"We humans are designed to adapt to incremental changes in our environment (an ability that is biologically inherent). It is amazing what we can learn to tolerate.

"Our acceptance of the pain at the gas pump is similar to our acceptance of housing prices. (A $300,000 house is an incredible bargain in California today, yet wages and salary increments have barely changed since the time when houses were under $50,000). This psychology of adaptation helps humans (and animals) survive in a changing environment. But, predatory capitalism (and its political pawns) knows how to exploit this natural willingness to 'forget' the past and accept present conditions (reality).

"We need leaders that are willing to give a 'wake-up' call to everyone who has 'adapted' and accepted higher gas prices. Sure, the Europeans are paying more than twice what we pay, but more than 50% of the price of gas in Europe goes directly into public funds to pay for things that benefit the people. In the USA, high gas prices drain the local economy, giving nothing back.

"Today, Americans are willing to pay $2.50 per gallon, but refused to pay $1.50 when gas prices were at 50 cents per gallon. If we had allowed a .00 gas tax years ago, we might be paying $3.00 a gallon today, but the extra $1.00 would still be part of the price.

"Think about this: 140 billion gallons of gasoline are sold in the USA every year. A $1 gas tax would produce $140 billion in tax revenue to spend on the development of alternative fuels.

"It would take a real leader to convince people to 'adapt' to pain that is good for the country."

Neil Brown [neil.brown@rtel.com] on pricing of industrial products and systems:

"I liked (and mostly agree with) your piece on wireless automation products, especially the pricing bit.

"A few years ago I presented a series of talks about how 3rd generation process control systems - led by Emerson's Delta V - would sweep away the 2nd generation dinosaurs, leaving them in a price vs. performance dead end. My opener was to ask the audience: If computer memory cost as much then (1999/2000) as it had 25 years before (1974) how much would the memory in the laptop I was using to show my Powerpoint presentation be worth? The answer (roughly) is $500M. Do the math - 100 Mbytes of core-memory vs. today's RAM.

"The reason for this is the cost/volume relationship of digital devices. For digital devices, when the sales volume increases by a factor of 10, the price falls by a factor of 4. Look back at recent consumer products and you'll see this is close to the truth (e.g., LCD televisions, digital cameras, DVD players, recorders.

"Much of the cost of a digital device is the development, design and testing and then the tooling up; once volume production is under way, the marginal cost of unit production is low. Further, the proportion of total cost of many products represented by software is rising steadily, and software has virtually zero marginal cost of manufacture.

"I can buy a sophisticated digital wireless device (wireless router) for about $50 in the US. OK, an expensive pressure transmitter, say, has more mechanical parts and assembly operations, and needs calibration, testing etc, but the huge price discrepancy can't continue. 'Nichts dauert fur immer' (nothing lasts for ever) - was spray-painted on the Berlin Wall the night it was torn down!"

My recent article "America needs leaders - now!" resonated with Howard Bales [heybales@gmail.com]:

"I enjoyed the thread of your recent commentary. I am a public transit advocate, so I was happy to see it get a mention. Public transit impacts your other comments on poverty and oil addiction. Wouldn't it be cool if the man you overheard saying he'd left his family money for food and gasoline said, 'Honey, I've left you money for food and train tickets.' ?

"Concerning leadership, I wanted to point you to three websites that I have recently been exploring. One is www.worldchanging.com which is working to improve the connectedness of progressive strategies and solutions to problems. The second is www.zaadz.com which is more of a personal growth community leveraging the connected power of personal development. And the third is www.integralinstitute.org

which promotes a very powerful paradigm for addressing business, political and personal growth.

"Together, I see these sites as an emerging energy that will empower the middle class to insert more control over our world. It is the middle class who will solve the issues of poverty and therefore terrorism. The middle class is a lot more connected to the issues of poverty. They can see it in their neighborhoods and families. Imagine if the middle class decided to give micro-loans instead of upgrading to Vista.

"You mentioned the tipping point of wireless automation. Here's to the tipping point of the empowerment of the middle class as the future leaders of America and the world."