As Crude As It Gets

Well, lately I have been obsessed with all things oil-related. People have also asked me whether my rants against taxes in general and gas taxes in particular imply that I have some other solution to the energy problem up my sleeve. Or perhaps it is just that the constant rain on Oahu is making my brain go soft. Well...the rain is a problem...but let's see what I can come up with.

First of all, every problem doesn't necessarily have a solution regardless of what homely wisdom says. Sometimes the choice is between things that make the problem worse and things that delay the inevitable.

The simple truth is that given the world's population and level of industrialization, there is no solution to the energy question that can preserve both. In the long run, that is. Oil has to run out some day, and there is no known source of energy which is so abundant and delivers quite the same punch. We will have to go back to a less-mechanized era one day and the world's population will have to fall accordingly. So...do we let it fall due to famine and disease or by gradually declining birth rates? How does one soften the blow?

I cannot think of anything other than more fuel efficiency really - but not via higher taxes. My route would be regulation norms on fuel efficiency, that increase yearly upto some sort of limit close-ish to the Carnot cycle (100% is theoretically impossible by the second law of thermodynamics). Coupled with naturally increasing oil prices due to free market trading, this should be enough to delay the inevitable by several decades.

There is a small problem with all this though: the US auto industry as represented by GM and Ford is in no shape to comply with fuel efficiency norms. Both corporations presently enjoy junk bond status on the fixed income markets, which basically means that you should be even more wary about lending them money than to the government of Guatemala. These guys just do not have the technical or managerial capacity to make such a big turnaround in their standards. However, together they employ about 300,000 people in the US alone, plus several hundred thousand contract employees (hourly wage etc). No politician in this country is going to do anything that might put these guys out of business.

How did these companies get into this mess? The short answer is "MBAs". They ignored their technical workers, engineers, designers et al and brought in freshly minted line management with no understanding of how a car is made. Then they proceeded to insulate top management from the rank and file of the company. And now they are worth so much crap...

So, what happens next? Well, the rest of the world should go ahead with better fuel efficiency standards. This will allow the Toyotas and Volkswagens to really shoot for across the board mileage improvements (not just the Hybrid - all of them) and the rising price of oil will naturally cause US consumers to shift to those cars. Instead of a timeline to death, GM and Ford will just wither away gradually.

What if none of this works? Then maybe there is no solution after all. I already have my plan - gonna be a glow-worm farmer when the lights go out...heh...

On Gas Taxes

O.K. so it's late night on Saturday, it's been a good day and I am writing about...gas taxes?? Well, inspiration can hit you at strange times.

Lately I have been hearing from many quarters that we should support extra taxes on gasoline to encourage efficient use of this (supposedly) fast depleting resource. But will this have the desired result? I don't believe so. First of all any sales tax creates a disproportionate burden on people with lower incomes. Worse, it is likely that low income people on average own older vehicles with lower gas efficiency, but don't have the money to invest in a new vehicle. Among newer vehicles too we have gas guzzlers like hummers, big-ass SUVs/trucks and so on, but from what I have seen these are driven by the richer set for whom money isn't much of an issue. Will they quail before a gas tax? Probably not. My guess is such a tax will just make life more difficult for people who have to drive long distances in fucked-up vehicles just to hold down a job. Will it spur a lifestyle change in favor of shorter commutes? I don't know about that. People tend to stay far from work because it costs less. If a good fraction can afford it and decide to move closer, increasing demand will drive up prices immediately as the demand curve for real estate is rather elastic. It isn't well understood that there is just no free lunch in economics...

There is also the rhetoric that money from the tax can be used to fund all sorts of alternate fuel research, light rail and so on. My innate prejudice is that sounds fine in theory but in practise governments just end up wasting the cash. Every politician has some axe or the other to grind which could use money. For some it's a useless construction project to create "jobs", and for the more ambitious it could be a pointless war somewhere in the world. Does one really wish to put more good money in the hands of these idiots? Also, while the money budgeted for basic sciences and alternate energy development is pathetic, that is not because of a shortage of money in government treasuries. It's because the politicians who spend the money and the public at large which elects them are both just too dumb to think about investing in the future. Of course, it goes without saying that both houses of congress are happy to spend billions on a missile shield, while knowing that there isn't a fool alive who would fire off a nuclear missile at the biggest ICBM power on the planet. I pose the question again - do we want to give these guys more money to play around with? I can bet that if such a gas tax comes to pass, a few years down the line there will be acrimonious debates along the lines of where-did-that-money-go, who-is-to-blame-now and how-many-drinks-make-rosie-sexy. Ugh. That's way too nasty...even for me...

Joint Security Area (Korean)

8/10. This is an excellent movie, seen at one of those Hale Manoa movie screenings. I suppose this is a reminder that living at the East-West center has the good side-effect of exposure to East Asian cultures about which I know little.

The title refers to the most forward posts of the UN command and North Korean forces that meet in an area known as the "Joint Security Zone" on the North-South border. It is also known as Panmunjom or the "truce village". The boundary runs right through this zone, and the armies are so close it has been the scene of some bloody skirmishes even after the 1953 ceasefire. As one would expect, it still remains at hyper-alert.

Nominally, the story is a murder mystery: a skirmish appears to have taken place one night at one of the border posts resulting in two North Korean soldiers killed and one wounded each among the two forces. However during a neutral Swiss investigation, an extra bullet is found at the scene which could not have come from any of the four soldiers. The question is who is the unknown party in the incident.

The investigator is unusually enough a Swiss-born Korean girl whose father served in the Northern army during the Korean war, but left for Switzerland after the ceasefire. What she unexpectedly discovers is a secret fellowship between opposing soldiers on the frontline, similar to that shown in movies like "No man's land", "All quiet on the western front" etc. As it turns out, this began with a South Korean soldier who accidentally got stuck on top of a landmine which would explode if he moves. He was saved by a couple of North Koreans who happened to be patrolling the same area. Of course they speak the same language, have the same ethos and are the same people which underscores the absurdity of the dividing line. Thereafter, the South Korean and a friend of his secretly begin crossing the dividing line regularly to visit the two Northerners and they become fast friends. They share pictures of girlfriends, play Korean dice games with bullets and offer quality cigarettes/cakes to the Northerners deprived by their communist regime. The dialogue is really funny, but you can feel the impending doom. Things are just too good to last given the military precipice on which these guys are sitting. Sure enough, one day they are discovered by a senior Northern officer and the little world implodes in suspicion and gunshots. I won't give the whole game away here, because people should see this movie. However I will say there is no happy ending here, which is as it should be in the non-hollywood world.

I guess the main point of the film is the naivette of young soldiers who are pushed into ideological wars, when what they really want is to make friends and hang out - very simply put. Worth remembering when the next dumb fuck begins talking about the honor in dying for a cause.

All the actors give awesome performances in this movie. The investigator girl came off a bit weaker than others though but I think it's the scriptwriter's fault. I don't know much about Korean cinema so I have no idea of the actor's names or past performances, but I will be watching out for them...