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One of my coworkers drives about an hour to get to work each day and another hour to get home. He got a house far from the city center because houses are less expensive out there and he could afford to buy a nice big house. Now he's crying because gas expenses are eating up so much of his money and he has to fill up his tank every few days, even with carpooling. The poor guy says he's hardly making any money from the job because the commuting cost is so high.

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Hey capitalism at work baby! Supply and demand, etc..

If you don't like it I hear fuel is pretty cheap in Communist China. Of course that's because if it isn't cheap then everyone at the state owned oil company is shot.

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The chines will rule the world one day and the those of people still left alive after the world wide genocide will be little more than food stock and slaves.

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What does he drive? An SUV? Or something with a reasonable level of fuel economy? If the public reacts properly this might actually turn out to be a good thing. Maybe Americans will finally think about how much energy they are using and start to buy cars, appliances, etc. that are efficient.

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Yes, the high prices are having an environmental effect and that is one of the only good things about this.

Ok here's the problem now. Fewer people are buying gas now, so many states are loosing tax revenue so in response they are going to hike their gas tax to compensate for lost revenue. [shaking head] It figures.

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Here is a link to the Hawaii state gas cap law I mentioned.
Gas Cap Law

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Today I filled up the car and the price was $1.188 per liter! The gas prices keep going up higher and higher! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

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Get used to it! The oil companies now know that we will pay this kind of money for gas. They will keep the prices up there until there is no more oil on this planet to sell us. I find it funny how they still say that alcohol is still to expensive as a gas substitute. How high do gas prices have to go before we can get a cheap and readily available alternate source?
As long as we keep using oil products the demand will always exceed the supply. We need more refineries! We have more then enough oil, but if you can't refine it, it will never get to market. The oil companies have used this to keep their price up there and now with the loss of the Gulf States refining we have a major shortage because companies wanted to keep supply to the point of maximizing their profits. It's backfired and people are pissed. NOW people will demand that the oil companies account for themselves and we will all be waiting for the next quarterly statements, where their profits will be way up there despite new and replaced equipment they will have to replace from the hurricane.

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1. Oil Company. Company. It's their job to make money, it's like complaining about a cow eating grass.
2. I'll put money that their profits will be up. And that most of that will NOT be from petrol, it's the other uses of oil that make money, petrol is a minor part of their trade.

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1. How much profit IS ENOUGH? Where should we be looking at profit versus being taken to the cleaners. All companies are in business to make money, I understand that part. Most companies have competition within their product line. Wouldn't it be nice to have an alternate fuel source for them to compete with? Most companies now operate as borderline monopolies. They buy out their closest competitors and leave the weakest of their competition to survive.

2. All oil products must still be refined into their final state. Oil, gas, tar, plastics, what ever the final product is, it must be refined! We should be experiencing a shortage of plastic shortly! I guess all those "blacktop" road projects will be at risk too!

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Buy a diesel car or a hybrid. Get a hydrogen cell conversion done on your own car. There's nothing stoping you doing those things. There's alternatives. But the key thing is: They aren't as good or are more expensive.

Refining is different for the various products, the huge amount of petrol that some countries **cough The US cough** use means that many refineries are dedicated just to petrol, and indeed use various fractions of the oil that could very easily be made into other products with far less work. Oh and did you miss my post a while back? The price of DVD-Rs and other high grade plastic items is going up, more than it should but it is.

When a plastic goes from very cheap to just cheap it doesn't make much difference to the final price, unless the finished product is all plastic and is cheap itself. For almost everything else the plastic is such a tiny amount of the total cost that the price could go up an order of magnitude and many firms wouldn't notice.

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Well if the "ALTERNATIVE$" aren't really alternatives, then there is no real competition. Why would you chose to use something that would cost you more to use? We need more competition for fuel sources and alternative fuel sources. Are we going to wait until the last drop of oil is sucked from this planet to start looking for them!
As far as plastics go, the volume used versus the cost increase is almost insignificant. It's probably only pennies a part, BUT the almighty quest for PROFIT will justify a larger then needed price increase.
We, as an overall society, have become totally dependant on oil byproducts. For the future of the planet and the children of the world we need to find other sources of energy!!! AND it's just not happening! Maybe this is the boot in the ARSE that we need,

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So your complaining that the cheapest option is, in fact, still the cheapest option?

