Because you can fly planes, and drive hummers, trucks and tanks on oil (products).
Other than electronics, gold has no value except for what the recipient thinks it’s worth.
Fresh water, food and medicine will be the leverage in the next decades.
Fresh water, food and medicine will be the leverage in the next decades.
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The USA is doing fine on the medical technology front. You bump into a lot of people these days who have experienced one kind of medical miracle or anther. The docs/medical scientists say advances are only accelerating.
There is another revolution coming in water — but its probably a decade or two off. That revolution will be when the cost of desalination and transport is cheap enough so that water on any desert coast can be desalinated and pumped 1000 miles inland to grow crops competitively on world markets.
This is coming.
It will turn the world’s deserts green and double the size of the habitable earth.