In the mid 1980s, a cocaine dealer named Russell walked in on his girlfriend and business partner mid-coitus. His business partner and main distributor, a man named William, was found floating in the Mississippi river some eight weeks later. Three years later, Russell was killed by DEA agents in his 16,000 square-foot home. The DEA estimated Russell's worth at the time of his death at just a little over eleven million dollars.
At the time Russell killed William, the drug supplier was worth a little over seventy thousand dollars. In three years, Russell had managed to increase his net worth more than a hundred times over.
Cocaine was the main drug of the 1980s. Popularized first by the rich, cocaine was the most widely used drug of the big bangs decade. And so, due to an availability of supply, a ridiculously steady increase in demand and the amazing efforts of William's replacement (a well connected and devout partier named James), Russell had managed to build an empire.
One of the main reasons Russell was able to attain such a stable of wealth — the steady influx of new customers interested in dancing with the white lady — is what made the cocaine trade such a profitable venture in the 80s. The drug had been around for a long time but simply never got all that popular until it was made accessible to everyone. All of the sudden — and it seemed to happen in minutes — the demand for cocaine went from a handful of people across the planet, to something like one in eight people from age eighteen to forty in the United States alone. Everyone, it seemed, simply had to have this new drug.
Not coincidentally, in the late 1980s, Americans paid roughly eighty cents for a gallon of gas. The rest of the world paid considerably more for two reasons: first, American companies were able to produce a lot of their own oil and second, because America was such a devout consumer of gasoline and other oil derivatives, they simply got a great deal. Much like Russell, who bought cocaine by the hundreds of Kilos, didn't pay anything close to street value, so the American people paid a lot less than countries like Germany, who didn't use as much or make as much of the black gold as did the Big Ole USA.
For whatever reason, sometime in that same decade, the American people's representatives in government decided to ban offshore drilling and the creation of new refineries. They also began putting strict limitations on just where American companies could drill for oil, thus increasing the demand from foreign suppliers. Which was really no big deal at the time.
Much like Russell bought a lot of cocaine from few sources, we bought a lot of oil from a few sources. And, to keep these sources happy, we aligned with them, offering them gold and guns in exchange for their favorable treatment. In many ways, it was a beautiful business relationship. The US had an excess of weapons and gold; the Middle East had an excess of oil. Our environment stayed healthier as a result of limiting our exposure to the very potent effects of oil drilling and their ability to control their desert environments increased as a result of new wealth and displays of power.
Fast forward ten or so years.
In the late 1990s, many countries thought to be third and second world countries took on the label: "developing countries." And develop they did. The world economy grew well beyond the major players (Japan, Russia, Europe and the US) and countries in South America and Asia found themselves with most of the factories, most of the businesses and as such, a desire for more and more oil to feed their growing infrastructure. All of the sudden America was taken down by the DEA agents of world government. Though we were still of use to the oil suppliers of the world, we were no longer the best game in town. We were, in short, being de-emphasized in terms of global economic importance. There were other customers. And they were increasing their demands at a rate we hadn't seen in eighty or so years. Oil became, forgive the expression, one seriously hot commodity.
Now, much like in the illegal drug trade, when there is excessive demand and endless supply there will be hostile takeovers. Attainable wealth is not just the American dream. It is THE dream, the reason immigrants used to pour into this country like ocean waves through a spaghetti strainer.
And where there are takeovers, there are also alignments.
Ninety percent of the oil in the world is not owned by companies so much as it is owned by countries. Oil, like most commodities, is power. And power is the goal of the rulers, not the ruled.
The number one enemy within any collective group is almost always the leader of that group. In baseball, just about everyone hates the Yankees. In football, just about everyone hates the Patriots. And, for many different reasons, just about every salesman hates his biggest client. Oh sure, the salesman enjoys the profits, but if one little thing goes wrong and that big client leaves or changes his orders, the salesman is out a lot of money. Your biggest clients are almost always your biggest pain because they can be. They have a power over you. Though they may need your product, you in turn, need their business. And in some cases, you'll even let your biggest client run your life a little (i.e. take precedent over some aspect of your social life in the case of the salesman, or take over some aspect of the way you work with other countries in the case of America and oil supplying nations). This is why the terrorists hate us. They hate us because we tell them how to live and yet they need us to live. It's more frustrating than a bad marriage with a great prenuptial agreement.
Fast forward to today.
On September 24th, Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter, and China announced plans to build refineries and boost oil shipments, said President Hugo Chavez, who is seeking to lessen dependence on the U.S.
You read that right. Chavez is actually looking to ease his dependence on us. No relationship is a one-way street, and that goes for business relationships as well.
Last week, the United States government announced a weak-ass lie of a plan to allow offshore drilling (it doesn't allow drilling in areas we know we have oil in and as such requires more exploration and more expensive technology than would otherwise be necessary but is believed to be better than nothing by some people and a freaking hoax by most… but I'm getting off topic) and today an additional twelve billion dollars in subsidies for the creation of alternative fuels was also approved by congress.
In an effort to lower prices at the pump, the American government is promoting alternative fuels for the future and drilling for right now.
This is kind of like trying to keep your disgruntled, attention-starved wife happy while saving up money to marry your mistress. It never works.
You see, the only way that alternative fuels will ever be popular, government intervention or no government intervention, is if oil-based fuels are too expensive. If America were to get prices at the pump down to two dollars a gallon again, then there would be little motivation for alternative fuels to be created.
So what do we do about this?
We drive less, we buy more fuel efficient cars, we try to create alternative fuels and we drill for more oil.
In other words, nothing really.
Get used to expensive gasoline, party people. It ain't going anywhere any time soon.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Oh, and while we're here, I've gotten a few emails from people who hate the kind of writing I've been doing lately and just put up the six bucks it took to download my snippet book so they could remember back when my writing was funny, aggressive and generally crude.
You can do it, too. The link's right here.
And I strongly suggest you do it before the download costs less than the price of a gallon of regular.