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ya but i am not sure anyone of the things i named will drop by 5% or more... and mean while they keep going up faster than inflation...

Cheap energy is good, but i worry more about our ability to afford those things.




If gas was $.10 / gallon, everything we consume would be cheaper because every single thing we buy is transported in trucks. A huge portion of what you pay for at the supermarket is the raw cost of getting a good to the shelf from the farm/factory.

If gas was $.10/gallon, cars would be cheaper. We wouldn't need ridiculously complex gas engines tuned to yield another 1 mpg, or electric cars with $30,000 of Lithium-ion. They could be low-mpg and cheap and it wouldn't matter.

If gas was $.10/gallon, everyone's wages would, effectively, increase since every person who owns a car would spend less on gas, which for many people is a lot of money.

If jet fuel was $.10/gallon, flying would be cheaper. Importing and exporting goods from faraway places would be cheaper.


If transportation is so expensive then why a lot of stuff is made in China? How cheap gasoline would afford you to rent a flat?


Oh, lots of ways cheap gas would help me afford a flat! First of all it takes a ton of energy to build a home, so housing would be fundamentally cheaper. Then, every month, I'd be spending less money on heating or air conditioning. I'd also be spending less of my own money on transportation (either through less gas costs, or buses/trains being cheaper). Then since goods are cheaper at the store, I have more money to spend at the store.

There is one mode of transportation that is currently REALLY cheap and that's huge ships. That's why we import so much from China -- sending a huge ship across the ocean is really cheap. If all forms of transit were that cheap (trucks, flights) the world would be very different.


If shipping is cheap why does goods go from Chine to US not from US to China?

Would cheap energy lower land costs for a house or flat? Cheap energy would improve situation. But a lot of competition comes from productivity and wages. Low wages in Asia made possible to import goods cheaper from Asia rather than produce locally.


Goods absolutely do flow from the US to China -- $100B worth in 2019.


And we could destroy the habitable world even more rapidly than we're doing. Sounds great.


Yes, but that's besides the point.


> And we could destroy the habitable world even more rapidly than we're doing. Sounds great.

It's worth noting that due to Jevon's Paradox, investments in energy efficiency also result in greater energy consumption.




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