Philosophy, Technology and Gas Prices

By Ron Beasley

Yesterday when I read Fester's Gas, Distance and Equity Destruction I was taken back to a graduate level course in Urban Geography I took in the early 70s.  Fester wrote:

Trading space for time is not just the classic Russian defensive strategy. It is our settlement pattern. 

Gas is a substitute for location.  People buy and burn gas because they are unable or unwilling to buy a location.  Suburbanization can be viewed through this lens as a means of trading expensive urban land for cheaper ring/fringe land.  This trade has made sense for many people as the travel costs were assumed to be relatively low as roads are heavily subsidized and gasoline was not a significant deterrent. 

People make their mortgage/purchase decisions based on total cost of ownership which includes the costs of living life and getting to and from work.  Individuals who live closer to their job have, all else being equal, lower commuting costs.  This allows them to shift commute expenditures to other expense categories, including housing.  Living further out and thus increasing commute costs often lead to the trade-off of lower housing prices, all else being equal. 

Trade-offs that made sense when gas was $1.80/gallon often do not make  sense when gas was $3.00/gallon and make even less sense when it has just topped $4.00/gallon.  Assuming home prices are smooth, which is a completely unreasonable assumption, significant drops in home values could be expected as the supportable house prices have to decline to meet the commute costs.

In that course 36 years ago I was introduced to the philosophy of Lewis Mumford, a historian of technology and urban development.  He saw the promise of technology but also recognized the threat.  In his 1934 book, Technics & Civilization,  he identified how the way we could think of technology is two fold.

• Polytechnic, which enlists many different modes of technology, providing a complex framework to solve human problems.



• Monotechnic which is technology only for its own sake, which oppresses humanity as it moves along its own trajectory.

In the first we use technology to improve our lives.  In the second we become slaves to the technology.  And yes, 74 years ago Mumford identified the increasing reliance on the automobile as an example of the second.