Eh, I would argue that it&#x27;s different from buggy whips, because there is a (somewhat) limited supply of oil.<p>The idea being that if it turns out you are off by a few years (or a few hundred years) in the buggy whip vs. car situation, and buggy whips are a thing for a while longer, well, it&#x27;s not that hard to ramp up buggy whip production.   I mean, you&#x27;ve got some training effort, sure, but there are more buggy whips to be made.<p>The idea is that oil is different, simply because there&#x27;s only so much of it.   If it turns out you planned wrong and have to come up with a few more year&#x27;s worth of oil, and you are out?  yeah, you have a serious problem.<p>As an aside, the hole in my argument is what was shown by oil shale.  There is a <i>lot</i> more oil available at $100 a barrel than there is available at $20 a barrel.   but the point is that at some point, we&#x27;ll actually run out of the stuff, and even before then, we won&#x27;t be able to make more oil the same way we had made more oil in the past; to get more oil, periodically, you need to come up with new ways of getting oil, usually at great expense.