Voluntary simplicity is the only morally high ground, even if it can't save us.

As oil prices fluxuate over $120/bbl and gasoline hits the magic $4/gallon level where consumers will supposely finally wake up and change their ways, I wonder, as usual, what will happen and what I should do.

And as usual "Voluntary simplicity" (VS) or "living beneath one's means" seems the only sane approach to a modern life, however unclear that path may be in practice.

I'd expect VS is a good approach under any economic circumstances, but in practice it is probably "too conservative" for most people. I mean THE GOOD LIFE HAS COSTS and ambitious people will pay ANY COST to what they want. And it's tricky. Wants and desires magically scale up with opportunity and risks in a "good economy" are smaller than rewards. Basically once you get beyond needs for FOOD and SHELTER, everything is negotiable, and there are NO clear LIMITS between "enough" and "excess". It's all "what we can get", and its only downturn and crisis that makes us see what we had before we lost it.

So ME, I have a college education, NO STUDENT DEBT, an inherented house (Partial mortgage paid off to siblings), NO CHILDREN, a good job, and so I pretty much can spent under half my income and be completely happy and invest the rest without much sense deprevation at all. Sure, I choose to not own a car, BUT this is a lifestyle thing - I get more exercise for free, more time for free, and less worry about getting stuck with maintaining a big ugly machine that I don't need most of the time.

I'd try to get everyone on my bandwagon, but of course there's ZERO real virtue in my position. It's just a convenience of my choices that happen to work for me.

I have to imagine in the near future SOMEBODY has to start a "Car-free" society that advocates for the needs of citizens who choose not to own a car, OR a smaller step "One-car-family" society with similar problems.

I look at my current two roommates. One actually works from home, but she still depends on her car to get her everywhere else, and drives it nearly every day somewhere, even if there's places within walking or biking distances. In her mind, she works hard for her money, and she can afford the car, the gas, so there's no problem to be solved. She'll keep driving with $10 gasoline because it gives her a life she likes. Well, I admit my house isn't as walking as a core-city neighborhood and she's a city girl, and will walk good distances. Now she just drives to places to walk, so if she lived closer to what she needed, perhaps she could be happy without a car.

Well, perhaps it is a critical mass issue. You need a critical mass of people who want interesting and uses places within walking and biking distances. Economy of scales works now because most of us are highly mobile. It is interesting to think about "diminishing returns" of autotravel as costs go up. At some point the disadvantages win, but unless you feel there's a choice, the comparison is never made. For the indefinite future the world is "too exciting" to be daily boxed within a few miles. But slowly the poor must find this smaller world by necessity.

And a few lucky people like me can explore voluntarily - biking and bussing, but really knowing I'm doing zilch to make the world a better place, just taking advantage of my good fortune.