You been a card carrying Commie long, or has it just taken slightly more expensive petrol to convice you that capitalism is evil?

That clearly is where the USSR went wrong. "Come to Mother Russia, we have cheap petrol!" They'd have won the cold war no problem.

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Just look at China to see where Russa went wrong. China is still communist and doing quite well. What did they do that Russa did not? Not that I would ever want to live in either country.

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Do you understand what "Competition" is? It's what used to drive this country. The competition for your business was the reason for 'customer support' and advertising. If your given one choice, which choice would you make. The US has long been a world leader in marketing 'Democracy', yet they are now involved protecting 'Monopolism' (my word for it). They encourage big companies to buy out all their competition and leave us with the freedom to make "ONE" choice. They pass laws to protect companies (cable, phone) within State and Cities to eliminate any competition.
Until there is an alternative to oil/gas we have no choice because we HAVE to pay what the Oil Companies want. Don't kid yourself that there is any competition between the different Gas companies. They all support each other.

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No war profitering is what drove the US. Selling arms to any country that had money, whatever their ideology.

Why on earth would the oil firms support each other in the the petrol biz? It is not worth that much effort as the potential rewards are, in the scheme of things, tiny and the punishment if caught immense. Remember Standard Oil?

The higher petrol goes in price, the more attractive other systems become. Hell perhaps some Americans may start walking places.... Only joking.

One simple question: Oil is now more expensive, hence petrol is more expensive. So why the hell shouldn't you pay more for it? No one is making massive extra profits off petrol, it's still:

Cost of oil + refining costs + Misc cost (transport, etc) + thin profit margin = Pump price.

Either the price of petrol goes up or the oil firms start making a loss on every gallon of petrol. It costs more to make, so of course it costs more to buy at the pump. You have nothing at all to complain about, it's like complaining that Strawberries are expensive in November. When things are rare they cost more.

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Hey! I have a diesel car and it rocks! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

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Try this one.

The cost of a barrel of oil goes up, so the cost of gas goes up.

Except that barrel of oil will not be arriving at gas stations as gas for WEEKS. The gas currently being sold is the gas made from the much lower priced oil!

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That's a good point Phoenix, but that is not the point I'm trying to make. My point is not that gas should be cheaper or that strawberries should be more expensive in winter. My point is that competition drives prices down and keeps companies looking for better ways (cheaper) of producing their product. WE HAVE NO CHOICE right now! If you don't use gas or diesel, what do you use? The auto industry hasn't exactly embraced hybrid cars until just recently. I'm not even going to argue the point that Americans should walk more, I agree with that. I fill my car up once a month and I walk whenever possible so like I said in an earlier post, We need to use cars when we need them, instead of wasting resources.

El_Phil, I am not a "card carrying Commie". I think if I were one, we wouldn't be here on this board expressing our thoughts and the Internet would have never exisited.

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Well Phoenix yes that is true, but it's also true that when the price of oil goes down so does the price of petrol. You cannot have it both ways.

Xrati: 1. Why should the US car trade make efficient cars or develop hybrids? Most US consumers just wanted a big engine and plenty of crushed velour interiors. That or a F150 pickup truck. Fuel efficient cars and hybrids didn't sell.The US was offered the choice and didn't choose it, now your living with the consequences.
2. So you invented the internet? Bugger me rigid! There was me thinking it was a combination of work by DARPA and Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Clearly I was wrong and it was in fact all your work. Truly you learn something every day.

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No Phil, I think you should read the words again. If we were under communism, the Internet would not exist at all. Such freedoms would not be allowed. But thanks for thinking that someone like myself could even begin to create the Internet! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I am flattered!

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I think your confusing "communism" and "dictatorship" there. A surprisingly common mistake.

Even so if the US was under a dictatorship that surpressed all freedoms there'd still be a internet in the rest of the world, a bit less stuff on it but on the plus side less idiots. Swings and roundabouts.

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Correct. However that's not what I was *****ing about.

When the price of oil goes -up-, gas prices track it very, very closely..even though, again, the oil won't be delivered as gas for weeks.

