Enough with OPEC | Spending as Prioritization and the Ire of Caesar

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Enough with OPEC 

I don’t about you but I’m sick and tired of living in a global economy that is beholden to OPEC. Their move this week to cut a 1M barrels of production, while predictable, is very unfortunate. From a real politic perspective, I get what they are doing. But at what cost? Is a global recession really in the interest of OPEC? A rising oil price hurts just about everyone and is the last thing our increasingly fragile financial system needs to see. With the banks on shaky ground, real estate in crisis, and dark clouds forming in employment data, renewed inflationary pressure from energy could back Central Banks around the world even further into the corner.

This is yet another reminder for why the US should get serious about leading the way in clean energy. In a world where the US is largely powered by things like renewables, nuclear and fusion (hopefully!), we could use the production capacity of shale oil to counter-attack the machinations of OPEC. In doing so, we could resume our post-WWII position as history’s greatest benevolent hegemon and offer the global economy a much-needed relief valve. Of course, this would require strategic thinking and some political compromise—i.e. a willingness to pursue investments in both clean energy and traditional oil production at the same time—but it would be worth it. Better to use our immense natural resources as a force for good than end-up on the list of nations that squandered them.

Spending as Prioritization

When it comes to understanding political priorities there’s no better place to look than the budget.

It tells you everything you need to know. Who in society really has the power? What do our politicians actually care about? What do they not? It’s literally all right there in the numbers.

Though not as deliberate as a political budget process and perhaps not even conscious, consumption patterns more broadly are just as revelatory. For what are we doing when we spend our money? We are making choices, prioritizing some things over others. The data that comes out of this tells us a whole lot more about our culture and ourselves than we might care to admit.

Take, for instance, our cultural obsession with pets.

Now, for all the animal lovers out there, rest assured, this is not some anti-pet rant! I’m a pet lover myself and have always enjoyed having them as part of the family. However, something about this chart got me thinking. I knew pets were a big deal for our culture but just never realized how much so!

Somehow this realization reminded me of a little story about Caesar. According to Plutarch, one day Caesar was walking through the forum and noticed some Roman aristocrats doting obsessively on their pet dogs and monkeys. Of course, the Romans had pet monkeys! Anyway, Caesar, so annoyed by this, quipped something like “if only you cared as much about your children!”

Interesting, right? Whatever you may think of Caesar, it’s always a mistake to underestimate him. This little anecdote, still circulating decades after Caesar’s death when Plutarch decided to write it down, reveals a depth of insight often missing from portrayals of Caesar. For what’s the implication here? Why did Plutarch make space for this? I think it’s there to remind readers that Caesar may have been right about some things and to point out that perhaps there was something indeed very wrong with a culture that prioritized pets over children.

I wonder what Caesar would think of our day and age.

Consider this: here in America, the pet industry is fast approaching a $200B per year business, or a “mere” 25% of the $800B total annual spend on public education. We average a shockingly low $15,000 per student per year, about as much per student as one of these life-extending veterinary cancer treatments I keep reading about. We’re spending more on pets than we are on food stamps ($100B) and Section 8 ($90B) combined. You see where this is going.

At the same time, the marriage rate is falling and the birth rate is falling even faster. There are school shootings seemingly every other week. And while, we pay a lot of lip service to climate change we have made very little progress implementing policies that can actually make a difference there.

When I look around the world, I feel Caesar’s ire. To be clear, I’m not at all against the pet industry just using the data to make a point. But I am concerned about what these spending patterns reveal about our collective priorities. It’s like we have forgotten who we really are and abandoned our responsibilities, to each other, to the children and to the future. As a father myself and an active citizen, I cannot stand for this.

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