Said the music major.
In SD, or rural NY, where I lived for the last two years, having these kinds of cars makes perfect sense. Lots of farming/mining/logging/construction business, dirt roads and tons of snow make it almost a necessity to have a truck. In major cities, though, I simply don’t get it.
By the way, you’re all making me jealous with your talk of new cars and other accoutrements. I’ll be happy when we can afford to move out of my wife’s parents’ house. And now that August is at our doorstep it’s becoming increasingly apparent that that day may not come for a while, and I’ll be faced with commuting up to Baltimore from northern Virginia to teach a class at 8:30 a.m. Gonna be a swell year!
What does my being a musician have to do with when politics should sully someone’s personality? I get too angry at the way this country is run and don’t really see the point of asking children to take sides in a “debate” that is really “sideless,” since both sides are practically identical. (Well, except for the other side. They suck.)
I agree with you 100%. It’s not really feasible for people like me where I live, unless of course you don’t mind not being able leave your house, or not working when you could be.
I see what you mean. The gas/oil situation may seem dire now, but it’s going to become a lot worse in the near future.
Here’s my take:
-
The entire mess could have been largely avoided if car manufacturers had gotten off their lazy sorrybarbs sooner and developed automobiles with alternative energy sources for fuel.
-
Why didn’t they? Because gas was so damn cheap in the 1990s. So there was no demand for alternative fuels among the masses.
-
Another reason why they didn’t? Big Oil bought important patents and/or prototypes and had them destroyed so they could continue to sell oil.
-
Every regular joe in India and China isn’t satisfied with a bicycle anymore. They want cars too. And there’s a lot of regular joes in India and China. Can we blame them? No, we started the whole thing, they’re merely jumping on the band wagon.
-
Why do we need automobiles in the first place? To get from A to B. If A was closer to B, we’d use less gas, pay less money. See what I’m getting at? If the fuel situation isn’t resolved soon, we’re going to see massive social and societal changes. People will not be able to afford living in suburbs any longer, people will need to move closer to where they work or go to school. Hopefully, we’ll see much more public transportation. People won’t be able to afford to go on vacation at the other end of the world anymore. Businessmen will take the train instead of flying.
I sympathize with people who really need trucks for their job, if gas prices rise, they’ll have to charge more for their services. Which will lead to people thinking twice about hiring them or doing more stuff on their own. Everybody who does not need a truck or an SUV and drives a big car just for the fun of it… they’re making everything worse by using up more gas than they’d have to, thereby increasing demand even further.
As I said, either this mess is going to be resolved soon, or we’ll all have to deal with massive changes to the way we live.
Well said. I also dislike seeing people who don’t really need trucks or SUVs driving them around just because they like them. Like I said, if I didn’t own one I wouldn’t be able to even get off the mountain seven months of the year (snow and mud season). If they developed a hybrid truck that actually made sense I would probably trade in.
I am already seeing big changes in the way people live around here. I happen to live in area where people are always looking for an alternative mean of fuel. Specifically around here it’s mainly solar energy and wood. It’s not rare to see a house in my small area with solar panels and another with an outside burner. The outside burners aren’t great environmentally, but the weird thing is how all the old trees cut down by the power companies disappeared, and if a tree falls down across the road, it gets cleared out pretty quickly now. A lot of people in my little town are experimenting with using vegetable oil for an alternative source of fuel. Interesting, but I am not sure how feasible it will be in the long run.
Transporters! I mean seriously, I’ve been saying this since I’m 9. I shoulda been a scientist.
I’d rather have a matter/antimatter shuttle.
Anyway, seriously, I think the electric car/solar car thing will be ready to hit the mass markets in a couple of years and that should solve the biggest problems.
[ol]
[li]After I made a casual comment on the phone about needing a USB hub while juggling the connections for my phone, iPod, keyboard, mouse, and external hard drive, my very technology-illiterate mother actually remembered what I said I wanted and went out and got me one (with assistance, of course). Not that it was all that expensive or hard to find, but it was very thotful and highly unexpected. Thanks Mom. :)[/li][li]At a yard sale, my very non-geek (what can I say? I’m sort of an anomaly in the family) sister got me The Making of Star Wars (for under a dollar, no less). Very cool, and actually in pretty good shape for being used. It’s not all gold with her, though, as she also got me Left Behind, thinking it was some sort of futuristic sci-fi novel. It’s the thot that counts. :p[/li][li]I turned a Whedon-loving but not internet-savvy friend on to Dr. Horrible. In so doing, I introduced her to the wonderful world of flash drives.[/li][li]Also in the field of Horribleness, I also “obtained” MP3s of the songs, just to tide me over until the soundtrack is available legitimately.[/li][/ol]
That is libertarianism in a nutshell. Government should perform its constitutionally-mandated duties and otherwise leave us alone. In practice, that could easily become very “Wild West”, so it’s not a perfect system either…
In the words of Douglas Adams: “Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
Which parts are which?
