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The US government has completely lost the ability to act strategically. Biden is currently in Saudi Arabia begging for more oil production, meanwhile he's bloc

The US government has completely lost the ability to act strategically. Biden is currently in Saudi Arabia begging for more oil production, meanwhile he's blocking measures to increase North American oil production. So, instead of fixing our own problem with inflation, we're asking one of the worst regimes on Earth for help and enriching Russia with higher prices simultaneously. Even if you support greener energy, like I do, this policy makes no sense other than to appear greener than you are. The US consumer could easily handle food inflation and energy inflation if we weren't also dealing with inflation on a bunch of other fronts -- from policy-induced labor shortages and policy-induced supply chain problems. But since we've got multiple compounding problems with inflation, we're pushing everyone towards an unnecessary recession. And of course the background here is a Fed that is whipsawing from creating trillions of dollars to destroying trillions of dollars and giving markets whiplash in the process.

wutbrodo 4y ago
Are the supply shortages policy-induced? Or do you mean not by the Biden admin, but just the regulatory status quo (incl tariffs from the previous admin)?
pphysch 4y ago
Many powerful people in Washington genuinely thought they "won the game of history" in 1991 and subsequently turned their brains off.
- butterfly771 4y ago
ayngg 4y ago
This entire thing has been some kind of bizarre politics induced self flagellation. Regardless of whether or not you think it is right or wrong, it has been no secret for decades that this conflict would be an outcome of Ukraine alignment with the west, yet the west continued to pursue it even after 2014, even with the huge increased dependency on Russian and Ukrainian resources while limiting domestic investment in energy because of ESG policies. And this is just the sprinkle on top of the inflation sundae that they have cooked up these last couple years. Now everyone is in too deep with costs so high, there is limited ability to back out and save face and spin the story without it looking like the massive screw up with huge costs and limited benefit that it has been. At the end of the day, we are going to get a global recession and mass food insecurity and starvation in the global south for what?
- belorn 4y ago
  > At the end of the day, we are going to get a global recession and mass food insecurity and starvation in the global south for what? If you are asking what the west nations got in exchange of making the economy dependent on cheap oil and gas from Russia, the answer is pretty simple. They got money. Politicians got political credits at the time from being anti-nuclear, and infrastructure wise they gained short terms budget savings by not replacing existing heating infrastructure that depend on burning gas. The cheap oil also helped keeping air traffic and shipping traffic cheaper, and the cheap artificial fertilizers created from Russian natural gas made food production cheaper. At the end of the day we traded independence in exchange for cheaper fossil fuels, and we went into dependency without having a backup plan.
  - cbHXBY1D 4y ago
    Don't forget the military industrial complex made a lot of money!
- yucky 4y ago
  It's all so obvious, which makes you wonder if it's intentional.
alphabettsy 4y ago
> he's blocking measures to increase North American oil production. How?
- hintymad 4y ago
  Not issuing drilling licenses? Besides, there is, or so I heard, so much political pressures that drilling has become a high-risk business that those companies either can't afford insurance or can't get one.
  - aaomidi 4y ago
    You do realize these licenses take years to materialize? Oil companies use any crisis to get more rights in the future. Biden can use wartime production laws to force oil companies to produce more. Oil companies right now just don’t want to produce more. It’s not that they can’t. They have no reason to do more work to make less money.
    - leereeves 4y ago
      Why would oil companies invest in production when the politicians plan to phase out oil in the near future? Infrastructure is expensive and takes a long time to break even. And what investments they do make, like the Keystone XL pipeline, are blocked by the government. Would you invest in that?
      - aaomidi 4y ago
        No I’d just force them to increase their production now. This is why critical infrastructure being private property is fucking insane.
  - alphabettsy 4y ago
    There are like more than 10,000 unused licenses right now. And drilling licenses are still being issued. Which is kinda beside the point because it’s refinement that’s the biggest issue right now.
anm89 4y ago
There's an amazing essay on this: https://archive.ph/D9YWr https://archive.ph/D9YWr It feels bad to us to have these ridiculous politicians who spend 95% of their time on theatrical in fighting as the US has for the last ~15 years but in terms of first order effects, it doesn't really matter. Like the risk of something like a kinetic civil war is still roughly zero in the US. But the problem is, no one actually believes that there is any need to do things like have a cohesive foreign policy or actually administer the government, people view the job of the politicians as to just repetitively engage in the kabuki theatre of dunking on the other team over over and again. Which was fine when the world was basically peaceful and we could just lord over everyone with our massive military and totally dominant currency which were built up in the previous era. The problem is that this system is going to fail spectacularly when there are actual complicated geo political issues to deal with and I think we are in the early stages of witnessing right now. Someone else made the observation that we are effectively trying to deal with this problem but cancelling Putin over twitter, because canceling people on twitter is one of the primary modes of governance in the US right now. That may sound hyperbolic but I think it's actually pretty accurate, a lot of the sanctions on Russia were companies self sanctioning after getting attacked on twitter. It turns out saying mean things on twitter is not particularly effective against tanks and artillery. Anyway, interesting times.
- simonblack 4y ago
  Like the risk of something like a kinetic civil war is still roughly zero in the US. To us people on the outside, listening to US people denigrating each other on the web, it seems to us that it's 50-50 whether the US will be involved in a Civil War or a big peer-to-peer International War first.
  - mkr-hn 4y ago
    It's mostly a tiny number of loud and influential people drowning out the majority who either have a balanced view and wish someone would listen through all the shouting or can't make sense of any of it and shut down a long time ago so they could get on with their lives. The latter group is where you find most of the swing voters both parties try to woo every election but ignore otherwise.
r00fus 4y ago
> meanwhile he's blocking measures to increase North American oil production. Increasing local oil production will do little - the barrel prices are not exactly high, but the price at the pump is high - why? Refining. And that's all controlled by oil companies. I wonder why? Perhaps they're just ginning for extra profit?
- leereeves 4y ago
  > the barrel prices are not exactly high $120/barrel is pretty high. Not the highest it's ever been, but close, and about twice as expensive as crude was from 2015 to early 2021. https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/oil-price?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/oil-price?op...
hintymad 4y ago
I remember that on TV Trump was telling German chancellor that they should seek energy sources outside of Russia, and the media was mocking him for being populist or for being anti globalization (or for being paranoid as Russian would need buyers? I can't remember exactly). Is the orange man so bad that whatever he touches is a taboo? Is there any truth in what he does, and the executive branch can be less political but focus more on execution? BTW, what's with all the politicians telling people to buy electrical cars so they don't have to worry about high energy price, as if they didn't know how expensive or unpractical those cars are for ordinary American families? I somehow find that stance insulting.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  >I remember that on TV Trump was telling German chancellor that they should seek energy sources outside of Russia, and the media was mocking him for being populist or for being anti globalization (or for being paranoid as Russian would need buyers? I can't remember exactly). Is the orange man so bad that whatever he touches is a taboo? Is there any truth in what he does, and the executive branch can be less political but focus more on execution? Trump and Jens Stoltenberg of NATO argue on camera (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?
stunt 4y ago
I recently listened to a podcast in which two senior political advisers talked about how they were surprised by the importance of fertilizers and the fact that a lot of fertilizers come from those countries. They had no idea before hands, and nobody around them talked about it. We see incompetent people around us every day, but sometimes we forget that there are incompetent politicians as well. The big difference, and what bothers me the most, is that they never admit their mistakes because of all the political party BS that is often the main priority and goal.

