2) You pay for tap water from the city. Unless you live in the country then you pay for the pump, a well, and some sort of septic system. Either way, you pay.
3) You can buy a cheap fuel the same way you buy a cheap house, or rent.
Your example explains it quite well. You can also purchase a higher mpg vehicle. You can live closer to work. You can travel less distance for vacations. You can combine trips or cut out nonessential. You don't eliminate the need for shelter, but there are choice to make that determines how much of your income you want to spend on this commodity. Are you telling me you have made zero changes in fuel consumption since prices were $1.50? Some people have put themselves in situations that make it difficult to significantly reduce consumption, such as living 50 miles from their work, but that is a choice as well.
In that everything is impacted by fuel costs, because of transportation, true. But you can do some things to counteract that.
Grow your own veggies, and purchase meat from a local farmer/butcher (usually by the quarter cow, etc.)
Keep purchases of goods in general to a minimum shopping at consignment shops or resale shops when possible.
Purchase a hybrid car, or one that uses E85, and keep driving to an absolute minimum.
Turn up the thermostat in the summer/turn it down in the winter.
That's just a few idea. Sure, it's 'painful,' but we sure don't want government controls on oil prices.
"But avoiding fuel purchase is impossible. Even if I ride the bus, I've bought fuel. If I buy anything that has been transported, I have purchased fuel. If I heat my house or turn on a light bulb, I have purchased fuel. So while there are viable alternatives to the strawmen examples the free marketeers push, there are no viable alternatives to our oil addiction."
How additionally wrong you are.
1. Buy more things made and produced locally - road side produce stand instead of the super market, local store instead of the catalogue or the Internet, "local" entertainment instead of a four hour car trip or a weekend plane trip - and you will reduce your fuel consumption and/or fuel costs. You have choices.
2. Reduce the number of trips you take. Do more "drive buy" shopping by picking up things as you go to and from work instead of making everything a separate shopping trip. Eliminate those very wasteful last-minute, gotta-have-it one-item-purchase trips. Nothing is that important.Walk to the neighborhood mini-mart around the corner for your 11:Pm Hagen Das fix.
3. But "riding a bus" is more fuel efficient than taking a car, when you measure the fuel in passenger-miles achieved by the same gallon of fuel.
4. Turn lights off when not at home. Buy "pilot-less" gas water-heaters and kitchen ranges - they don't waste gas when they are not being used. Spend a little more and install water-heaters that produce all the hot water you want, on demand, without running 24/7 to keep a tank of water hot. Cost more to buy, saves tons of cost and fuel in the long run.
So, every way noted above CAN reduce the EXTENT of YOUR oil addiction.
However, don't lose sight of this fact. As you reduce your "fuel consumption" because the price is high, you will in time bring down that price, and therefore you will continue to use that "fuel" when your conservation efforts help keep the price of that fuel reasonable.
And, conversely, if you allow your useage to remain as it is and the current "fuel" prices do not decline, you will help to insure that someone will bring out more alternatives to the "fuel" you are consuming, because the high prices will make the profitability of those alternatives more likely.
Either way, we have and we do make the choices that result in what is available to us.
Many people could, if they wanted to badly enough, ride a bike to work.
I did it myself for six months and lost 40 pounds.
Until I had a high-speed encounter with a dumpster.
You can reduce your consumption of coffee and bottled water in response to price increases for coffee and bottled water, but you can also reduce your consumption of these things in response to price increases for gasoline.
Do you not understand the fundamentals of capitalism, and a free market economy? Or does Communism make more economic sense to you? Is 1-800-KARLMARX on your speed dial? Alfred Marshall and Adam Smith economic principles work better among free people.
In my opinion, he is using examples that most people can understand to explain the fundementals of pricing. Despite the differences in the use of gasoline and those products they are not strawmen intended to deceive. They are simply easy to understand examples.
In fact, your post seems more of a lament about gasoline prices and free maketeers than the structure of the argument. Is it possible that your complaint is a strawman itself?
Yep.
Let me put it this way:
My lawyer is angry about fuel prices. His per hour rate had gone up 50% in the last 10 years.
My doctor is angry about higher fuel prices. His rate for an office visit has tripled in the last 10 years.
Lots of people are angry.
What does Joe do? Joe is a wellsite geologist who makes his living on an oil rig--when they are drilling. In the last 10 years the rigs spent one shut down when oil prices were lower than the cost of a barrel to put it in. Joe didn't make much money, but he still had to pay those other folks. Now, in the last 5 years, Joe has been employed steadily. His day rate has doubled over those 5 years. Not as good a curve as the other guys' wages but, wtf, Joe providees an essential service in the production an exploration for an essential commodity. Joe, like most in his industry, works a 12 hour day, away from home, 7 days per week until the job is done. Then Joe does it again.
Joe has to buy fuel, heat his house, feed his kids, etc. too. Handle it. We're just catching up with inflation.