In Praise of a Bit of Sophistry on Peak Oil Which Understands Adam Smith

By ‘accident’ I came across a Blog (Sophistpundit: ‘self-consciously pretentious since 16 November, 2004’) written by someone I do not know, and found myself scrolling through its contents with deepening wonder at its style, approach and robust arguments.

One such posting was a professional demolition of ‘Peak Oil’ theory by applying fairly simple economics to the explicit predictions of oil running out and the world economy, and everything else with it, collapsing, as if economics were suspendable and markets did not exist. I recommend that you read it too (I wonder what it would make of the world economy collapsing and everything else with it, from a few more years of ‘global warming’?).

Here is an extract from a post, which shows a good grasp of what Smith was about, and what its author, Adam Gurri of GMU, is also about:

“It's time for us all to grow up. Calling Imperialism an extension of free market economics is like calling quantum physics just another stage of newtonian physics. It makes no sense. The Wealth of Nations is ripe with blatant criticism of everything that its brand of economics is often blamed for creating. So please, please, please, try to take the time to learn something about economics before making irrelevant accusations about it. Or at the very least, learn something about its history.”

[Read his Blog – it is quite fascinating and worthwhile reading at: http://sophistpundit.blogspot.com/]

Be ready to have your mind stretched a little.