Had a strange thought while filling up the Zook this morning...

What would happen if gasoline were rationed for people driving passenger vehicles? What if, (and please forgive me if this sounds fascist, my mind is somewhat broke as of late), each person with a legally registered, and insured vehicle was issued a fuel card. In order to fill up you would need to put you card in the machine, and the system would keep track of you weekly ration and such. If your vehicle wasn't legally registered, (and insured if it's like that in the state you live in), no card. What would be a sensible weekly limit? 50 gallons? 75?

If you were traveling long distances, the ration period would apply only to the state that you were currently in, (so a person could still drive across the country for instance). I added all of my gas receipts for last month and I used 48 gallons for the whole month, but that is a car with a little tank, and I average about 30/mi per gallon, and my normal driving routine, (heavy foot). What do you think would be a reasonable weekly limit?

I can still remember when I was 6y.o. the gasoline "crisis". I would go with my dad and sit in the long lines on the certain days he was allowed to fill up. This was a tangible restriction on driving freedom. But was it a restriction on our freedoms? Would a gasoline ration force us to change our driving habits? Probably. Would it cause some economic collapse? Hmmm, probably not. Would it force us to spend more time at home with our families, or find other means of transportation to visit friends? Maybe...

Please fellow DU'ers, let me know what you think, and please be kind...

Thanks
E-Bat

still have the gasoline rationing coupons that my dad used. He was a farmer, so was exempt from military service and got extra gasoline for the farm equipment.

Considering that I use less than 200 gallons of gas a year for my 2 cars & lawn tractor, 50 gallons a week would allow me to make some extra money on the black market!

I never knew about those stickers and such. I always appreciate some education!

:hi:

are lessons in it. Among the lessons: Members of Congress and other VIPs got the rare X stickers.

DROVE back to their districts!! Not that they got much time off, really, because Congress stayed in session pretty much throughout the war. None of these long, lazy vacations of recent years.

Of course, past a certain point, they took the train rather than drive, but even at that they needed the X designation to do constituent support and services in their home states...

Now, that justification noted, is it possible some of them might have abused the government largesse they were granted?

I'd suspect so....nature of the beast, unfortunately!!!

:)

I currently use 5 gallons on an average week. There's a couple of trips where I'd use max 30 gallons round trip a year. I'd be good with 50 gallons a week.

That 50 gallons might not be enough. It would be hard to derive a solid number.

plus special rationing for truckers, school districts, mass transit, and farmers.

I use very little gas because I'm in a big city and my other car is an electric moped. I know people who commute up to 60 miles each way from inherited ranch property in what is now becoming the exurbs. It makes no sense at all to come up with a hard and fast number for everyone, but any rationing would have to be based on a fuel efficiency of 25 city, 30 highway, at the very least. Exceeding that ration should be met with a steep increase in price for those folks who were dumb enough to buy big, "safe" SUVs last winter when the price was election year low and can't trade the suckers in for what they should have bought in the first place now that prices are back up. Ration cards should be able to be banked so that occasional road trips are possible (they've certainly made flying so unpleasant that we can count those trips out).

Cut and dried rationing to force folks to move a little closer to their jobs might have been a good idea before we had a real estate bubble and subsequent deflation, but it won't work now.

Those suddenly high prices in 1973 had one great effect, Detroit finally started to make smaller, more efficient cars. If only they hadn't thought those words were synonymous with "cheap," they might not have lost market share in the ensuing 3 1/2 decades. They are now making decent small, efficient cars but are still too stupid to advertise them.

You purchase gasoline coupons for use with your vehicle. They are limited and based on your horsepower. They are tax free, which makes the price cheaper than the cost to locals. You use them just as you would cash, only each coupon is for an amount of gasoline (one litre, five litres, ten litres) and not for a cash amount.

The number of coupons you get each month depends on the size of your engine. Pigmobiles get four hundred litres, economy cars three hundred, real fuel misers two hundred. If you want more gas than that, you pay full price.

