What I meant was, people have been largely sitting back and enjoying the ride, not commenting much. Politics in the conversation should change that. I enjoy the debate.
As for energy.
Cheap energy, cheap labor, superior materials, superior transportation, any technological upset will invalidate someone's investment, be it in material or training, and they will rally to preserve it, at any (public) expense.
I like to fantasize about teleporters, or rather portals, becoming readily available, and two things I figure would happen in such an event would be,
A. airlines, buslines, auto-manufacturers, hotels, and most restaurants would quickly feel the pinch of fewer patrons and customers, as people just teleported past them to their destination, and teleported home to eat and sleep.
B. Cities, especially small towns, would quickly lose sales-tax dollars, as their patrons would just teleport to commercial hubs to do their shopping, rather than even buying a roll of toilet paper locally. Meanwhile, the large cities would largely depopulate as people moved to "suburbs" hundreds of miles away, so those small towns would have more occupants, not fewer.
Naturally, there'd be a 3 day quarantine on even the shortest teleport, "to reduce the risk of spreading infectious disease and parasites".
