One Unit Gasoline

Can you imagine a return to the use of these? Suppose oil and gas supplies suddenly become tight...suppose there's an above-ground crisis -- a revolution in Saudi Arabia whose new gub'ment decides to keep all resources in house, as an example.

I don't foresee this; I think their own interests would be harmed in doing so, just like China won't suddenly purge all their dollar reserves. China needs us as an export sink, we need them to accessorize our suburban homes, we (globally) need Arabian oil, and Arabia needs western technologies, food, and other imports to make up for their single-resource economy.

While I don't foresee a sudden resource scarcity, we will all soon be experiencing increased bidding for accelerating declining net oil exports from oil exporting countries. Oil will continue to increase in price. Haiti, Benin, Bangladesh, Namibia; these countries will be simply unable to afford the increased costs. Demand destruction will occur here first, and while we grumble about how expensive vacationing to Columbus, Ohio is going to be this winter, Haitians, slowly but surely, will begin to starve, when food staples are either shunted to bio-fuels or they become simply too expensive to ship.

I can't envision how rationing energy could possibly work here in the U.S., in a nation completely oblivious to its own energy squandering, with its consumption per capita far greater than any other nation. If we are completely unwilling to discourage the use of non-renewable resources, and we show a complete willingness to price out every other oil consuming country (i.e, the rest of the entire world)...would we ever again consider that oil use is a common good and therefore ought to be rationed to every citizen? Not just to those who can price everyone else out?

There's enough concentrated power in this nation that if we ever had an energy deficiency, those in control would never allow for the redistribution of what was available. Rationing will never work.