I've been a conspiracy-theorist for most of my life. But of late, I've done a lot more study into energy and "all that stuff". Let me share with you my most horrible fear due to the conclusions that I've come to: yes, there are some malignant people in charge, always have been, always will be, BUT... it's simply all out of control. Frankly, I think it'd be a h*lluva' lot better for us IF there was some greedy cabal sitting on "all the money" that we could raid and redistribute. But in reality, no, I don't think it's going to play out that way.
Here's how we estimate a piece of equipment: we figure out what it will basically take to complete the job and estimate our costs from past experience and quotes from vendors; multiply that cost buildup by a multiplier (or divide by a divider, same thing) that will effect a gross margin between 5 and 15 percent; and give the company the quote. If, after the sale is made and completed, we've realized a net profit of ~5%, we figure that we're doing pretty good. That's very common in this industry.
There are an awful lot of things that can go wrong to make that money essentially evaporate. They have before and they will again. For instance, making payroll during a severe downturn when you're trying not to layoff workers and staff. I'm all too sure that for the bulk of the economy, the numbers are like that. Yes, there are definitely some fatcats that are raking in the dough that shouldn't be, but I really do believe (and this is the truly scary part) that that money isn't a significant enough percentage of the entire GDP to save us from the mayhem that's already beginning.
And money isn't really everything, you know... it's only a scorecard of sorts. The valuation of that money can change radically as has been evidenced in places like
Argentina and
Zimbabwe recently.
It would actually be good if companies (like ConocoPhillips, PG&E, Dominion, BP, ad nauseum) kept vaults full of money to deal with crises but they don't: they either reinvest the bulk of it in their own operations (necessary in their kind of game) or in other companies and funds. As such, they can be destroyed by a severe economic upset as well. That's our biggest problem--it's all interconnected too much anymore and we're (globally speaking) too big of a population and too dependent upon our technology for major interruptions.
Way back when, a lot of families considered it an imperative to get their kids a college education so that they could get off the farms. Now, it looks like the best thing to do would be to move back to them. I remember the seemingly endless days bucking hay, herding cattle (yes, I've done that on horseback), catching chickens (layers too old to be economic anymore)... and that kind of stuff. I've even milked cows the hard way and shot the cat with a stream (she liked it).
But I digress...
I'm not sure that I can quite go with the idea of the oil companies being a monopoly since there are so many of them around the world. There used to be more but they're cannibalizing themselves. That's actually a very bad sign, by the way, as in a world with increasing demand and virtually infinite supply it should work the opposite way.
I suppose I could program a spreadsheet (do you have Excel?) to basically provide real numbers for the investment in wind and solar based on what we know about the costs. The assumptions that you'd have to make are pretty complex, though, like programming what the population is going to do. I never had any kids because I saw this coming mathematically way back in the early '70s (Hubbert's Peak in the US) and knew that there was going to be a bloodbath-from-h*ll within my lifetime.