A lot of people got around those odd-even restrictions by owning two cars, hopefully with a different ending number on the plate. A giant plastic syringe, which could siphon out a gallon or two of gasoline from one car to put in another, was a BIG seller at the time. Of course, some people used it to rip people off--that was when the old "locking gas cap" became popular.

which means the poor won't be driving and the rich will. That is a prescription for social unrest. I would guess some sort of fuel rationing in the not-too-distant future is probably inevitable

Mowing the yard, chainsaws, tractors, agricultural use. How do you include that in your rationing?

Although I'm not sure what kind of mileage a riding mower gets these days...

$10 maximum purchases (back then that was plenty)..

It happened before :) but gas was about 35cents a gallon then and there was a REAL shortage..not a trumped up one like now..

but shit like drag racing and jet powered rocket trucks needs to go.

You're right!

Are we having problems with demand exceeding supply, or are the companies gouging us? Rationing works in the event of supply problems, but if it's a pricing issue, then Rationing serves no purpose other than effectively stating that the Gov't is FULLY subsidizing the petro-chem industry. Supply and demand dictate that the companies will only be able to raise the price so far before the public says enough and refuses to buy any more. Interestingly enough, this may be what it takes for alternative fuels to really take off. The Petro-chem companies hiking the prices so far they induce a vacuum that is filled by something else.

Essentially, you are stating that there should be regulations limiting petrolium usage. This harms us more than the corporations because this effects more than gasoline, remember, most plastics and polymers are made from petroleum. Think of how many goods are transported cross country. Wouldn't this also create issues with the travel industry?

Think about it, rationing without a shortage is basically a gov't guarantee that these companies will receive X-Amount of dollars each month. Also, the Gov't would lose money it earns on taxes. If for no ther reason, I believe this would be a sole cause for them to not consider it. You would be taking money away from the gov't.

The rise of alternative fuels issue being the main benefit. That coupled with a change in driving habits, and remember I'm only talking passenger vehicles, not transportation vehicles or trucks used for business like utilities. I agree with you that anything that takes away from the governments making revenue will not be considered. But within the realm of supply-side economics, I would think that this would eventually drive the price of gasoline down to a reasonable level no? I guess I am saying that there perhaps should be regulation limiting petroleum usage as a fuel source, but not in the manufacture of plastics and partially hydrogenated cheese food substance. Perhaps it would change peoples rationale for hopping in the Excursion for a trip to the Dairy Mart, when it's within bicycling, or walking distance to begin with.

I can't save the world, but apparently only I can prevent forest fires. It's too much pressure...

In regards to your comment:
>>I would think that this would eventually drive the price of gasoline down to a reasonable level no?<<

It would be an artificial decrease in demand, not because the pricing had reached critical mass. This would be akin to Governmental extortion of the petro-chem companies.

My problem with this scenario is that If a company does you wrong, you have the choice to not become beholden to that company, you can pick up a bicycle, buy a hybrid or whatever. You can use another service or company. Not so with the Gov't.

and age, I think. Consider my circumstances, which are uncommon but not rare. I travel about 270 days a year for business. I usually spend two weeks to a month in the cities I visit. I would have no trouble keeping within my ration at home, because my round trip to work and back would be 14.6 miles. Most of my night life is in D.C. so I take the subway to get there. As of right now, I'm at a pace to put about 3,200 miles on my car this year.

But there are times a I use a shitload of gas on the road. Right now I am in Newark, NJ and drive back and forth each week from DC, going home for the weekends. Some of the places I go for work are very remote (Arizona and Texas borders mostly) and require a long drive if I plan to stay at a comfortable hotel (and I do). So places I got don't require that I have a car at all (next month I'm in Boston and since office and my hotel are both dowtown, along with a lot of night-life in walking distance, I don't plan on renting a car at all).

I don't have any facts on this, but I'm betting the average commute these days is longer than it was in the 70's. I know that in DC, the "suburbs" are moving further out every year. How do you solve for people who live in major metro areas who have been forced to move an hour or more away from their jobs to afford housing?

...both personal and economic.

use a fucking push mower. also good for the environment!