Commodities Dealers vs. Community Cooperatives Concerning Oil and Other Resources

Commodities Dealers vs. Community Cooperatives Concerning Oil and Other Resources


(The premise of the article to which I responded was that Commodity Dealers were driving the price of oil way too high)


Half true.

Commodity dealers are hard sucking parasites and their effect on the cost of home heating oil and gas (and electricity) could be fatal to many this winter and/or increasingly very soon.

Community buying/producer cooperatives direct trading should replace the existing exploitative and parasitic economic relationships for fossil fuels, agricultural, products, and other "commodities". Citizens' Energy Cooperative, which buys its home heating oil from Venezuela, may be a good, though small and isolated, example of how an alternative economic system could be structured.

It is my considered opinion that we are in an era of post-peak oil. Oil is a stock resource; therefore the long-term scarcity justifies high prices. Also, the demand side management and the environmental costs (including climate change) would justify much higher taxes (at least on gasoline) and caps on its use.

We must make the commitment of reducing automobile use by 80% in the next 20 to 40 years, by rebuilding neighborhoods/villages and reallocating goods and services to those neighborhoods/villages so that almost all can get what they need and reasonably want within walking distance of their homes, and so that a maximum amount of people can work at home and/or within walking distance of their homes.

Such would be a major boom to the building trades and with the proper education and training rectify the terrible structural unemployment situation that now exists in the United States.