Sunday night thoughts.

So I was watching ABC TV's Insiders this morning and the Australian Financial Review reporter Brian Toohey validated one of my econopolitical views, with regards to petrol pricing. Profligate use of petroleum products isn't sustainable nor is it healthy and one way to put a check on the growth of its use is to tax it via the fuel excise. Maybe the current high bowser prices might encourage motorists to consider other alternatives, or at least smarter use of their vehicles.

And if there's anything that shits me more than whinging commuters, it's whinging motorists. While the cost of petrol rises, drivers all over this country are complaining to the Government. For fuck's sake people, just deal with it. The Government doesn't have any influence over the market that determines petrol prices, nor does it want to, what with its free market ideology and all. If anyone is at fault, it is you, the consumer, whose demand is driving up those prices and further perpetuating the reliance on hydrocarbon fuels. And removing the fuel excise, much like removing stamp duty or property vendor tax, would only increase demand more and dig us all into a deeper hole. We'd be up shit creek with out a paddle, without a canoe and without a life jacket and all the while the salt water crocodile of doom will be hungrily sliding down into the murky water from the muddy, muddy bank.

In the long run, the use of hydrocarbons as a fuel isn't the best idea. Not only are the combustion of such fuels environmentally damaging, supplies are finite (although the issue of exactly how much we have left is debateable). When supplies run out, or become so scarce that the prices skyrocket, what then? Global economies collapse, industry comes to a standstill. Transport and other logistical systems will cease to operate. And we won't have any useful petrochemical materials. No plastics. No synthetic fibres. No organic solvents. Petroleum is much better utilised in the production of such materials rather than being combusted in an engine anyway.

Thank you for your time dear reader, signed Mikey, armchair professor of economics.


Listening to:
Title: Requiem: In paradisum
Artist: Fauré/Sydney Philharmonia Choir & Orchestra
Album/station: Life Is Beautiful with ABC Classic FM (2005)
Length: 3.30