On Petrol and the Culture of Consumption
As homo economicus, consumers are expected to make rational choices in order to maximize their individual utility. Yet, economists had expected motorists in the U.S. to make concrete changes in their driving activity based on an irrational fear of gasoline priced at $4 a gallon. Exactly $4? If humans were truly as rational as economic models make them out to be, then taking such drastic measures in response to an arbitrary price (Not at $3.68 or $4.37?) seems out of place in that discipline.
Perhaps these economists are implying that consumers are rational, but North American drivers with a fixation on round numbers associated with a product so central to a national culture do not count as "consumers" in the classical sense. It's a tad reminiscent of early modern England's tumultuous shift from valuing the "fair price" of, say, a bushel of barley to the "market price". Apparently the former concept still means something a few centuries later, despite that the "fair price" of a gallon of gasoline ($0.50? $1? $2? Low enough for a night on the town when one was in adolescence?) emerged from market forces in the first place. Cultures informed by capitalism have a way of romanticizing its earlier conditions, even if capitalism is itself an impersonal force of rapacious cultural change. As a devotee of anime, even of some shallow and disposable titles, I'm as guilty of this phenomenon as the next person.
Still, at first I would like to think that, since motorists are driving less for the first time in 26 years, this would mark an important change for a national culture and its obsession with quick and individualized mobility. That is, even if it is a mobility to places much like the last place 50 miles back the way one came. No doubt people are staying home more often, though to watch cable TV, or play with the console and/or Internet. Additionally they are forced to do more things in their local communities, which probably involve spending at chain restaurants and big-box stores.
Gas prices were around $3/gallon in today's dollars in 1982 and had declined to the lows of the late 1990s accompanied with an upsurge in driving. Relying on historical analysis or even my memory as a small child, I can't recall any sort of move towards sustainability in the early 1980s, short of motorists buying small gas-efficient German and Japanese cars. Nor was there any real revitalization of community life before $1/gallon came back to tempt motorists back to spending more free time on the freeway (pun unintended). Still, unlike 1982, there is the chance that community life might migrate to and be emboldened by the Internet, though that's not without its well-publicized problem of online communities as socially superficial exercises. Not to be glib, but that likely depends on the community.
In short, higher gas prices then, while obviously improving air quality and automotive efficiency in the short term, did little to force the U.S. to question its most fundamental assumptions about consumption and mobility as an absolute good. I doubt current trends will hold steady for long, as the linked article from the Tribune above concurs, and certainly not long enough to force these questions to the forefront of a discussion of the nature of consumption, mobility, and communal life in the U.S. Ethanol, touted as a quick fix to this "crisis", has had a notable effect on developing countries' agricultural sector. The affordability of rice for entire villages is hardly an afterthought amidst the complaining and search for short-term solutions that contribute to this problem. Without that conversation, the price spike really is little more than an inconvenience to the middle class, a burden to the car-bound poor, the death knell for many a trucker's livelihood, and literal death for the developing world's less upwardly mobile.
Perhaps these economists are implying that consumers are rational, but North American drivers with a fixation on round numbers associated with a product so central to a national culture do not count as "consumers" in the classical sense. It's a tad reminiscent of early modern England's tumultuous shift from valuing the "fair price" of, say, a bushel of barley to the "market price". Apparently the former concept still means something a few centuries later, despite that the "fair price" of a gallon of gasoline ($0.50? $1? $2? Low enough for a night on the town when one was in adolescence?) emerged from market forces in the first place. Cultures informed by capitalism have a way of romanticizing its earlier conditions, even if capitalism is itself an impersonal force of rapacious cultural change. As a devotee of anime, even of some shallow and disposable titles, I'm as guilty of this phenomenon as the next person.
Still, at first I would like to think that, since motorists are driving less for the first time in 26 years, this would mark an important change for a national culture and its obsession with quick and individualized mobility. That is, even if it is a mobility to places much like the last place 50 miles back the way one came. No doubt people are staying home more often, though to watch cable TV, or play with the console and/or Internet. Additionally they are forced to do more things in their local communities, which probably involve spending at chain restaurants and big-box stores.
Gas prices were around $3/gallon in today's dollars in 1982 and had declined to the lows of the late 1990s accompanied with an upsurge in driving. Relying on historical analysis or even my memory as a small child, I can't recall any sort of move towards sustainability in the early 1980s, short of motorists buying small gas-efficient German and Japanese cars. Nor was there any real revitalization of community life before $1/gallon came back to tempt motorists back to spending more free time on the freeway (pun unintended). Still, unlike 1982, there is the chance that community life might migrate to and be emboldened by the Internet, though that's not without its well-publicized problem of online communities as socially superficial exercises. Not to be glib, but that likely depends on the community.
In short, higher gas prices then, while obviously improving air quality and automotive efficiency in the short term, did little to force the U.S. to question its most fundamental assumptions about consumption and mobility as an absolute good. I doubt current trends will hold steady for long, as the linked article from the Tribune above concurs, and certainly not long enough to force these questions to the forefront of a discussion of the nature of consumption, mobility, and communal life in the U.S. Ethanol, touted as a quick fix to this "crisis", has had a notable effect on developing countries' agricultural sector. The affordability of rice for entire villages is hardly an afterthought amidst the complaining and search for short-term solutions that contribute to this problem. Without that conversation, the price spike really is little more than an inconvenience to the middle class, a burden to the car-bound poor, the death knell for many a trucker's livelihood, and literal death for the developing world's less upwardly mobile.
Labels: capitalism, consumption, developing world
posted by Brent Allison | 5:39 PM
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