Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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I think it only affects 20% of supply globally, so why can't we adapt?
Because capitalism is not designed around planning for events like this. Global trade is meant primarily for profits of the capitalist class. This means they remove redundancies that would provide stability to maximize profits.
This is a very simple explanation. But it's why there is nothing in place prepared for this.
"Adapting" just be further capital consolidation as the working class suffers all of the losses and the capitalist class is protected in their bubble. They don't plan for events like this, because they are able to whither the storm.
Their wealth is not measured in dollars. Their wealth is a reflection of how much more power they have over the working class of the world. Events like this only serve to solidify that power unless the working class of the world fights back.
Because most system are run on a "just in time" model of logistics that means you dont store enough stock to cover emergencies, because storing extra stock costs money and may depriciate in value. So instead you get only the exact amount you need, when you need it.
Since every system is basicslly optomized to this cuttthoat, zero reduancy way, we cant really just "take the hit" when 20% of oil/food/etc disapears overnight. It would be like telling people to "just eat 20% less" or " just drive 20% less." Both good advive, but we are creatures of habit that build routines around systems, so when someone fucks a system over, it causes rippling chaos. So what happens when 20% of a daily resource goes away in our global, market economy? All prices go up up! Then people have to break habits, and/or start breaking politicians. Well, we are in stage 1 and barely in the bad polling/protest stage of 2.
I don't think oil is just in time, especially since most oil sailing the seas is crude and needs refining.
Car parts sure, oil, don't think so.
Pretty depressing hearing the media about it here. Countless people were killed in missile strikes across the middle east today, now we talk about the real issue, petrol prices have gone up slightly.
It's why you hear mostly about Iran and the strait and nothing of Lebanon until it influenced the ceasefire.
Israel has displaced around 1M people from Lebanon and are repeating the tactics of terror it enacted in Gaza. But I'd bet that the majority of people paying attention to the Iran war every day had no idea Israel was even invading Lebanon.
Unfortunately, most people of the world are trained to not care about anything until they can see a direct material impact on their lives personally. But, that means we have a real powerful method of getting people to care.
I don't care if the masses are directed to the right conclusions because of a moral framework or if they are directed to that same conclusion because of a material impact on their lives. They just need a means of understanding where to correctly place blame when they are inevitably impacted.
That's the difficult part. Because historically that blame is misplaced through xenophobia, racism, gender persecution, etc.
Even now, the reactionary forces in America have anchored their outrage to the correct criticisms of Israel. However, they all seem to be using Israel as a means to ignore the same crimes of the American empire. It is interesting. It seems to be a desperate move to let American politicians and the rich capitalist off the hook and place all blame solely on Israel as if American Oligarchy is not also to blame.
It's similar to the liberal Zionist that would blame Netanyahu as the problem and attempt to wash away the sins of Israel with him being the sole problem. But, that ship has sailed. There is no way to repair the image of Israel.
My worry through this is that the right wing narratives around Israel will be much easier to spread than the more complicated but accurate left wing reality. I worry as the right wing movements (like Tucker Carlson) become more popular the left will struggle.
The left either agrees with the right that "it's Israel controlling America" and lose the narrative by being seen as "weak" against Israel. This will come from many in the Democratic party remaining as loyal Zionist while the Republican party will quickly label their own Zionist as "RINO" but keep them around.
I think it's very important the left (1) Purges and shames any liberal Zionist. They should be seen as Nazis. And (2) does not give the right wing the power of the narrative they want. It is not "Israel controlling America". It is more than that. It is the crimes of the entire ruling (Epstein) class and those in Israel and those in America need to brought to answer for their crimes.
The US seems especially fucked politically. At least here in the UK we have greener options.
We can adapt and the process of doing that in capitalism involves prices rising and rising until people can't afford things and stop buying them, thus reducing demand.
That's super tough on people who don't have much money and they don't consume much anyway so when they tap out it doesn't reduce demand much. So prices need to rise enough to hurt the middle class in developed countries, meaning the lower classes everywhere else have a really shit time.
Meanwhile there are some oil uses that are completely unable to be reduced, such as emergency services, food distribution, etc so the govt will intervene in the market to ensure that happens. This means all non-essential sectors of the economy must reduce usage by significantly more than 20%.
Meanwhile every country's govt is doing everything it can to try to lock in 100% of their usual supply and some will succeed, leaving other countries to make much bigger cuts than 20%.
There will be lots of people making 100% cuts while a few make none. Humanity isn't great at sharing especially at a global level.