Let us also assert that the process of "market discovery" is a mechanism by which the markets effectively establish the actual prices of goods and services. We shall defer for the moment the problems of asymmetries in knowledge, and gamePerkinShip of unquantified externalities, for the moment, since, well, how ever could anyone but the market be able to know the true value of goods and services. I mean, it is not like there are banks holding onto any assets which at current market discovery rates, are, well, WAY OVER BOOK! Clearly the banks allocated funds to purchase such goods as the intermediation that makes market discovery possible. Anything less would make them the disney channel of economics, how ever can we doubt the FeeMarketeers.
yes, kids, you can sing along,So with all of that stipulated we can look at the current cost of gasoline, and the questions of when are things actually profit, and when are they merely looting, as means of hoping that no one was going to ask about the actual prices that an actual market discovery method would find.The world is a panoply of HORROR! wounderful Horrorfying HORROR!You mean that was not the disney channel of economics theme song? Where tinkerbelle flew over the dungeon of doom and digital despair of those who did not learn the correct implementation of Fresh Water Economics?
Clearly the customer understands the influence of supply and demand on the current market prices. That as the supply in a given product decreases, either the demand must change, or the cost will go up. The price at the pump is fixed by this law of supply and demand, as well as by the underlying cost of all of the components that bring the gasoline to market!
There is the cost that the station must bear to bribe both the current labor market and their thugs in government. Then there are the costs that the distribution system must bear to bribe not only the current labor elements in the distribution chain, but also the various regulatory systems put in place by the wage labor types hiring government thugs. Then there is the cost at the refineries, which again includes the cost of bribing the labor elements, and the regulators, and the financial markets which are required to provide the capital and other financial assets to get not only the really large capital installations built and maintained, but also the ever expanding series of international thuggeries who all need to be bought and sold, of course at market prices.
Then there are the Extraction firms who have to bribe the labor force, both of the indigenous population, and the paramilitary forces who are required to manage the thuggery of the local governments, and the international exchange that regulates the global prices for buying and selling certified pre-owned governmental regulatory agencies, and their proprietors, who may or may not be the government that can be purchased at market rates, based upon the policy of Market Discovery.
So as not to overly complicated the model here, we shall presume that the Extraction companies are of course vertically integrated financialized firms that have effectively hedged themselves with regards to their Holey owned subsidiaries that find, and fix, the various repositories of fossilized fuels. { Of course they are Holey, since clearly they are doing God's Work! And at God's Compensation Package wages! }
But if we were truly to allow the invisible foote of the market to do the will of god, then what about the dinosaurs?
What About The Dinosaurs?I mean, they contributed, and we clearly can not imagine that they did it for anything less than what the FeeMarket would demand!
Shouldn't the costs of creating and compressing the dinosaurs be factored in by the invisible foote of the market as a part of the non-externalized costs of creating gasoline for suburban assault vehicles and the Tiger-Soccer-NasCar-HeManManlyMaleBuckUp-M
WHAT?
You mean that the market failed to factor in that the strata of rock where the dinosaurs were nice and neatly liquified by at least decades of pressure? You can not seriously tell me that the all knowing, all see, all calculating market fundamentals had a major systemic moment of "oopsie"?
Now seriously! Clearly the market understood that you do not make dinosaurs and turn them into a liquified carbon rich goo, with really mellow yellow benzene bonding rings that like to self deconstruct into a wide range of chemical by-products, and other easily financializable compounds, as if they were a french literary society sitting at the side walk cafe reveling in Foucault! { would this be the wrong time to point out that Foucault and fiends have NEVER invited the dinosaurs around for so much as a post-surrealist-post-marxianist assault on the post-suburban post-culture... or which ever pillar of what ever is post enough now. }
Oh hold it! what if the world were created in seven days, and the dinosaurs were merely put there to challenge the faith of those who were going to doubt the all knowing, all seeing, all pricing imaginary foote of the market!
Clearly if we factor that into the Cost of Doing Bizniz, well the marketing of the makretMythos to the bumpkins buying into that whole "suburban assault vehicles and the Tiger-Soccer-NasCar-HeManManlyMaleBuckUp-M
Granted, there is another possibility.
What if americans should be thinking about the problem of quantizing the externalized costs so that there were some way that an open and transparent fair market would be able to trade on the whole of the costs, and not merely a portion of the cost that the seller has been unable to fob off on god, or allibababingdingdingdingwingdingding, which ever is first.
Hum. What if we had a way to look at actual costs, the real costs of given goods and services, when we look at what we are really paying for -- without the cost of say reaping so called profits now, and deferring to another time, the need for someone else to raise the funds to find a SuperSiteFund to clean up all of that externalized costs. Why that way would be like, uh, using the market discovery mechanism to price goods and services in a way that did not allow some to merely engage in openly fraudulent conduct in the market place.
Hum....
What if Oil does not grow on trees. Or maybe, what if we found a way to make the oil products we need grow on trees... Why then we could deal with the actual costs and consequences of the economics, without the need to play fast and loose with the game of resource depletion, and all of the hand waving about how majikally god is going to honor the future's contract by pressing more Dino's for the Market Discovery Channel.