And The New Pipelines Will Carry Ponies From Iran To Tennessee

Shorter Verbatim Glenn Reynolds: “Of course, if we seized the Saudi and Iranian oil fields and ran the pumps full speed, oil prices would plummet, dictators would be broke, and poor nations would benefit from cheap energy. But we’d be called imperialist oppressors, then.” (via Lambert.)

There’s the most obvious level of idiocy here, which Tim notes–the idea that we can just use troops we don’t have to invade a country and seize their oilfields, and we could get them running at full capacity lickety-split because there certainly wouldn’t be any sabotage or terrorist attacks on pumps and pipeline during a war–would have to become considerably more rational to be described as “nutty.” In addition to that, there’s the idea that dictators would be “broke” (with the implication that they wouldn’t be able to stay in power) if oil prices dropped. Hmm, lessee, to find really low oil prices we’d have to go all the way back to…1998, when the average inflation-adjusted price was less than $15 a barrel. What a democratic paradise the oil-producing countries must have been! And finally, you have to enjoy his sneering at the fact that people would call invading countries to seize their material assets “imperialist.” I can’t imagine why! Next thing you know they’ll be calling governments that don’t respect legal limits on state power and don’t have fully competitive elections “authoritarian.” (As Jim Henley notes, this is also a fascinating innovation in “libertarian” theory; I can only assume that Reynolds supports the Bolivian nationalization as long as it will increase capacity and reduce marginal prices…)

And yet, there are people who will take anything Reynolds writes about foreign policy seriously.

…and Matt answers the other question I was wondering about; Iranian and Saudi oilfields aren’t being pumped at intentionally reduced capacity the way they were in the 70s…