Oil oil oil oil oil - gotta have it! Is it for need or because we can?

[devilgrrl]

sorry... I needed to get that off my chest. :hide:

[skids]

1. For profit, and for class domination.

The profit motive energy companies have in keeping Americans addicted to power you have to constantly buy, rather than products that collect and store power renewably, is obvious. However as an explanation it only scratches the surface.

The elitists want a lower class that they can control -- that they can put under enough financial duress that they will obey orders. If a person could easily work for say, ten years and lay down enough capital to create a partially-self-sufficient homestead, and then start a small business, that would be bad, bad, bad for control freaks.

No, what the powers that be want is a pliable workforce. They need a system where a person has to work most of their productive years. They need people, to quote my favorite Dilbert strip, to "work like a frightened idiot." So they need to be able to threaten these people with freezing in the winter, sweating in the summer, eating cold food (or not eating at all), being unable to see after the sun sets, getting wet when it rains, not being able to travel long distances -- all the horrible things that would happen if we ran out of money and couldn't afford energy, or on the housing side, failed to make a mortgage or rent payment. Heck, if you can make a few of them really desperate, you can even get them to commit crimes for you.

A person that owned their own energy production and housing would only need a way to produce enough to trade for other basic needs -- though more likely they would produce much more than that, for the perks that extra brings. They would become a small competition threat to those that desire power. If there were millions of them, well, that would be a big threat.

A person that has to hustle and live paycheck to paycheck, however, will do what they are told for fear of not getting that next paycheck. That means the people who can write those paychecks get to tell them what to do. That means power and domination. And that, my punky devilgrrl, is why they excercise that power to keep the energy economy (and the economy as a whole) working and structured in such a way that self sufficiency can be thwarted with a simple hike in the price of a barrel or kWh or rent or loan rate, or any of the thousands of other levers and buttons they have at their disposal to keep the average American chasing his own tail.