Dakota Access Pipeline Protests

[Lexicus]

Owning stuff would not be a productive activity if you do not get a return on your investment.

You are not producing anything merely by owning something, whether your investments are profitable or not.

If as you wish such people were squeezed out the governmeent would have to supply the money to invest.

As I asked before, If you owned an oil company ( or wind farm developer) would you invest your money without a return.

Yes, 'I stated' that public policy should be used to slash profits, not get rid of them completely.
I would certainly invest my money at a lower profit if that meant that workers would be well-paid, environmental standards followed, and so on.
Of course, the real issue here is that if no one is buying anything, there will be no business activity in any case and the question of whether I will invest won't even come up. Which gets us back to why we need to redistribute wealth away from profits and towards wages.
Government already supplies the money for investment over the long run in any case. The only question is who controls investment decisions and who benefits from them. The answer doesn't have to be an idle class that derives income purely from owning stuff, in other words simply by existing.

It has everything to do with your point. If you have a gold plated government pension and do not realise that other people have pensions that invest in the stockmarket and so need the divideneds to fund their old age if they do not want to live in poverty.

I don't have a pension at all let alone a gold-plated government one. Pensions don't actually need to earn a return to keep paying out benefits. The essence of a pension is that you set money aside to be paid out after retirement. There is no requirement that this money be invested in anything, and in my opinion placing US pension funds into the stock market was nothing but a huge sop to money-managers who now extract nice fees from the whole process.

 

[Silurian]

I don't have a pension at all let alone a gold-plated government one. Pensions don't actually need to earn a return to keep paying out benefits. The essence of a pension is that you set money aside to be paid out after retirement. There is no requirement that this money be invested in anything, and in my opinion placing US pension funds into the stock market was nothing but a huge sop to money-managers who now extract nice fees from the whole process.

I can see why you do not have a pension since you are ideological opposed to a return on investments.

You seem to think that a pension invested in nothing would be a good idea.
If you had invested $100 in 1928 in nothing you would have $100 now.
The trouble there is a thing called inflation. To buy the same stuff last year you would need $1386. (CPI index calculater http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp )
If the $100 had been invested in the S&P500 it would be worth $294,061 in 2015.
And 10 year government bonds would be worth $7,062 last year.
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html

 

[Lexicus]

I can see why you do not have a pension since you are ideological opposed to a return on investments.

I am opposed to certain uses of the return on investments, though you are not the first person I have encountered who was unable or unwilling to distinguish between RoI and profit (which is only one possible use of RoI).

I don't have a pension because my job doesn't offer me one (yet).

 

[Silurian]

From Wiki

Return on investment (ROI) is the benefit to an investor resulting from an investment of some resource. A high ROI means the investment gains compare favorably to investment cost. As a performance measure, ROI is used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments.[1] In purely economic terms, it is one way of considering profits in relation to capital invested.

In business, the purpose of the "return on investment" (ROI) metric is to measure, per period, rates of return on money invested in an economic entity in order to decide whether or not to undertake an investment. It is also used as indicator to compare different project investments within a project portfolio. The project with best ROI is prioritized. Recently, the concept has also been applied to scientific funding agencies (e.g. National Science Foundation) investments in research of open source hardware and subsequent returns for direct digital replication.[2]

ROI and related metrics provide a snapshot of profitability, adjusted for the size of the investment assets tied up in the enterprise. ROI is often compared to expected (or required) rates of return on money invested. ROI is not net present value-adjusted and most school books describe it with a "Year 0" investment and two to three years income.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_on_investment

 

[Timsup2nothin]

From Wiki

Point?

 

[MobBoss]

It really doesn't. The price of oil is set by OPEC, and how much oil they decide to bring to market. They were the ones who decided to flood the market with oil to bring the price down so far, chiefly to hurt the Russian economy but also to harm U.S. exploration. Which they have done successfully.

OPEC doesn't set the price of oil. They set how much oil they will produce and add to the market. Lately, many of the member states of OPEC have ignored their own agreed production caps, and flooded the market for their own particular reasons. If OPECs own member states violate agreed upon levels of production, then obviously OPEC, as a body, no longer really determines their own level of production which in turns affects the global price of oil.

I think you lack a grasp of the issues involved in making that determination. Either that or your definition of 'benefit to society' is narrow enough to be worthless.

You can think what you want. In turn, I think your 'not of benefit to society' is so overly broad as to be equally worthless.

 

[metalhead]

OPEC doesn't set the price of oil. They set how much oil they will produce and add to the market. Lately, many of the member states of OPEC have ignored their own agreed production caps, and flooded the market for their own particular reasons. If OPECs own member states violate agreed upon levels of production, then obviously OPEC, as a body, no longer really determines their own level of production which in turns affects the global price of oil.

Either way, we aren't producing enough oil such that our cost of production would have any effect on the price of refined oil products.

They haven't been operating under production caps for a while now, largely at the Saudis behest. That's why the market is flooded - the Saudis want it to be flooded. Other countries like Venezuela don't mind either. How much they pump is what determines prices. If they decide to control production, generally the cartel abides.

