It's Not Just The Gas Can

In an essay called "How Government Wrecked the Gas Can," writer Jeffrey Tucker describes the frustration of just trying to pour gasoline into a car. It's hard to do, not because we don't understand how to do it better, but because we aren't allowed to: gas cans are no longer permitted to have vents.
That sound of frustration in this guy’s voice was strangely familiar, the grumble that comes when something that used to work but doesn’t work anymore, for some odd reason we can’t identify.

I’m pretty alert to such problems these days. Soap doesn’t work. Toilets don’t flush. Clothes washers don’t clean. Light bulbs don’t illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked. It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice.

It’s like the barbarian invasions that wrecked Rome, taking away the gains we’ve made in bettering our lives. It’s the bureaucrats’ way of reminding market producers and consumers who is in charge.
Let's talk not just about the gas can, but about the gasoline itself. The ability to store energy is at the basis of all our advances in civilization. The ability to produce more food than we could use and store it up was one of the things that enabled cities, with all the advances of philosophy and its products, mathematics and the early sciences. The ability to bring the energy stored in a rushing river to work brought us the mills that were such an amazing technical advance at their time. The ability to bring the energy stored in wood and coal to work in the steam engine enabled us to cross mountains and vast distances at speeds as fast as a horse could run, and faster, without tiring. And the internal combustion engine, and the gasoline that powers it, enabled us to fly.

More than that, it enabled us to be free in the literal sense. We could go where we wanted to go. We could do many things, as individuals, that we could not have done by ourselves before. With a chainsaw I can, by myself, fell a great oak and buck it into logs in part of an afternoon. There's enough stored energy in that tree to heat my home for a good part of a winter, but the only reason I can access it is the stored energy in the gasoline. The ability to bring that to bear on the work I need to do is what enables me to live as a free individual, outside of a city and in no larger a community than I want.

It used to be that gasoline was a kind of energy you could store. When I was a boy, we would have a gas can -- with a vent -- that had a few gallons inside of it in case we needed it around the place. It might be used for a lawnmower, or the tiller for our garden that excused us from owning a mule, or to mix up with fuel oil for a chainsaw.

These days you can't store gasoline for very long. Even with fuel stabilizers, the stuff will go start to go bad after about thirty days. It's not that we don't know how to make it better, so that we could store it up and use it when we liked. It's that we aren't allowed to do it.

The new stuff rots, partially turns into varnish. It'll burn so hot it will score your pistons, destroying the engine it was supposed to serve. Why? Because we said so.

17 comments:

RonF said...

I found this out when I ran out of gas and had to buy a gas can. I got this plastic thing with a heavily-overengineered spout. Between it and the bad seal between the spout and the can I'd say about 60% of the gas got into the car, 30% ended up on the street and 10% stays in the can because I can't tilt it high enough (the spout isn't flexible anymore) to get all the gas out.

RonF said...

And it was WAY expensive, like $10. A gas can should not cost more than the gas in it.

Grim said...

Don't worry -- if the administration has its way, soon the gas will be much more expensive than the can. :)

RonF said...

" It might be used for a lawnmower, or the tiller for our garden that excused us from owning a mule, or to mix up with fuel oil for a chainsaw. "

Or for pouring into a hill of carpenter ants, or for starting a bonfire. Dad showed me how. For ants, just make sure that the gas can is well away from both you and the hill before you throw the match on the ant hill (from a few feet, not standing over it). For a bonfire you increase the distances and substitute a lit road flare for the match.

RonF said...

The town was small enough that Mom had dated the Police Chief when they were both in high school, so while the cops were not unfamiliar with our home address any actual formal action absent an actual crime was unlikely.

Grim said...

I have heard that it works at least as well on the ants if you don't light it. Or yellowjackets.

RonF said...

Mom and Dad would more than make up for that, mind you. The cops couldn't do to us what Dad did ....

RonF said...

Probably, but what fun is that?

Grim said...

I wouldn't know, since obviously I would never.... :)

Texan99 said...

We actually were called to a nearby fire started by a guy trying to attack his sand gophers. :0) He was so embarrassed he sold his house and moved away soon after.

My husband just forwarded me this gas-can story, which must be making the rounds and ringing some bells. I was on my way over here to post about the "speak-easy economy."

james said...

Gasoline also works on termite mounds, at least partially. On a big one the flame doesn't effect everything. Maybe it would poison them if it weren't lit; I can't say either.

james said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ymar Sakar said...

Slaves, serfs, peasants, and indentured laborers don't need gas cans or cars. That is not the end goal of a slave economy.

Grim said...

I was on my way over here to post about the "speak-easy economy."

That's not quite Ymar's approach, but it is a kind of insurgency. We're at war with our government, not all the way, but more and more every day. The law is the enemy of ordinary people leading ordinary lives. That's got consequences, you know?

Anonymous said...

I have it from the person who tried the experiment that while C4 will destroy a fire-ant or large red ant nest, the ants that rain down on you back down pretty peeved. Said experimenter allowed as how he would not repeat the experiment. :)

LittleRed1

Grim said...

Hah! I'll mark that down as something not to try. :)

raven said...

If you need gas to store, try finding a station that still sells it with no added alcohol. I believe there is a website, "puregas" or similar that lists them. Fill your small seldom used machines with it, particularly if they will be stored all winter.
Keep the cans cool and full.
I stopped using stabilizers, seemed like they caused as much trouble as they prevented.
And a bottle of Techron will do wonders on small clogged jets in your carb.
Better buy some before it is gone, like a buddy of mine said, "if it works, they don't make it anymore."