CIA Analysis of Energy and Transportation: A Future Policy?

[jeaton]

QUOTE: Originally posted by futuremodal

It is also worth noting that the types of work wherein in-home communications could be substituted for travelling to an office are not the types of "new economy" domination that we all thought it would be in the 90's. Look right now what the prime needs are for this global economy - energy production, manufacturing, product production. You might be able to monitor a server network from home, but you're not going to explore for oil from anywhere else except out in the field. You can only mine coal at the coal mine. You're not going to roll steel or melt aluminum from the comfort of your own home.

"Old economy" jobs are jobs wherein the boots need to be on the ground on location. And it is clear now that the old economy is much more pivitol to global economic growth than the over-hyped new economy.

Well, duh. Obviously there will always be boots on the ground for the exploitation of natural resources, manufacturing, warehousing and transportation. (Of course some suggest that trains could be operated remotely). Over time, technology has dramaticly reduced the ratio of people to output, but I doubt that the need to get people to the job site will ever go away.

My point is that the practice of getting people together in an office to do office work continues as much because of culture as it does because of some limits with communication technology. Much of the failure of "new economy" (dot-coms?) was due to the fact that people weren't ready to buy the better mouse trap. I'll take myself as an example. If Amazon is an example of a successful new ecomomy company, I would still rather browse the stacks at a good book store to make my selections. On the other hand, if there is a title I know I want, I don't have to drive spending 15 cents a mile for gasoline.

[Anonymous]

It is also worth noting that the types of work wherein in-home communications could be substituted for travelling to an office are not the types of "new economy" domination that we all thought it would be in the 90's. Look right now what the prime needs are for this global economy - energy production, manufacturing, product production. You might be able to monitor a server network from home, but you're not going to explore for oil from anywhere else except out in the field. You can only mine coal at the coal mine. You're not going to roll steel or melt aluminum from the comfort of your own home.

"Old economy" jobs are jobs wherein the boots need to be on the ground on location. And it is clear now that the old economy is much more pivitol to global economic growth than the over-hyped new economy.

[Tulyar15]

QUOTE: Originally posted by wallyworld

With faxes e-mails and a telephone-there was really no point of going fifteen miles to do the same thing in an office. It does take discipline to do this and avoid the obvious temptations but I am surprised that alot of firms dont do this. It saved me a significant amount of money and the company had no need of leasing a huge office space for all of us.

The trouble is a lot of employers dont trust their workforce. I used to work for one such company and they would not even allow their staff flexi time. As a result, every weekend evening the streets in the town they were based would get completely gridlocked at 5:30pm as 900 employess all tried to go home.

[daveklepper]

Email allows me to communicate without spending money for 16000 mile (round trip) air tickets!

And don't forget, that report still leaves out the subsidization of the private motor car from LAND USE! Or I am I preaching to the converted?

[wallyworld]

The most impressive part of the report that really had nothing to do with the contents When they did not have any certainty or real answer about trends-they said so - that kind of blunt honesty is pretty much a rarity these days.I was home officed for ten years and only went out in the car when I had to attend a monthly meeting or check a job site.
With faxes e-mails and a telephone-there was really no point of going fifteen miles to do the same thing in an office. It does take discipline to do this and avoid the obvious temptations but I am surprised that alot of firms dont do this. It saved me a significant amount of money and the company had no need of leasing a huge office space for all of us.

[jeaton]

Just hit a few pages, but the report certainly has the goal of trying avoid biases. Unfortunately, the report is over ten years old, and some forecasts were off the mark. For example, Summary page 8 outlines the reasoning for a projection of oil at $29 per barrel in 2010. That's less than half the current price.

tomtrain brings up a great point. We still tend to be bound by the needs and traditions of the industrial age when people had to go to the location of the work. If communications technology could be effectively deployed to make virtual "in person" as good as real "in person" interaction, think of how much work could go to the location of the people. No gasoline is used when the commute is just to another room in the house.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for posting this, wallyworld.

Just this evening, one of my in-laws was telling me about a friend from UW Madison who has been perfecting the adroit use of video/audio/computer for teleconferencing.

They've got it to the point where participants come away from meetings having forgotten they were teleconferencing. They felt they had had extremely effective communication with the others involved.

As this type of use really develops, I think it could dramatically cut costs, and as a result have a large impact on many aspects of business travel.

[wallyworld]

Regardless of where it came from, its what it lays out in pretty understandable terms, is the situation of how and why we are in the current oil dilemma and that was the point of posting it so anyone else who wants a better understanding of it could read it. I think the most surprising lesson I came away with after reading it was the huge portion of the consumption of oil represented by trucks in comparison to railroads-another was the unallocated costs of driving my car which is heavily subsidized as well. The fact that traffic congestion is driving up costs was interesting as well. The government intervention of allocating these costs directly to drivers to decrease consumption was pretty sobering. It may have not been authored by spooks but I have a greater appreciation of the complexity of the problem-politics aside.

[Anonymous]

CIA?!

This was published by the Congressional Office
ot Technology Assessment. I seriously doubt
that this was ever classified. In fact, the GPO
Number confirms that this report was available
to the public for purchase.

Dave

QUOTE: Originally posted by wallyworld


The CIA did a very interesting study of this problem and what I learned from it was that if there was any form of government intervention via policy, it would be to introduce fully allocated costs to the the "light duty vehicle" ( car), in other words place the actual cost of subsidy to the private driver to drive down usage.. This includes non monetary societal costs. Heavy reading but very interesting in terms of the many debates on this in the past and ongoing in this forum. The link below is to the Black Vault website begun by a young man who wrests classified documents thru The Freedom of Information Act. Its a very interesting site worth checking out.

http://www.blackvault.com/documents/ota/Ota_1/DATA/1994/9432.PDF

[wallyworld]

The CIA did a very interesting study of this problem and what I learned from it was that if there was any form of government intervention via policy, it would be to introduce fully allocated costs to the the "light duty vehicle" ( car), in other words place the actual cost of subsidy to the private driver to drive down usage.. This includes non monetary societal costs. Heavy reading but very interesting in terms of the many debates on this in the past and ongoing in this forum. The link below is to the Black Vault website begun by a young man who wrests classified documents thru The Freedom of Information Act. Its a very interesting site worth checking out.

http://www.blackvault.com/documents/ota/Ota_1/DATA/1994/9432.PDF