Something else that can't last...

People are wah wah wah crying over the gasoline prices. Get used to it, chumps. The era of cheap gas is over. The era of Western exploitation of world energy is over, and it isn't because of OPEC or any al-Qaeda threat. It's because of that old thing called competition (and you can cast that in a Libertarian "free market" way or a Marxist way, it still remains competition) with the rising industrialization of China, for instance.

You could also throw in a few arguments for the "peak oil" crowd, who claim we are at or near the peak of oil extraction and will soon be on the downward slope as new reserves etc. aren't found in enough quantities to match current production.

Any idiot who's even sat in on one economics lecture could tell you that scarcity + demand = higher prices. And in the commodities markets, scarcity doesn't even have to be real: it can be perceived. Remember, it doesn't take war to send oil soaring; it merely takes the threat of war.

So we sit around lamenting over our $3 a gallon gas, and the obscenity of the Hummer becomes even more apparent. Even as the upper middle class flees to their McMansions in the exurbs, the cost of that lifestyle rises with each mile more they have to drive.

I wonder if this coming scarcity will make our sprawling communities and car-based infrastructure seem as useless and quaint as castles following the introduction of the cannon.

UPDATE: I'm not sure that I've ever come across a more retarded proposal than the Senate Republicans' idea of giving out $100 bucks as a "rebate" to every taxpayer for being such idiotic consumers. What is this? Hush money?