North American Mineral Resources

John Waring

1992

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 1st quarter 1992, No. 326

The Price System method of social operation has depleted the United States of several metals that once were in adequate supply; among them antimony and chromium, and is on the way to squandering more. Flashy chrome steel on autos is one example. The official ``import dependence'' statistics are misleading, and probably are put out to cover up commercial waste and to justify the import business.

In the Price System here in the U.S. the economic and commercial decision whether to get minerals from domestic U.S. mines, to import from a neighboring North American land or to import from abroad is entirely a matter of comparing price -- whether it is ``cheaper'' has been the way to go. Incidentally, this applies most glaringly, and crucially, as well to petroleum -- which is why the U.S. imports any oil at all from the Middle East. That has always been technically unnecessary. In other words, it is not whether this country has large deposits of a mineral, a diminishing reserve of that mineral, or, least important to business, whether a proposition will benefit North America strategically.

With minerals, the known reserves in the United States of copper, lead, molybdenum and phosphate rock are the largest in our North American Continental area.

As a result of either geological evolution or upwards of two centuries of commercial, profligate mining within the U.S. (mostly the latter), the other lands of this continental area are now known to have greater reserves of antimony, bauxite (for making aluminum), chromium, cobalt, fluorspar, ilmenite (for making titanium), iron ore, manganese, mercury, natural gas, nickel, crude petroleum, potash, silver, sulfur, tin, tungsten and zinc. With cadmium the known reserves of U.S. exactly match those of the rest of the Technate area (The ``Technate area'' is comprised of North America and northern South America).

All things considered, the whole North American Continental area comprising all present national entities above the Equator north to the Arctic, is almost entirely self sufficient in known mineral reserves. The confirming figures are shown in tables in the booklet Technocracy - Technological Social Design; in which, for the first time, the mineral resources of this continental area have ever been compiled and published.

Official statistical charts of ``U.S. Import Dependence'', always pointing to this country's dependence on the rest of the world and the attendant foreign trade and foreign political-military involvements, misinform, in that money is the actual consideration for both domestic production and exports and imports, not whether this country lacks a particular mineral or has large supplies potentially. Where there actually are no deposits of a mineral in the U.S., or very little, there are in many cases adequate amounts in other North American areas. In only two or three minerals is North America deficient if taken as a whole, a condition that can easily be resolved in a Technocracy, either by domestic substitution of materials or by barter with a foreign country. About the only food plant we have long had to import because it was the only one not grown here, tea is now being grown commercially in the U.S.

While the wasteful interference factor of money and price will have no meaning in a functional society, resource conservation will be vital. Being non-renewable, metals and fuels must be used as little as possible, and the metals that are used must be diligently recycled and re-used. None should be exported off this Continent for business reasons.

We must conserve, so that future generations of North Americans will not be deprived of the optimum high standard of living we now can assure for them -- by initiating the world's first functional society.