A Russian's take on the current state of relations between the U.S. and Russia, economic sanctions and the manipulation of oil prices.

Addressing the rest of your response,

It's not obvious because it's not true. Money is not the lifeblood of an economy, money is nothing more than an arbitrary but somewhat consistent measure of value. The lifeblood of an economy is the exchange of value, so while it can be somewhat measured in money, money isn't the economy, nor is it founded on some underlying mandate of continued exponential growth.>

Sure, money doesn't have to be the lifeblood of any economy, but it is the lifeblood of ours.

Again, economic growth is value, and while resources of a finite nature can contribute to this value, they are not the entirety of value. There are nonfinite resources which have value and figure into our economy. In fact, the economies of the world have been based on them since before recorded history.

Yes, economies can grow in part, sometimes in large part, due to non-resource based variables. Internet service for instance, or debt collection agencies. But these, and the rest of non-resources based parts of the economy require resources to funtion. Therefore, anything that affects an economies access to resources will affect all aspects of that economy.

Time will tell, but people have been singing that song for the last fifty years, and yet the economy and the market have supported the prices without much of an issue, even during the times that they rose dramatically. The West's economy has proven to be extremely adaptable, and certainly more so than the Russian economy.

The west cannot adapt to resource constraints that limit growth. Grow or die. That's it, period.

Sure...all oil production boomed when oil prices were $80-$100 per barrel. But the reason that 1970s fracking didn't take off while 2000s fracking did was a matter of technology, not low oil prices, since the 1970s had incredibly high oil prices.

Technology may have played a role in the 1970's, but fracking did not take off then because it didn't need to. Conventional wells still had not peaked, and spending additional money to get oil wasn't yet viable.

/r/CredibleDefense Thread Link - cluborlov.com