Hummers Escalades and Lexus Limousines

I find that MySpace is good for the occasional meme or short spurt of angst. For long rambling rants such as this one, it's blogger where my thoughts find a home.

On the way home today, I'm in the turn lane headed left. However, there's a mammoth, silver SUV in the oncoming lane and although the light is green, I can't see around this bastard to look for approaching vehicles. The driver in the car behind me looks impatient. I don't want to be honked at. It's not so much that I care that this person at my rear will be a couple minutes behind their likely meaningless schedule. It's that I'm so full of loathing for the human race these days, that I think I might jump out of my truck carrying a tire iron. And, well, you can imagine where things would go from there.

So, I take a chance and speed off down the next street. Luckily, there was no one to collide with. But, the encounter spawned a rampant dialogue in my head. Let me see if I can make my train of thought logical enough to convey. Supposedly, there's a fuel shortage in this country. I don't buy it and here's why. If the world is such a place that Americans are in danger of running out of gasoline, why are car makers building the largest abominations they can manage? Well, that's because the fuel crisis is a load of bullshit dreampt up by the coordinators of the Middle Eastern war. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself.

There is such a thing as the law of supply and demand. The way I understand it, the price of an item fluxtuates depending on how many consumers are willing to purchase it at a certain cost. If nobody is buying product, then cost will go down so as to encourage purchase. If the demand for something goes up enough, and the supply is low, cost will rise. Or, price will be higher if fewer product is bought in order to make enough money to survive from the sale of fewer items. Make sense? Thus, companies that do market research will generally produce only items that they sense a demand for.

Car makers do loads of market research. If people in America could truly not afford the prices of gas, we wouldn't be seeing ads for Hummer and Dodge Mastadon every seven seconds on television. The parking lot at my local grocery store wouldn't be crammed with Soccer Mom Vans. Car makers would be pushing the latest in hybrid mini cars. Unless of course, everyone in America is a complete freaking idiot. There are masses of idiots, but the smart people out there make up enough of the population to make a difference. What's that you say? "Why Neko, there are ads for hybrid vehicles" Right you are, my friend. That's because these companies see the paranoid section of us that do like to save money on gas and do pay attention to the destruction of the environment and do live in California. That's beside the point. How many hybrids do you see on the road versus trucks and SUVs?

So, we've established that there is a demand for gas-guzzling hunks of impossibly massive four-wheeled steel, just by observing what products are on the market.

If the car companies see that we are all willing to shell out mass quantities of cash in order to keep our monsterous trucks running, where's all this gas coming from. Here's a theory. Public support of the war starts to wane. So, a "gas shortage" is conjured. "Oh no," Americans say, "kill those Arab bastards and get us some gas." Support of the war goes up. And why are we at war in the first place, if our neighbors to the North have so much fuel? And why are there people saying that the U.S. can survive on it's own reserves? It's because G.W. wants to fight daddy's war for him. That's why!!

Okay, enough political raving for me right now. Just think about this. I'd be happy to hear a couple different views or supporting factoids. I'm I right, or stark-raving loony? or both?

Off to the showers to wash away the stink of human contact.