“signalled to the world at large by a slow rise in price over the period of several decades”
So, just how do you explain, whilst looking at the oil production graphs, why a barrel of oil has gone from $30 to >$100 in about two years?
Markets swing. In the late nineties, oil dropped into single digits, due to the “Asian Flu”, the recession in Asia. Oil dropped to about 8 bucks a barrel. There were coups, riots, blood in the streets in oil producing countries. It was bad.
Since then Asia has recovered. China is using about 3 times the oil it was using in 1990, 50% more than in 2000. That puts a lot of pressure on the market. Even so, gas at the gas pump is not really anymore expensive than it was in 2000.
But overall, the oil price was in the mid twenties per barrel at the beginning of the decade, 2000. It has gone up 3 to 4 times since then. Similarly, coal has gone up 3 to 4 times. So has steel, gold, concrete, how about your house? It probably has at least doubled.
The unspoken common denominator in all of this, if everything has tripled since 2000, your dollar is worth approximately a third of what it was. Your dollar is losing value. We have no inflation, supposedly, and yet everything has tripled in its dollar price.