wutbrodo 4y ago

Are the supply shortages policy-induced? Or do you mean not by the Biden admin, but just the regulatory status quo (incl tariffs from the previous admin)?

pphysch 4y ago

Many powerful people in Washington genuinely thought they "won the game of history" in 1991 and subsequently turned their brains off.

butterfly771 4y ago

ayngg 4y ago

This entire thing has been some kind of bizarre politics induced self flagellation. Regardless of whether or not you think it is right or wrong, it has been no secret for decades that this conflict would be an outcome of Ukraine alignment with the west, yet the west continued to pursue it even after 2014, even with the huge increased dependency on Russian and Ukrainian resources while limiting domestic investment in energy because of ESG policies. And this is just the sprinkle on top of the inflation sundae that they have cooked up these last couple years. Now everyone is in too deep with costs so high, there is limited ability to back out and save face and spin the story without it looking like the massive screw up with huge costs and limited benefit that it has been. At the end of the day, we are going to get a global recession and mass food insecurity and starvation in the global south for what?

belorn 4y ago
> At the end of the day, we are going to get a global recession and mass food insecurity and starvation in the global south for what? If you are asking what the west nations got in exchange of making the economy dependent on cheap oil and gas from Russia, the answer is pretty simple. They got money. Politicians got political credits at the time from being anti-nuclear, and infrastructure wise they gained short terms budget savings by not replacing existing heating infrastructure that depend on burning gas. The cheap oil also helped keeping air traffic and shipping traffic cheaper, and the cheap artificial fertilizers created from Russian natural gas made food production cheaper. At the end of the day we traded independence in exchange for cheaper fossil fuels, and we went into dependency without having a backup plan.
- cbHXBY1D 4y ago
  Don't forget the military industrial complex made a lot of money!
yucky 4y ago
It's all so obvious, which makes you wonder if it's intentional.

alphabettsy 4y ago

> he's blocking measures to increase North American oil production. How?