That’s easier said that done. Not only does the incumbent have an advantage in any election (barring huge scandals and general public anger, like a war or economic downturn), but they also have the power to increase the likelihood of their remaining in office. Consider the gerrymandering in Texas, for instance, or limiting when and where certain groups can vote, with the usual consequence being that “undesirable” voters just won’t be able to do so.
Are you suggesting that doctors should pass with lower scores? Don’t we have enough incompetence and malpractice already?
I don’t know very much about cars, but isn’t it bad for a new vehicle to have the “check engine” light on? 
How else would they defend the emperor and fight his enemies in the afterlife?
Amen.
I agree with you 100% Lucky. I get so mad when I see the brightly polished Hummers driving around L.A.
of course, when I see these, and I see them more often than one might imagine, I want to throw up
I dont know about Germany but only have gs prices really went up. Also its not like its peoples fault for not predicting the rise in prices…its all caused by the futures market sigh
Not quite sure what you’re getting at here, my friend, but we are experiencing a similar price spike. A gallon of gas costs almost 9USD over here. In fact, prices are going down a bit already because the demand is decreasing.
Also its not like its peoples fault for not predicting the rise in prices…its all caused by the futures market sigh
Oil prices have been going up for years and it’s common knowledge that there’s only a limited supply of oil around the world. The futures market is merely a reflection of what’s to come. Even if you shut down the futures market, that wouldn’t create a single drop of oil. We’re running out of that stuff and we all need to wake up and realize that.
Nah. They don’t bother with paperwork anymore. They’ll just come and get you in the middle of the night. 
Sadly, I think that the tipping point is very near, or more likely, already past. 
That’s really the issue with all the alternatives to oil. Consider our latest obssession: ethanol. The cost is artificially low due to subsidies, both at the agricultural and the refinery levels. Subsidized prices necessarily just move the costs elsewhere, such as the already overburdened federal defiicit. Beyond even the monetary costs, though, is the untenable process of refining corn into fuel, which uses more energy to make ethanol than the energy that you can get from that ethanol. Add to that the energy needed to harvest and transport the corn to the refinery, as well as necessity of trucking the ethanol to its destination rather than using pipelines (due to ethanol’s affinity for water). Things are somewhat better with sugarcane, of course, but the US doesn’t have a lot of that, so our refineries aren’t designed for it. All of this means we actually use more oil to produce that which was supposed to save us from using so much oil in the first place. It would be laughable if it hadn’t already cause broad economic and environmental damage. The higher demand on corn raises its price, so farmers grow more of it over less lucrative crops, thereby increasing the demand and price of those crops, leading to ripples in the cost and availability of the entire food supply, not to mention the environmental effects of such ramped-up farming (fertilizers, cutting down trees to obtain arable land, the fuel needs of equipment, etc.).
Oh, and those great hybrid vehicles use very specialized lithium batteries, which of course use a pretty massive amount of energy in their manufacture, not to mention the environmentally damaging processes needed for mining, transporting, and refining the component chemicals.
And, most unfortunately, the economics of scale don’t really apply in these cases. In fact, higher production actually is making the problems worse. Maybe oil’s not so bad after all – we just need to use a lot less of it.
A never-ending and ever-expanding “war against terror” certainly isn’t helping matters.
We’re headed for Mad Max territory, folks. Stock up on your leather and chains while you still can.
Ever heard of Oil shale? Between shale, Alaska, and Offshore drilling we could successfully get all the oil we need to last us till we fully develop alternate energy infrastructure. Also if we started those projects now we could greatly reduce prices in the futures market. If we were willing to refine w/ these methods, and these places the futures market would reduce the prices. The market is currently betting we wont refine shale or drill in Alaska/off shore. I have research and graphs to back me up so frak off Either way we need more $ and time to go to ethanol production/other things.
The Patriot act is a scary thing
Oh dont get me started…
Oil Shale seems to need a more difficult and costly refining process than crude oil and Alaska/Offshore drilling would also be very expensive. It’s too late anyway, such projects should have been started years ago.
Better not, I agree. But the thing about Mad Max isn’t that far-fetched. I predict wars over natural ressources some time in the future. That stuff used to be science fiction, but it is going to come true.
High price can be accepted b/c we need to make it through.
But prices are already high?
See, prices actually need to go way higher so that the industry suffers a lot of pressure to quickly develop alternatives. If we invest money to make oil cheaper again, nobody’s going to invest in new technologies, just like during the 90s.
What? You want middle income families to fail? We need two things to produce alternative energy 1 more money, and 2 more time. Yes it should have happened earlier, but we still need time. And this isnt 4 or five years, this is more like 30 or 40 years till we can make large jumps in tech. and distribution. A large increase in price wouldn’t decrease aggregate demand that much. We all need cars to go places, granted we would cut back majorly, there are hundreds of other industry that need oil for production.