

Freakonomics: Q&A With the Author of $20 Per Gallon - paulgb
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/it-wont-be-so-bad-a-qa-with-the-author-of-20-per-gallon/

======
adamt
I don't buy into this. He talks about a world of $8 per gallon bringing on
drastic behavioral and economic changes. A world where by school busses would
have to stop running etc and private motoring is massively reduced and
restricted to hybrid cars.

In the UK (as with most of Europe) due to heavy government taxes on petrol
(gas) we pay over £1 per litre. This equates to over $6.35 per US gallon (and
at peak prices, it would have passed $7 per US gallon in 2008.

Have our school busses stop running? Has private motoring disappeared? Do well
all own hybrids? The answer to all these questions is an obvious no.

Sure - we care a bit more about MPG - the average out-of-town MPG of cars on
the market in the UK is 47MPG (admittedly only about 39 miles per US gallon)
for extra-urban (out of town). Source; <http://www.fuel-
economy.co.uk/stats.shtml>. Similarly, car ownership per capita across western
Europe is broadly similar to North America
(<http://www.swivel.com/data_sets/spreadsheet/1003604>)

I think the author confuses what happens when prices spike (and school
districts exceed their budgets) versus what happens when prices rise steadily
over above inflation over a number of years.

~~~
dejb
I agree with your sentiment but I think the differences between the UK and the
US due to fuel prices are quite noticeable. Here some that I noticed

\- UK cities and towns are built more for people. In the US they feel like
they are built more for cars.

\- Pretty much everything is more expensive in the UK than the US

\- Pedestrians take more 'right of way' in the UK whereas in the US it's
'watch out or get hit'.

\- The UK has much better public transport than the US

\- UK cars are tiny and US cars are huge.

\- Some people in the UK people do tend to think it was a big deal to drive
100 k's to go somewhere. I guess this is partly because the UK is
geographically small.

So I'd say that there would be some good and some bad changes but they'd
certainly be noticeable. Of course technology will adapt so most likely the
impact on the cost of living will be reduced.

~~~
sho
_"Some people in the UK people do tend to think it was a big deal to drive 100
k's to go somewhere."_

Maybe so, but in Australia they'd also think it's a pretty big deal to drive
100kms. And yet in the USA, I remember one guy I used to know who drove _6
hours_ , two ways, every weekend to see his girlfriend, seemed to think
nothing of it. Trust me, that is never going to happen in Australia.

Americans just love driving, it seems. They seem to like being in their cars
more, almost seems like a second home. I don't know why.

Another thing I've noticed about Americans is that they equate their cars with
freedom, whereas in many other countries cars are a necessary evil which, far
from making you more free, is actually a millstone around your neck. If I drag
a car somewhere I have to worry about it, pay for parking, can't drink, etc
etc. Give me a train anytime! But Americans seem to see it the exact opposite
.. go figure.

~~~
dejb
I live in Brisbane and I know a fair few people who commute between here and
the Gold Coast (about 70k away) every day for work. Many wouldn't think twice
of driving 100k north or south on the weekend to go to the beach. So my
impression is that us Aussies are closer to the US than UK in terms of car
usage.

I must confess I'm not a big car fan either. Maybe if you could sleep in the
damn things then it would be a second home but otherwise it is just a place
where you sit while trying to avoid becoming a road fatality until you reach
your destination.

~~~
sho
Hm, maybe because there's a decent freeway between the GC and Brisneyland it
doesn't seem such a long way? I admit that 100km by freeway doesn't seem that
bad. But 100k through Sydney traffic and you'll want to go on a killing spree.

------
ken
Interesting, but avoided the one question I really wanted asked:

"I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people who _didn't_ end
up looking stupid when they predicted 50 years ago what life would be like
today. What can you say to convince us that you'll be one of the 5 of this
generation who got it right?"

Technology has a way of surprising everybody.

~~~
old-gregg
You're right, the future may surprise you! Just go and watch "Back to the
Future 2" again and then ask yourself: "Where is my anti-gravitational
skateboard and a self-drying jacket, self-tailoring jeans?"

Or even something simpler: _"Where did 24-bit true-color laptops go?"_

------
JacobAldridge
Nice combination of freakonomics with hypothetics.

I can understand a discussion of $8 and $18 gas prices without factoring in
the effect of new technology and energy sources over the next decade or so -
it's just adding made-up stuff on top of made-up projections.

But not factoring for more predictable things like inflation and wage rises
over that time? It's a recipe for scaremongering or, worse still, an article
so far-fetched nobody takes any notice of the serious underlying issue.

~~~
tokenadult
I think the predictions assume "real" dollars (dollars adjusted for inflation)
in all cases, but check the book to be sure.

------
mynameishere
My expenses would increase by 5 or 6 dollars a month. Seriously, if gas
actually hit 20/gallon people would adjust by moving closer to their jobs
(over the space of decades, this would cause very little pain.) Problem
solved. Am I the only one who finds easily-solvable problems really quite
annoying?

~~~
trafficlight
I'm glad you're on the case.

How about curing AIDS while you're at it.

~~~
mynameishere
The cure for AIDS is: A reduction in the quantity demanded for unsafe sex and
dirty needles. AIDS is a trivially-avoided disease and a stupid example, even
if you're just being snide.

The cure for 20/gallon gas is: A reduction in the quantity demanded for >25
mile commutes, which is an incredible historic anomaly.

Neither cure works 100 percent of the time, just like every other single cure
in the whole wide world.

