If petrol were 10x the current price, you wouldn't commute that distance. You'd move or get a different job.
I don't work in San Francisco because flying there every day would be too expensive, the airlines don't have the ability to force me to pay an infinite amount to them...
This doesn't happen in practice. Instead, people get stuck in poverty traps.
I suspect you mean that people would prefer to spend a lot of money on fuel rather than moving. Maybe they feel that overall moving would be a quality of life decrease.
That's not a trap, it's a preference.
"Just move" or "just get a new job" is great advice for a highly mobile household where the workers have skills in high demand (e.g. young tech workers with no dependents).
For a great many people, "just move" is terrible advice. Moving is financially burdensome, socially disruptive, at times irresponsible, and at other times impossible. Not everyone has the option of just picking up and moving to a place that's more economically viable. They may not have the money to move. They may have obligations tying them to a particular geographical area. There might be legal barriers preventing them from moving.
"Just get a new job" is similarly terrible advice for most workers, for whom a job is not an easily disposable or replaceable thing. It's nice to work in software, where anyone with a reasonable network can organize half a dozen interviews next week with close to no effort. Most people aren't in software, though. A friend with a STEM PhD recently spent 18 months looking for a new job. Now think about people who have less desirable education or skills. "Just get a new job" is not advice that they can act on easily; certainly not quickly in response to rising fuel prices.
I was going to write a long thing here about autonomy and economic circumstances, but I can't really be bothered. In short: people really don't like having their entire lives disrupted, and we shouldn't be building a society that expects that of the average person.
Same if the local grocery stores all closed.
They're not just gonna curl up and die. They might stay and struggle and try to make it work until it's not possible, sure.
You're overcomplicating something that really doesn't need to be. I've been poor, have poor friends, we have autonomy, lol.
Would I? Or would housing costs in densely populated areas also scream upwards? You're thinking about my life on the micro scale, there's a whole forest you're missing for a tree. What happens to the farmers and truckers which the entire economy depends on? Are they just supposed to move or get different jobs too?
The economy relies on price signals. If you just sit about and pay whatever the price is for anything regardless of whether it makes sense to you, then we end up with bad outcomes.
e.g. minimum wage jobs being shit because people do them anyway.
To use your analogy, if the travel was subsidised maybe you would actually take the plane. If the plane company suddenly stops because of strikes, this affects you, not some theoretical shmuck who shouldnt be using planes.
If e.g. a city metro ramped prices then many people in outer zones would have the choice to either pay it, move job, or cycle/walk in.
If they bought a house next to a station with no other good transport links and no local work, well, it's not as if that wasn't known...
You could also get a motorcycle.
The oil companies, as well, would only be slow-walking physical gasoline in hope of future price increases or, for refineries, cheaper inputs. Otherwise, they're missing out on profits by not selling it at current prices.
okay but if oil production is down then at least one of the following must happen:
1. higher prices, which should encourage alternative means of oil production to come online
2. people being priced out of gas and withdrawing their demand
Thinking that everyone can continue to same amount of gas as before is pure fantasy.