The Oil Drum

34 comments on On practical solutions

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

praetzel on October 13, 2005 - 9:09am

This is curious - but once again they miss the point.
My wife and I went thru university without a car. Enough was saved for univeristy or made working during it and we always brown bagged it - years later still eating on $3/day.

Meanwhile the students that we teach are driving cars, spending more on clothes every year than I have in my lifetime, wearing fancy jewlery, spending more on each meal than I would on food for the whole day .... and they gripe about the cost of gas too.

They just don't get it.

Read Your Money Or Your Life I tell them. Where are you spending your money? Does it line up with your values? Is personal convience worth the world to you? You would not believe how many kids toys we have found and I have fixed on the "Sunday night store" (aka garbage day). I've supplied neighbours and friends who don't care if something is used or patched up with lots of tricycles, trailers and sandbox toys.

Everyone is still asleep. They think of this as a temporary measure. Of course someone tore my "Peak Oil - Wake UP" sign off of my door.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

NC on October 13, 2005 - 9:28am

I have noticed the same behaviour in people younger than 35. They have always had cheap gas and abundant personal transportation. ALL the college people HAVE to have a car. They all have to go home on the weekends or drive to campus from 20 blocks away and I live in a small University town. They don't NEED to do these things, but they can't conceive any other way to live.

I also didn't own a car until I graduated from College. You were dropped off at College in the fall and that is where you were until breaks or major car pool trips home. Very few students owned cars (This was late 70's early 80's) and they were extremely highly valued for their utility. The owners always got gas and food paid for by riders because we knew the high cost of owning a car.

Our young people have never learned how to do without luxuries. There are not enough peer examples for them to follow. That will be the biggest hurdle in the coming energy crunch. Young adults are going to have to learn (very late in life in my opinion) how to live well without energy consuming luxuries being used every day. They see these as needs now, not wants. Learning the difference is going to be painfull.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

spooky on October 13, 2005 - 10:11am

This is a HUGE generalization - there are quite a few students who are paying their own way through school, and these same students are not profligate spenders.

As the parent of 4 college graduates, I can say this about the kids today: they are what they were taught.

Give a kid money, he will spend it. Make a kid EARN their own money, and she will appreciate it.

I forced all 4 of mine to buy their own cars. Each of them not only worked summers, but held down part-time jobs during the year with full academic loads. No, I did not expect a 4.0 grade point average. But having been down the same road, all college grants you is a piece of paper allowing you to enter the job market at a much higher level than non-graduates.

If kids are doing what you say, I would venture that Mommy and Daddy are footing the bill, and that these same kids haven't ever done a hard days work in their lives.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Bigelow on October 13, 2005 - 3:30pm

"Your Money or Your Life" http://tinyurl.com/9cg8h is incredibly subversive from the Credit card/Madison Ave/Media's perspective.

NPR's All Things Considered, looks at how the credit card industry markets to teenagers. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4488488
A transcript:
http://www.commercialalert.org/blog/archives/2005/02/marketing_credi.html

We are not citizens anymore we are consumers and the pressure is especially intense on the young. See Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers http://tinyurl.com/bos3s

Or

No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs http://tinyurl.com/9lz95

Bigelow