Off Topic — HabitableZone

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re: Bread trucks
ER — (archived)

During the first fuel crisis, (back in the Carter era). One of the items that practically doubled in price overnight was phonograph records (vinyl was made out of petroleum, as well as most of the plastic packaging materials). However, by the recording industry's own admission, the raw material that actually went into LPs made up only a fraction of the manufacturing costs, the rest was distibution, promotion, marketing, and the exorbitant royalties charged by recording artists.

The latter was, of course, a lie. A handful of big-name acts may have gotten top dollar, but most new bands were contractually chained to a pittance, and older artists didn't get a penny more in residuals than they had contracted for decades earlier. Proof of this was that the price you paid for the latest heavy metal band album was roughly the same you were charged for an obscure Bavarian chamber orchestra. And both doubled in price even though the oil that was consumed in making and moving these items only made up about 10%-20% of the cost of production.

Although energy costs do play a role in the price of everything (after all, the physical definition of energy is "the ability to do work"), the inflation we can expect to see in the near future will not all go into increased energy costs.

So who profits?

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