Food for thought, Larry. I once wrote a policy paper on the Social Discount Rate which, in part, postulated by way of analogy that western governments and oil companies should spend their money on oil exploration and research, develop reserves, but only bring enough of it to market to pay for these activities... until we use up every drop of "their" oil.

Simple aritmetics, really, but the catch is that we have to have lots of bullets when we say we are not going to compensate "them" for all the $'s they invested in our economy when their oil runs out.