Monday, May 21, 2007

Same Song/Different Verse

Found the usual evidence of pandering by our so-called leaders, this time on the subject of gasoline prices. Robert Rapier has the needle out for the witless Senators who are either incapable of understanding the spoken word, need hearing aids, or were playing to the cameras. Smart money is on the latter. JoMo no doubt feels quite comfortable with this crowd.

The truth hurts and everyone present, other than the witnesses, was dancing around it. Yup, we'll fix those pesky Big Oil companies for engaging in good ol' fashioned capitalistic thinking! We'll fix 'em good!!!

3 comments:

The North Coast said...

I received an email today from moveon.org appealing for signatures on their petition for government action to lower gasoline prices.

I did not sign it.

It's sad but true. The only way to discipline our population on energy consumption is to let the Law of Supply and Demand mediate the prices.

The price hikes of recent years are the "market signals" that will either trigger the innovation all the cornucopian pundits say will surely save us, or the "demand destruction" we will need to conserve our dwindling supplies so we will have them for critical needs, like the mechanized agriculture that is necessary to keep 300 million people fed.

If authorities hold the prices down artificially, demand will stay level or increase. We are consuming more oil than we ever have, and recent price hikes haven't slaked our thirst.

I have a hard time sympathizing with people who "can't afford" gas when the streets are still clogged with SUVs and other inappropriate gas-guzzling mobile palaces. Was walking up Sheridan Rd last night, in rush hour traffic, and it seemed to me that every other vehicle was something oversized and gas-thirsty, and usually pretty new. I fail to see how someone who can afford a $60K vehicle + 10 trips a day in it to the power center & Little League & and for aimless cruising for hours on end by the family teens, can not "afford" anything.

Sadly, the poorer citizens will be blasted out of their beaters first, but there is a silver lining for them in that: the poor will be the first to make the adjustments that will be inevitable for us all in the coming years, and to get themselves entrenched in housing convenient to their work. So they will be ahead of the game.

The middle classes, sadly, will be the last, especially those in Edge Cities like Schaumburg and Oak Brook. Too bad for them. They will be the most surprised of anyone, and they will be the people least capable of adjusting and who take the largest unrecoverable losses as their houses and towns permanently lose all value in the years ahead. They will do what they will do, but we don't have to engineer the commodities markets by legislative fiat in order to accomodate this most wasteful and clueless class of people in their belief that they are entitled to carefree gasguzzling.

anonymous said...

After twenty years of non car ownership I now have the use of a car for six months, so I guess I'm still a non owner. Anyway, its so great, I think I may get one. I used to have alot of stress and suffering from waiting too long for busses. I remeber one day I was taking a child for her first bus trip and we waited an hour in the sun and she started crying and we missed the movie and went home...

Anyway, I stopped letting it stress me out and found ways to deal with long waits without getting upset and frankly, I just don't go anywhere often, even that 147 was really late and made me miss meeting my friend who invited me for the first time to hear the symphony, she was so upset with me, and couldn't leave my ticket with the will call for some reason because it was an employee ticket, fortunately a nice gentleman gave me a ticket...

Anyway, I'm not sure what happened, but I know I had a full tank of gas and one morning I got in and it was completely empty! I really think someone stole the gas, the tank doesn't lock and I remember people doing that when I was a kid during the last gas crisis...

So what I'm leading up to, is not to brush off what could really be a crisis, people would get really fucking angry and desperate and this is a big tough city, people aren't going to just ride the bus all la la la, they're going to start robbing and attacking if I had to guess, and I have an escape plan for any blackout or gas crisis, I'm going to get to work freshening that up right now.

The North Coast said...

I voluntarily chucked car ownership back twenty years ago, when I moved to this city. I was more affluent then and gas was not an issue. Yet, the stresses and costs of auto ownership were becoming intolerable. Yes, I got gasoline siphoned out of my car during the oil shortages in the 70s. Yes, I got towed a couple of times, which was when I sat down and penciled out the costs of owning a modest car, without figuring in fuel. The non-fuel costs were, I decided, intolerable.

This is not the best juncture of our history to acclimate yourself to car ownership. If you think the bus delays are bad, wait till you get stalled in a traffic jam of the type that occurs, say, on Dempster St through Skokie, or Lawrence Ave, and you sit there in it figuring how much of YOUR gas you're burning up idling in traffic.

We sure are in for a lot of disorder if gasoline prices head any higher, and you know they will. We are now post-peak. Global production was down 800,000 barrels in 2005,from the previous year. The sooner people volunarily adjust, the better off they will be.

I don't want to be anywhere NEAR the outer burbs when gas gets over $5 a gallon.

Adjust and enjoy the silver lining, which is a steep fall-off in motorboat traffic out on the lake. No more morons in jetskis and speedboats run too fast too close to shore. I'm sick of all the noisy cretins in their motorboats disturbing the peace.