06-30-2022, 07:13 PM
(06-30-2022, 06:30 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Just a few days ago I saw a post concerning gas prices, and despite record highs it was predicted that it will be like all the other times, where folks gripe for a while, then get used to it and willing pay the inflated price.
Prices will adjust to accommodate higher fuel prices, and people will change their ways. Pleasure travel might completely drop off. People may do more shopping on the Web. Given a choice between ordering cat food on line and traveling seventy miles to buy it, I used the Big A twice in the last six months. Books, video, and compact disks? Sure, I can get those on line if they aren't in a local thrift shop. I never expected to buy cat food from the Big A!
People are more likely to rely upon local entertainments, which means that we may have more people watching high-school sports and band concerts. Live music might get a boost as more people of limited talent become the attraction for bars and restaurants.
People may decide that gas prices are so high that a household improvement such as painting or remodeling makes more sense than does taking the usual cross-country trip. As I have found, one can take the dial-a-ride service to travel within town, My car gets about 10 mpg in stop-and-go traffic and perhaps 30 in freeway traffic. You would be surprised at how small-town driving eats gasoline. If I really did live in town I would use a bicycle for much of my travel in town (eschewing a bicycle only in bad weather). I need to use roads to get to town on which the speed limit is 55 mph (snicker, snicker if you believe that people observe that speed).
(An aside: I reported a second-tier highway to the State Police for having plenty of opportunity for picking up speeders who travel at freeway speeds because the road is low, straight, and flat when I was walking a dog nearby. Within a couple weeks I saw Michigan state police pulling people over on that road, one that they rarely patrolled.
Electric cars will steadily supplant gas-buggies (they are much more efficient for stop-and-go driving because the motor can absorb engine power from braking, and those vehicles use much less power while idling. Having driven one, I have noticed that above 40 mpg, power consumption is a linear function of speed, which explains why my car uses little more power at 70 mph than at 30 mph. Hybrid vehicles may be the norm, but how common is your cross-country road-trip? Maybe with self-driven vehicles we could have roads on which travel is around 40 mph because one can sleep at the wheel while the car recharges much like an electrified train or trolley on such a road.
Economic realities will more shape spending habits than will technology. If you are making $3200 a month and spending $2400 a month on rent, then you really are poor. I have said that there is no techno-fix for food shortages, but neither is there one for gouging, either.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.