Bingowings said:

Mrebo said:

Bingowings said:
We have been living through a blip in history, The relative comfort the west has enjoyed has been funded from the fading embers of the European Empires and the petrochemical despotism (hydraulic despotism but with oil) of the American empire. It wasn't that long ago we were all torturing women to death for knowing which herbs were good for pain relief or chopping the balls off men for daring to demand their country back. It wouldn't take much for us to go back to that. The political class in Britain seem to be really keen on it and they aren't Arabs or Persians (didn't the token Muslim have to resign for blaming Jews for his bad motoring?). The Oil is the Car, the Car is the Oil.

Shun economic prosperity! We'll be back to torturing, holistic medicine, neutering, and all the rest soon enough. Entropy demands it.

Manufactured plutocratic energy monopolies are not a stable basis for economic prosperity. They create economic cycles which inevitably lead to catastrophic (for most of us) financial crises. Leading to threads like this and as you say universal homeopathic provision.

They are good for maintaining a tiny mega wealthy elite but that was true of ancient civilisations the Egyptians, The Aztecs, The Romans etc, almost all of them had some form of human sacrifice.

Oil is a finite and polluting resource that is only currently in use because of the understandable desire of oil dynasties and their creditors to remain as the capstone of the pyramid.

Cheap and abundant fossil fuels mean abundant electricity and the transportation of goods across long distances. I don't know what financial crises due to the use of fossil fuels you are talking about. I'm sure there were those who hated on railroads in the same fashion, and that led to unfortunate editorials in the newspaper or something.

For the oil producing countries of the Middle East, you're right that pinning all their hopes on oil is not a permanent solution. But outside of oil, they don't have much more than sand.

Consider the reservations for Native Americans in the US. Reservations have long been known for their poverty. Now many reservations have casinos (which are otherwise generally illegal in the US). Casinos have many drawbacks and tend to help the people at the top. But it's a whole lot better than what many of them had.