Chained

Kept under lock and key; seeing Red.

Food shortages, rising commodity prices and rocketing oil seems to place us on the verge of a Malthusian disaster. Shackled by our limited resources and locked up by our habits, we await an anti-Malthusian technological liberation. Yet even as a believer in technology , my faith has been shaken by the recent spikes. And then it all makes cents. Perhaps the high prices are a true reflection of value. After all, if you think about it, oil is under-priced relative to the cost of carbon emissions and key resources such as water are often provided free. A basic rule of economics is that the only value of an asset is what someone will pay for it, not some theoretical value derived from a complex computer model. But then the sub-prime fiasco has proven this theory wrong; that a "someone" is often deluded and possesses imperfect knowledge. Ah-hah. So maybe the key lies in knowledge. So in the search for value we should hunt for the truth, the all elusive evasive epiphany, that will put us either in the know or in the Red.