The Importance Of Rare Metals

One of the mining media outlets that covered INDABA called me an “apocalyptic soothsayer” after hearing me talk about the global imbalance between rare metal production rates (supply) and growing Asian demand. I liken those journalists to the advisors to Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West. As Gibbon said in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” (paraphrased by me) …at the end 200,000 barbarians which the legions of Caesar’s (Julius) would have swept aside brought to ruin and the end the “Roman” army of 200,000 mercenaries who were paid by the exhausted and effete Romans of the last days.

So, let’s be clear, I am saying that the clueless politicians of our age, elected by special interests, none of which care about the fate and standard of living of the mass of humanity, are bringing us to a critical point in history. If we don’t start setting goals for our economies (of the various nations) in terms of getting the necessary material goods for their health and safety and then the comfort of the most people possible then any hope of a peaceful stable world ends.

The airlines say that when the oxygen masks drop serve yourself first so you can then help others.

The USA must now re-industrialize to save ourselves and this means that we must produce domestically whatever we can to be self-sufficient. THIS IS THE ONLY PATH TO THE CREATION OF WEALTH. After we re-industrialize we can resume the path to helping keep ourselves and the world safe from self-immolation in resource wars.

Globalization to maximize profit was a mistake, because its negative economic consequences were overlooked.

We must now increase the production rate of those resources we know we have, or we have doomed ourselves to a progressively lower standard of living. We must stop frivolously wasting our increasingly expensive precious resources of rare metals on toys that dissipate them and prioritize closed loop recycling of rare metals as we begin to increase our production rate infrastructure, because without this increase there will be no additional supply. This may well be the most expensive re-industrialization in history. It is criminal stupidity for our politicians to assume, as they surely do, that the world of natural resources is of infinite dimension awaiting at the beck and call of our mining technology.

I do not believe that there is any long-term effect from so-called “anthropogenic ” global warming. I do however believe that global economic stupidity exists and can have dire consequences.

I’m going to soon be seventy and thanks to modern medicine, clean and cheap healthy food, and genetics I could live another generation or more. Please don’t make me watch America’s standard of living decline in that period. Americans, please wake up to the consequences of knee-jerk “environmentalism” before you reduce our standard of living to the point of no return. Money like rare metals is a precious resource; it must not be wasted any more.