muddyboots wrote:
Yeah but we have to drive more in America. We're all so fat we can't carry the weight on our legs...
Well, I'm not going to throw stones - we live in the countryside and have to run two cars, though Mrs JDK's city commute is drive 8km (4 miles) to the station and V-Line train into Melbourne.
I've seen a lot of Americans walk a lot of miles at Oshkosh, so it can be done...
Every fuel price spikes gets more people to move to smarter, more fuel efficient cars (and the car companies) sooner rather than later. The general trend is that way, so if you want to beat the trend, make sure your next truck's a car with a smaller, more efficient engine. That'll be what happens, like it or not.
That said what's going to be hard for North America to wean off the car culture monopoly (currently impossible, I'd say) is that you can't
walk anywhere - it's kind of funny watching Europeans and Aussies trying to walk from one shop to another in boxstorehell in N America, rather than using a three litre plus engine to drive a 1/8 of a mile.
When we're in a city in Europe or Australasia, we walk or take public transport for most of the journey; often just not possible in a lot on American cities, let alone suburbia.
Going to be interesting in 20 years...
Cubs wrote:
Point taken about the cost per gallon. But, I think he's trying to say that it doesn't make sense for the overnight increase. It reminds me of the Far Side cartoon, with the two pilots of the airliner:
"Well folks, that looks like the end of the turbulence, oh... wait... I think there is some more...."
Then you see the two of them grinning and jiggling the yoke back and forth.
I can see the oil execs." Looks like a .05 cent a gallon increase tonight, oh... wait... no, it's a .35 cent a gallon increase. Yeah, yeah,.35 cents."
I'll still take your high rather than our low!
The key is actually habituation - people complain about the unusual, not the fact that it's set at what the market will (currently) bear.
How would you feel if gas went up
every weekend?
When we got to Australia we discovered the petrol stations push the price up each weekend, so you get to learn to be buying petrol on Tuesday, rather than Saturday... Aussies regard this as 'normal', but it's a weekly example of what this thread started at. Anything becomes normal if it's the main thing you're used to (the interesting element is most Australians are more internationally aware and travelled than most Americans, yet the petrol price trick isn't noticed...)
We all bitch about gas/petol prices; but they're set at what the market will stand and will always be creeping up from hereon in - sometimes they'll do more than creep and there are more likely than not to be price spikes in our future than not, now. It's a finite resource we've been using at a higher rate than it's been created.
What's the bottom line? Well, ignore the noise. Petroleum companies are about shareholder return and profit - that's the deal; calling it 'greed' is just another word for what they're built to do. Does it matter? Not really. The critical lesson I've seen on my travels is
everyone bitches about the price of car fuel, but
no-one's economy's collapsed because of pump prices. How can each of us stop being gouged? Get a smaller vehicle with a smaller, smarter engine; there's more options now than there's ever been and they'll increase; and figure ways not to be using the stuff like water*.
Just a few thoughts,
*That's how 'most people' use water, because you wouldn't want to be so tight with water as we have to be here...
Login
Register
FAQ
Search
