone's breakthroughs, and eventually, the entire world will benefit.
Till then, let us remark how it once was America who was astounding the world with ever greater feats of construction, but those days are long gone now, aren't they? Thank Tricky Dick and St. Ronnie and all the Dittoheads hence.
Thesis: The health of a country can be directly correlated to its overall construction rate (and the overall debt rate), averaged over a set period of time. Dubai, of course, has cash money up the Yin-Yang, and is spending it aggressively yet strategically. America spends hundreds of billions of dollars every year in Finance Charges. And that, precisely, is why we no longer have nice things.
2 comments:
Of course, if we could come up with some alternative source of energy, we would completely pull the rug out from under these guys. And they can't do much on their own -- most of their labor and even their engineering is done by foreigners, who won't stick around for long when that cash flow dries up. (This same energy alternative, or even a more advanced electric car, would get Texas out of our face as well.)
True that. But I don't see us not using oil anytime soon. Decades and decades of future use, at an ever rising price, no doubt.
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