PICTURING THE COMING DYSTOPIA IN THE WEST

If petrol becomes so expensive that most people cannot afford to operate a vehicle, where they continue to have access to one, certain specific changes will occur within our society. For example, tradespeople and mobile professionals, who pay for their own means of transportation, including petrol, will be forced off the road. Over time, these workers will attempt to consolidate work appointments into time blocks to save on petrol expense, and when this does not work due to the persistent increase in the price of petrol, they will opt to work part-time. Within three to six months, many will wind up their business enterprises, unable to strategize around price inflation and currency devaluation. Along with painters and plumbers and electricians, we will also observe the disappearance from view of taxicabs, Uber cabs, and shuttle buses. Not to mention mobile businesses such as animal grooming, pool cleaning, garden landscaping, personal training, pizza and food delivery, and home hairdressing.

What has been mentioned so far largely relates to private enterprise. But what about the public domain? As petroleum products become unobtainable, in this example due to prohibitive cost, imagine what this might mean for our emergency services. As well as the necessary local council services such as lawn mowing, tree trimming, street cleaning, and refuse collection. And then, there is the outpatient service, the in-home service, the residential care service, the mobile counselling service, the work service (the sheltered workshop), and the mobile library service. Although the cost of petrol and diesel is subsidised when purchased by the state, in a universe where the cost of petrol and diesel does not stabilise but rather continues to push upward, these services identified above will also be curtailed before being eventually cancelled. We will likely then be made subject to lots of advertisements related to electric car fleets that the government is considering for purchase, but it may be a case of too little, too late, as patients and clients reliant on community care may already be dead, because the same community care has ceased to be delivered.

Lastly, our supermarkets are serviced and supplied by a fleet of trucks and lorries that travel by road over long distances. These heavy load vehicles require large amounts of petrol or diesel to operate. Should petroleum products such as petrol and diesel become scarce or otherwise difficult to obtain, our supermarket shelves will soon empty before remaining in that useless state. When the trucks no longer arrive, the supermarkets will themselves become inoperative, and many will shutter and close down, and a media campaign developed and promoted by the supermarket industry will describe these closures as temporary but necessary. With this in mind, where will local people procure their weekly supplies from? And, if there’s no petrol to run the car to travel further to get to the only supermarket that remains operative and open for business, what then? Do we turn on each other, fighting over toilet paper in the streets, reducing ourselves to the animal state, or do we discuss, plan, strategise, organise, and implement a valid workaround?

Punk Human