51–60 of 129 posts
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The problem here isn't oil but simply the power of the global elite. I went into this article thinking "So what? The world runs on oil, and oil has a lot of money. Welcome to learning about the economy." But yeah, it is concerning that private interests that don't share our same niceties about democracy and human rights have power over us.
You willingly put up with the ‘global elite’ though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem here isn't oil but simply the power of the global elite. I went into this article thinking "So what? The world runs on oil, and oil has a lot of money. Welcome to learning about the economy." But yeah, it is concerning that private interests that don't share our same niceties about democracy and human rights have power over us.
You willingly put up with the ‘global elite’ though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem here isn't oil but simply the power of the global elite. I went into this article thinking "So what? The world runs on oil, and oil has a lot of money. Welcome to learning about the economy." But yeah, it is concerning that private interests that don't share our same niceties about democracy and human rights have power over us.
You willingly put up with the ‘global elite’ though.
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The average cost for an offshore oil drilling rig is now about $650MM. The ones that can go really deep are even more expensive.
I didn't know they were that cheap. A new refinery starts at about $5B.
One thing to point out: Oil is still _huge_ when it comes to investment and sheer amount of financing available. Anything involving large-scale finance will have oil money involved in it in some way. Frankly, even at the height of the tech boom, the tech industry has never had significant capital available compared to the oil industry. I've worked in both... Folks in tech think 100 million in capital is a lot. In oil…
I was at an iron works a while back where I learned that an industrial grade blast furnace was, ballpark, $100 billion. This was built 100 years ago. That day I decided I just didn’t and wouldn’t ever understand capital markets.
The largest blast furnace in the world is about 5 million tons of iron per year (and was upgraded to that capacity in 2013): http://www.donga.com/en/List/article/all/20130610/406398/1/P...
...so that means the biggest blast furnace in the world has a capital cost of approximately $1 billion.
More than likely the cost (in today's dollars) of that blast furnace you're referring to is $100 million, not $100 billion.
Side note: direct reduction furnaces furnaces are usually cheaper from a capital cost perspective and can use natural gas or even hydrogen for producing steel... We may use more of this tech in the future as we move away from coal for sustainability reasons.... The US now produces about 10% of its raw iron/steel using DRI and 90% by blast furnaces and the rate of DRI growth is fantastic (going from 2 million tons in 2017 to 3.4 million in 2018, pdf page 10): https://www.worldsteel.org/en/dam/jcr:96d7a585-e6b2-4d63-b94... A few years ago, virtually no steel was made via DRI in the US. The fracking boom has changed a lot.
Comes close to an important point, and then misses it completely. The problem is not that Saudi money would get them influence at new U.S. tech companies. The problem is that Saudi money is getting pushed into "tech" companies that have unsustainable business models, and this is sucking all the oxygen (e.g. available developers) from other projects that could accomplish more. Imagine two startup ideas. One, could be…
Well that just means that a rational investor would make a killing amid this chaos, wouldn't he? So, we have to assume that for the last decade, not a single VC in the industry have been rational enough to pick up easy money everybody else is overlooking?
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You willingly put up with the ‘global elite’ though.
Yeah, but I'm putting off "taking down the global elite and reworking our entire system" for next Tuesday because I've got some other things on my to-do list.
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You willingly put up with the ‘global elite’ though.
"willingly" is a bit of a stretch considering the difficulty of doing so, and gives off a different connontation.
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The problem here isn't oil but simply the power of the global elite. I went into this article thinking "So what? The world runs on oil, and oil has a lot of money. Welcome to learning about the economy." But yeah, it is concerning that private interests that don't share our same niceties about democracy and human rights have power over us.
You willingly put up with the ‘global elite’ though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t see it being so negative that it comes from oil. I don't believe that's the actual problem. If it was Norway investing its oil money, this wouldn't be an issue. It's oil money from a state that is very much not aligned with the values SV companies claim.
I guess you and I have different ideas about SV company values! I think that SV has very lax attitudes on censorship and data collection, and frankly I think that some of these companies practices would be much better accepted by the ruling parties Saudi Arabia than in most of America