Supply Chain Breakdowns
Supply chain breakdowns during the pandemic caused goods to be incredibly valuable . For example, there were a ton of products, like hand sanitizer, or toilet paper, or meat and fish that were really hard to come by in many locations, which led to a sudden increase in the prices of oil..
One, we know that Europe is still suffering supply shortages as the result of the War in Ukraine, but that war will end, and the supply line shortages will continue, so we're gonna have lower energy supply. As supply decreases and demand increases, the price goes up. This happens with all products, and there's no reason to believe it won't do this to oil.
Which led to panic buying, which further led to this sort of chain reaction of the price of that product increasing more and more, and in some cases, the price of that product increasing five times higher..
And then it's this loop of "oh, the price is now higher, I'm going to buy more because I don't know when this shortage is gonna end" and then it spirals further and further to the point we saw a hundred thousand percent price increases on, of all things.
In order to maintain our civilization and our economy, we're going to have to switch over to a new system that is able to maintain a high industrial capacity while not being able to rely on fossil fuels.