[lbo-talk] Output Falling in Oil-Rich Mexico, and Politics Get the Blame

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Mon Mar 12 14:40:01 PDT 2007


On 3/12/07, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Mar 12, 2007, at 4:58 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > If the early oil and auto businesses were not characterized by big
> > investment, that is probably in large part because there was still a
> > lot of competition and oligopolistic consolidation had yet to take
> > place.
>
> You've been hanging around MR too long! Competition is not dead.
> Firms are still born, and others die; technologies are introduced,
> and some succeed, and some fail.

Competition never dies, but in industries like auto and energy, it would be difficult for individual entrepreneurs or small groups of investors to make inroads into the markets already divided by big companies. In any case, that competition will never go away from any part of the capitalist system doesn't invalidate the point that big oligopolistic corps, often backed by the state, can spend more on R&D than small start-ups in a nascent industry unaided by the state, which is usually the case in the environmentally sounder alternative energy industry.


> > Moreover, we need to face up to the fact that the question of oil vs.
> > environmentally sounder energy sources is not a technological question
> > but a political one.
>
> Well yeah, but you never know what the Wozniak & Jobs of energy could
> come up with.

There are two theories with their corresponding structures of feelings that are likely to block the rise of any political force to compel conversion to an ecological system of production: crisis theory, of which the "peak oil" theory is one variety, which conjures up limits to capital bringing about a big crisis and hopes that crisis will clear the way for a new world; and faith in automatic progress made by the revolutionary power of capitalism. Both are wrong. Capitalism is innovative, for sure, but the ruling class have never favored environmentally sounder solutions to externalizing environmental costs if the latter is cheaper in the short term.


> Oh, and the Chinese are pretty committed to new forms of energy.

Reading a lot of Thomas Friedman lately? :-> -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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