>It's a combination of both. Look up the word 'complicit' ( or 'need',
another interesting
>word, as 'want' seems to have insinuated itself in it's definition) in any
dictionary.
>
>If we didn't "need", the oil, if it wasn't imperative to "modern life"
>(making us complicit), the demand would not be as significant and the oil
companies would be >peddling it like bad drugs (which they, along with the rest
of corporate America do.)
We're already past that point, consumption is not up to production. We're already not consuming enough to satisfy capital's productive capacity. Leading to the invention of the SUV and billions in advertising lies to sell it. And leading to destruction of productive capacity to jack up prices (as with closing refineries). They wouldn't need to do that if consumption were outstripping production.
Up against a system hellbent on forcing oil down our throats, a series of individual lifestyle 'choices' has little impact on oil consumption. What has a lot to do with oil consumption is destruction of public transport, development of the interstate highway system, the suburbs, the enormous US military, lax fuel efficiency standards (and evasion of these) and much more I'm sure others who actually follow this stuff could name. None of these was part of any choice you or I made. And if I do bike to work (which I do, actually) that won't make a dent, because the system is rigged. It's rigged because capitalism creates abundance it can't sell, not scarcity. If we want to want for things again (or at least understand where real scarcity might exist) we need to get rid of the system that is creating crises of fake abundance, abundance created by our sweat and our physical risk and our lives with which we'd much rather be doing something else.
>If you don't want to take responsiblitity for the business/social framework
>of modern day America, that's fine, but puuleease don't try to rationalize
it away
>with an "economic model in a vacuum".
So where does that guilt about consumption take you, then, politically?
Jenny Brown