this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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I'd agree but oil is absolutely next level to all of that. Entire countries are basically held hostage by energy supply which was never the case before. You could cut off trade and that's the worst thing you could do but now you can fundamentally disable the entire country as oil is so fundamental to everything.
Oil was such a massive security mistake that we're still collectively recovering from it.
Oil is a force multiplier, definitely. But any nation that declined to pursue an oil-based economy during the oil boom years would’ve been swept aside or doomed to irrelevance. It’s like someone throwing a loaded gun into the middle of a prison riot. You either grab for the gun and start shooting or you take cover and try not to get shot.
Totally and it's a great illustration how diversification is crucial for any organized system. If we started to diversify earlier we not only would have more economic power now but avoided thounsands of conflicts as well.
Though a bit of optimisim here - seems like we learned this lesson and most countries are taking energy hedging very seriously these days. I don't think we'll ever have a new resource like oil again.