On Mar 12, 2007, at 4:00 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> It is certainly impossible to calculate "the position of private
> wealth-owners in the social system" forty years from now, but barring
> an apocalyptic end of civilization as we know it, if fossil-fueled
> industrialization is to end sometime in the near future, it has to be
> replaced by an alternative into which a great deal of investment is
> already being made today, in a fashion that coal was overtaken by oil.
> Is such investment being made now?
The early oil and auto businesses were not characterized by big investment. Ford, for example, complained about how Wall Street wouldn't fund him - which, it's said, contributed to his virulent anti-Semitism. We just don't know what could pop up in five or ten years. Of course, just waiting for something to turn up would be a bad policy, and we should be spending oodles on energy R&D now. But just doing a straight line extrapolation from the present is pretty dodgy.
Doug