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Wheels
When the internal combustion engine was linked to the wheel, the fulcrum under the lever of human affluence shifted.
For millennia the wheel has been associated with power and control. Anyone with sufficient means to possess a set of wheels for personal use, and horses to power them, was recognised as someone of high status. Monarchs, princes, the lord of the manor; all had use of wheels, while the common peasant did not, other than by working for someone higher up the social ladder. It was one of the ways in which high and low status became clearly defined.
The association of wheels with wealth became embedded in all of us. What we failed to recognise was that the use of wheels was (and is) only possible through the availability and consumption of surpluses derived from cheap energy. A horse needs a couple of (surplus) acres to feed itself, a carriage requires hand crafted materials and skills. Until our modern era, such surpluses were limited and available only to a select few. Everyone else had to walk.
The ability to move around at will became part of a covert caste system that kept everyone in their place.
Then at the beginning of the last century, private transport began to change all that. But it was growing prosperity that gave us wheels. Most cannot grasp the fact that…
