A Present and A Future Crime

Gas prices are rising and they are never going down. Even without speculation and a slight dampening in demand for gas as a result of these rising prices and demand for alternatives increasing, a conflict will arise between wasting gas by burning it to run machines or using oil to create products like medical supplies, or toys, asphalt and condoms, that presently require oil as an integral component in their construction.

Obviously, I stand on the side of conservation and reservation of oil for fabrication and not for destroying oil to produce power. Funny thing, I don't want people to die because medical supplies became too expensive to, for example, allow diabetics to afford their insulin shots.

However, oil will be running out all the same since it is not an infinite resource. And, no matter how much of it may be hidden away, it is not worth our time to use the last millennium's power source to take us to the future.

But, somehow, the public doesn't quite have enough backbone to actually try and convert to something else.

Thus, I foresee, probably about the same time that we may see gas riots, the developing crime of people stealing cars not for joy-rides but, rather, for business-rides. Eventually, gas may become so expensive that it makes more sense, even if you have your own car, to just steal someone's car that has gas so you can get from one place to another. I grant that before this there may be waves of siphoning out the gas of another person's tank but I think that people will lose patience with that and find it easier to just steal the car altogether.

Do you think this is crazy? Well, let me tell you about a crime wave that is already going strong: the stealing of catalytic converters.

You know what those are, right? They're the things that reduce, not eliminate, the nasty shit that comes out as a result of burning gas and released out the exhaust.

Among their components are the metals palladium, rhodium and platinum. Everyone is probably aware of the last one as a precious metal but the first two are often common in jewelry but are more common in various technologies for their chemical properties.

Now, I bet you know that the price of gold has gone up recently. But, did you know that the price of the catalytic three are also rising?

In fact, they have risen so much that it is now profitable to sneak under someone's car and cut them off and them sell them to scrapyards or some such. It is easy for a police officer, or anyone, to recognize if someone is trying to commit this crime: if someone is trying to get underneath or is underneath a car with a sawz-all that is your fucking clue. I'll grant you that this crime might not be as popular as say selling drugs, but it is out there.

Did you think that would ever happen? Never rule out any possibility no matter how strange it may be.