 

[MobBoss]

Either way, we aren't producing enough oil such that our cost of production would have any effect on the price of refined oil products.

They haven't been operating under production caps for a while now, largely at the Saudis behest. That's why the market is flooded - the Saudis want it to be flooded. Other countries like Venezuela don't mind either. How much they pump is what determines prices. If they decide to control production, generally the cartel abides.

Again, wrong. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-oil-exports-idUSKCN0ZM1E5 US oil exports are the highest they've been in over 40 years, and OPECs failed attempt to hurt our production by driving market prices down has indeed had a huge effect on the current oil market, but our oil production has remained competitive and survived it, so it is most certainly a factor on the world market now.

 

[metalhead]

Yes, but transportation cost savings aren't large enough to impact how much oil we end up supplying, especially now that pipeline extension decisions affect a small percentage of the oil we produce.

It isn't wrong, you're arguing something else entirely. The question isn't whether we supply enough oil to affect supply and therefore affect prices, the question is whether our oil supplies are dependent on building more pipelines, which they aren't because the cost savings that more pipelines provide don't effect the bulk of our oil supply.

Also, OPEC does still control the market, because they place artificial controls where our oil reacts solely to the market, and with significant lag time. Their flooding of the market has had a significant impact on new exploration and new wells, but that won't show up in the supply or export statistics for several years.

 

[MobBoss]

Yes, but transportation cost savings aren't large enough to impact how much oil we end up supplying, especially now that pipeline extension decisions affect a small percentage of the oil we produce.

It isn't wrong, you're arguing something else entirely. The question isn't whether we supply enough oil to affect supply and therefore affect prices, the question is whether our oil supplies are dependent on building more pipelines, which they aren't because the cost savings that more pipelines provide don't effect the bulk of our oil supply.

Also, OPEC does still control the market, because they place artificial controls where our oil reacts solely to the market, and with significant lag time. Their flooding of the market has had a significant impact on new exploration and new wells, but that won't show up in the supply or export statistics for several years.

If transportation cost savings weren't large enough to make that impact, we wouldn't be building pipelines.

And again, OPEC isn't really acting as a group anymore - it's more like each man for himself lately. In that regard, it's certainly not controlling the market.

 

[metalhead]

If transportation cost savings weren't large enough to make that impact, we wouldn't be building pipelines.

Sure we would. You're mistakenly assuming that the U.S. government wouldn't OK the use of eminent domain or give up federal land for pipeline extensions just to benefit the bottom lines of some oil companies, but of course that's what happens. The companies lobby heavily to win approval for these projects because the cost savings over time to them is large, but amount to a drop in the bucket in terms of the overall global oil market. And are meaningless in terms of exploration and drilling costs when companies determine when to drill.

 

[Silurian]

If transportation cost savings weren't large enough to make that impact, we wouldn't be building pipelines.

Sure we would. You're mistakenly assuming that the U.S. government wouldn't OK the use of eminent domain or give up federal land for pipeline extensions just to benefit the bottom lines of some oil companies, but of course that's what happens. The companies lobby heavily to win approval for these projects because the cost savings over time to them is large, but amount to a drop in the bucket in terms of the overall global oil market. And are meaningless in terms of exploration and drilling costs when companies determine when to drill.

Glad you agree that the savings are large.

If I came up with a way to make the site were I work 1% cheaper to run they would be quite happy with me. If they could apply that to another 20% of sites they would be very happy.

 

[metalhead]

Large to one company does not mean large relative to the entire market. Try to keep up.

 

[Silurian]

70% of US crude oil is shipped by pipeline.

If the percentage was increased to 80% the savings would have a market effect.

If you were to do nothing in your job it would be "meaningless" to the market.
If 10% did..

 

[Gary Childress]

The latest developments on the DAP:

ND Prosecutor Seeks "Riot" Charges Against Amy Goodman For Reporting On Pipeline Protest

(Bismarck, North Dakota–October 15, 2016 ) A North Dakota state prosecutor has sought to charge award-winning journalist Amy Goodman with participating in a "riot" for filming an attack on Native American-led anti-pipeline protesters. The new charge comes after the prosecutor dropped criminal trespassing charges.

http://www.democracynow.org/2016/10/15/breaking_nd_prosecutor_seeks_riot_charges

Unbelievable! Good job North Dakota!

 

[tetley]

Unbelievable! Good job North Dakota!

I assume you're being sarcastic.

I also saw the actress who played lead in Divergent got singled out for arrest.

 

[Arwon]

I'm reading that they're using water cannons against people out there in sub-zero temperatures. I'm not sure how that isn't attempted murder tbh.

 

[W|M]

The violence of the state is called ''law'', while the violence of the individual is called ''crime''. If the state does it, it isn't called murder

 

[tetley]

I know someone who got maced in subfreezing temps. That source comes not through the news--it is direct from them.

Personally I think we've got bigger fish to fry, than to protest the pipeline.

 

[tetley]

Confirmed. The guy I know was water cannoned in sub-freezing temps. We are also not positive whether he is even okay right now. Waiting to hear from him again.