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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   33999 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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I think part of the reason it doesn’t get the fanfare is because it doesn’t create 12 figure networth people. Its a constant costs business versus most building business. Of course if the businesses are not as profitable then the surplus value went to consumers in the form of lower energy costs. Also likely led to America not needing to write giant checks to the Saudis which meant are trade deficit could fund other things and those depend more on price leading to the strong dollar. People working in constant-costs businesses (farming, manufacturing, energy) tend to vote red people working in wide moat with ability to extract economic rents or winner take all markets tend to vote blue.

I think a bigger factor is that this success goes directly against the carbon-reduction platform that is important to much of the Democratic party base. Democrats are not too keen to paint any fossil energy extraction as anything but an economic negative and ate a lot of criticism over things like blocking Keystone XL, even if from time to time they quietly throw their environmentalist base under the bus when it comes to opening federal lands for drilling. But politically, fossil fuels are "bad", and good things can't be caused by bad things, therefore shale oil and gas can not be responsible for positive economic developments. Lucky for them, the press is generally fine with not talking about the double-think taking place because stoking environmental panic is good for their bottom line (and some, I assume, are true believers).

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