hintymad 4y ago
Not issuing drilling licenses? Besides, there is, or so I heard, so much political pressures that drilling has become a high-risk business that those companies either can't afford insurance or can't get one.
- aaomidi 4y ago
  You do realize these licenses take years to materialize? Oil companies use any crisis to get more rights in the future. Biden can use wartime production laws to force oil companies to produce more. Oil companies right now just don’t want to produce more. It’s not that they can’t. They have no reason to do more work to make less money.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    Why would oil companies invest in production when the politicians plan to phase out oil in the near future? Infrastructure is expensive and takes a long time to break even. And what investments they do make, like the Keystone XL pipeline, are blocked by the government. Would you invest in that?
    - aaomidi 4y ago
      No I’d just force them to increase their production now. This is why critical infrastructure being private property is fucking insane.
- alphabettsy 4y ago
  There are like more than 10,000 unused licenses right now. And drilling licenses are still being issued. Which is kinda beside the point because it’s refinement that’s the biggest issue right now.

anm89 4y ago

There's an amazing essay on this: https://archive.ph/D9YWr https://archive.ph/D9YWr It feels bad to us to have these ridiculous politicians who spend 95% of their time on theatrical in fighting as the US has for the last ~15 years but in terms of first order effects, it doesn't really matter. Like the risk of something like a kinetic civil war is still roughly zero in the US. But the problem is, no one actually believes that there is any need to do things like have a cohesive foreign policy or actually administer the government, people view the job of the politicians as to just repetitively engage in the kabuki theatre of dunking on the other team over over and again. Which was fine when the world was basically peaceful and we could just lord over everyone with our massive military and totally dominant currency which were built up in the previous era. The problem is that this system is going to fail spectacularly when there are actual complicated geo political issues to deal with and I think we are in the early stages of witnessing right now. Someone else made the observation that we are effectively trying to deal with this problem but cancelling Putin over twitter, because canceling people on twitter is one of the primary modes of governance in the US right now. That may sound hyperbolic but I think it's actually pretty accurate, a lot of the sanctions on Russia were companies self sanctioning after getting attacked on twitter. It turns out saying mean things on twitter is not particularly effective against tanks and artillery. Anyway, interesting times.

simonblack 4y ago
Like the risk of something like a kinetic civil war is still roughly zero in the US. To us people on the outside, listening to US people denigrating each other on the web, it seems to us that it's 50-50 whether the US will be involved in a Civil War or a big peer-to-peer International War first.
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  It's mostly a tiny number of loud and influential people drowning out the majority who either have a balanced view and wish someone would listen through all the shouting or can't make sense of any of it and shut down a long time ago so they could get on with their lives. The latter group is where you find most of the swing voters both parties try to woo every election but ignore otherwise.

r00fus 4y ago

> meanwhile he's blocking measures to increase North American oil production. Increasing local oil production will do little - the barrel prices are not exactly high, but the price at the pump is high - why? Refining. And that's all controlled by oil companies. I wonder why? Perhaps they're just ginning for extra profit?

leereeves 4y ago
> the barrel prices are not exactly high $120/barrel is pretty high. Not the highest it's ever been, but close, and about twice as expensive as crude was from 2015 to early 2021. https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/oil-price?op=1 https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/oil-price?op...

hintymad 4y ago

I remember that on TV Trump was telling German chancellor that they should seek energy sources outside of Russia, and the media was mocking him for being populist or for being anti globalization (or for being paranoid as Russian would need buyers? I can't remember exactly). Is the orange man so bad that whatever he touches is a taboo? Is there any truth in what he does, and the executive branch can be less political but focus more on execution? BTW, what's with all the politicians telling people to buy electrical cars so they don't have to worry about high energy price, as if they didn't know how expensive or unpractical those cars are for ordinary American families? I somehow find that stance insulting.

TMWNN 4y ago
>I remember that on TV Trump was telling German chancellor that they should seek energy sources outside of Russia, and the media was mocking him for being populist or for being anti globalization (or for being paranoid as Russian would need buyers? I can't remember exactly). Is the orange man so bad that whatever he touches is a taboo? Is there any truth in what he does, and the executive branch can be less political but focus more on execution? Trump and Jens Stoltenberg of NATO argue on camera (<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpwkdmwui3k>). Who turned out to be right? Who turned out to completely, totally, 100% wrong?

stunt 4y ago

I recently listened to a podcast in which two senior political advisers talked about how they were surprised by the importance of fertilizers and the fact that a lot of fertilizers come from those countries. They had no idea before hands, and nobody around them talked about it. We see incompetent people around us every day, but sometimes we forget that there are incompetent politicians as well. The big difference, and what bothers me the most, is that they never admit their mistakes because of all the political party BS that is often the main priority and goal.