When the price of oil goes -down- prices DON'T track if closely at all. For exactly the same reason I stated above: the oil hasn't been delivered as gas yet. Funny how it only works in one direction, isn't it?

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Not really, or at least I don't see anyone else laughing.

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I guess the only option is to get a horse! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

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Screw riding a Horse, the Democrats would eat you alive on environmental impact fees, and find a way to tax you right off the saddle.

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When you look at the price of a hybrid vehicle compared to the price on an equivalent conventional vehicle, it still may not make good economical sense to buy the hybrid. You save on gas, but for the average driver, it will take many years for those savings to add up to make the hybrid worthwhile. By the time the extra cost of the hybrid pays for itself, the battery may wear out. Like all batteries, there's a limited number of recharge / discharge cycles that it is good for before it degrades and need to be replaced. It will probably be expensive to replace the battery if it fails after the warranty expires. But if gas prices keep going up like they have been recently, hybrids will become increasingly attractive.

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You know I could have predicted AT would say that. Not to say your occasionaly predictable, but Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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Ok, so its a bad joke. My bad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif I was watching the West Wing and they had an episode about something, and one of the characters made the comment about adding a $3.00 per gallon tax on gas to force people into finding alterative mobility sources and it just rang out to me... more TAX revenue, of course!

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Hey guys, lets try to have fewer personal attacks and insults and more rational debate... makes for a much nicer place.

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I always knew that there was something about watching those horse drawn Amish carts that made me wonder if they had a better idea of what life should be! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Now that prices are going down again, it only took a 5% reduction in usage to get them sliding. Just think of what would happen if everyone just stopped for a week or two and didn't fill up. I wonder how far the price would slide?

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Yeah, they have the right idea. Horse are not only 'organicly' fueled and so easy to maintain, they make their own replacements!
And they have more uses than just transportation:


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...e/farm_scene_1

Horse-and-Plow Farming Making a Comeback

Ron VanGrunsven farms about 50 acres with horses near Council, Idaho, and has used horses for years there and in Oregon's Willamette Valley.

"They're more economical," he said. "They raise their own replacements, you can train them yourself and raise their feed."

A mare can produce a foal every year or so, and Miller says that, if properly trained, one can bring about $2,000 after two years.

A plow horse usually lasts 16 or 18 years, Miller said. He said he looks after his stable of nine carefully and veterinarian bills rarely total $200 a year.

VanGrunsven said a two-horse team and a farmer can plow about an acre and a half a day if the ground is right and that an acre usually produces more than enough hay to feed a horse for a year.

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Seems like the page is gone, went there and got this message.
<font color="blue"> The story or page you were trying to access may have expired. </font>

I always figured that society would end up going backwards to be able to move forward once again.

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Doesn't scale up though does it? You only get cheap food from Agri-biz scale farming. And as we've established Americans get very upset and whine if prices for anything go up even a little bit. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

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It doesn't even scale -down-. Using a horse to get to work will cost you significantly more than a car.

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Ok, here's the original source:

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2.../outwest01.txt

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Gack! Have you bought a car in the last 20 years? Paid insurance? Paid for maintenance (like replacing tires, shock-absorbers, etc.)? Bought gas in the last year?

Cars are very expensive to own. The only thing that can be said in favor of them over horses is that they don't use 'fuel' when they're not actually in use -- horses must be fed every day of course, and their routine 'waste' doesn't clutter the road -- horses do add a 'road maintenance' problem http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif (although the 'corpses' of cars are much harder to dispose of than horses).

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Yes, I've done all that. Let me see if I can find that age that actually did the math..

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Thanks Baron, that was an interesting article. I believe that all corporations, including agro-business are going to price themselves out of the market. As they become larger they keep adding on more office jobs and lose the extra profit they may have gained from growth. They keep blaming THE WORKERS while most big companies are so top heavy they can no longer profit until they reduce the non-product related jobs. This article confirms it on these farms that use horses. They are tripling their profits (far better then corporate farms) by getting away from mechanization of their farm equipment which is reducing their maint. bills and no overhead.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif Just a note on the last post. Can you say "A breath of fresh air?" BUT even that pollution is better then what we are currently doing!

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Horses are smart. I've only ridden a horse once so far but it was fun. I just sat on it and didn't have to do anything. If the road turned to the left, the horse automatically turned and I was so impressed that I didn't have to steer, and the horse didn't crash into the wall! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif Up until then, I've never driven something that has its own AI autopilot!

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Cars get you from point A to point B. Here everything is so spread out that walking or biking it just isn't practicle unless you live within 10 miles of your destination. Where I live it rains 85% of the year so that factors into things as well.

Just invent a cheap, renewable, environmentally friendly, low cost fuel source that works in all current gas or desiel powered vehicels and call it Good Gas. This way we can tell the Arabs to go with Ala and not have to interfer in their interal business and the way they live.

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**bangs head into wall**

So going back to Agricultural revloution farming is the way forward is it?

So 90 hours work for 100 boxes of corn is better than 2.5 hours work for the same amount? That's the difference mechanisation makes. Yields of corn are tricky, I assume these farmers do you fertiliser, pesticides etc? If they do they shold get good yeilds, if if they don't it will be far lower.

Anyway with a small farm you can spend hours on one acre, when your farming thousands of Hectares of land in fields bigger than most of these horse farms it just isn't practical.

Oh and that's triple per acre NOT triples profits, if its true. Which I doubt as its from a self confessed bias source who has no reason to be positive about agri-biz.

The corporation still has so many advantages over small scale that they aren't going out of buisness. All those extra office jobs aren't for fun, they're what the law requires. Health and Safety, pensions, tax deductions, etc. No-one wants them, but you have to have them to stay in buisness.

I would put money that is the US version of the health and safety boys turned up on any of those farms they would tear them apart. They are going to be breaking dozens of rules and regulations. I'm not saying they're dangerous, but I bet they don't have risk assessments, impact plans and all the paperwork a company has to have by law.

All that paperwork is a waste of space, but that doesn't make it any less a legal requirement. One man and his horse can hide under the radar and not bother with it, a large corporation can't.

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ZERO gas = ZERO mechanization = Zero Food http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
Most large companies now hire through contracted 'Head-Hunters'.
Pensions are being forfeited in place of bankruptcy.
OSHA plans are administered by department supervisors along with the workers. They are overseen by outside consultants.

Horses are the future unless you want to go to a camel?

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Bloody hell, petrol gets a bit more expensive and suddenly the world has ended. There is still decades of oil, at least, left. What's next? We're all going to have to live 'Fallout' style?

Horses are not the future, at all. I doubt anyone bar those hores farmers family actually get fed from the food they make. Even then it requires someone, somewhere, to do a real job to buy that food from the farmer.

It's a nice story, but even mechanised farming is very hard work, during harvest and planting time at least. For a horse farmer it'll be back breaking, or you're farming bugger all land.

You hire head-hunters so you don't hire an internal HR goon to do it. If the firm goes down the pan, there is no pension. OSHA is an evil invention, its just about paperwork nothing else.

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El_Phil says: "OSHA is an evil invention, its just about paperwork nothing else." Good point. I agree!

El_Phil says: "There is still decades of oil, at least, left." So you have a gauge that lets you know how much we have left? Oil consumption is growing exponentially, we will continue to use more oil then we can produce. With all the uses for oil products we need to find another source for transportation. Are we going to end up waiting for the last drop of oil to be pumped from this planet before we look for an alternate source? It's a win, win situation to get away from oil. While we may never see the end of oil use in our life there is only so much left in the entire world!

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I'm not saying keep going till it runs out, but equally don't luck at misleading solutions. Farming with horses is nice for local TV items, but it's not a serious idea.

Oh there are decades of oil, for a given value of oil. If you include coal to oil plants and oil shale/sands (which I know are pricey, although perhaps not now compared to $70/barrel) then that exponentialy increases oil stocks.

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Steam power - nuff said.

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But what's powering the steam engine? Coal! But we've only got lots of coal, so it'll run out and we'll all die slowly and painfully unless we all become vegans and have solar powered Sinclar C5s!

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LOL http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif I've just realized that this thread is starting to resemble that "Monty Python" episode about a Department of Argument!!! (something along those lines)

I think 'nuff said" covers it. Well just have to solve all the worlds problems some other time. Till then "Hi Ho Silver!"

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"But what powers the steam engine?"

Presto Logs!