Although the negative consequences are more or less obvious in terms of spiraling negative cost consequences, there are some "good" elements.
High prices motivate alternative behavior. People are getting rid of their enormously wasteful large vehicles, car-pooling in greater numbers, riding bicycles, trying public transportation for the first time etc.
After the oil embargos of the seventies, we should have taken great steps as a nation to increase domestic production/refining capability and moved significantly into alternative means of transportation.
Instead, when the price of oil was very low, we became a nation of one person per large vehicle and public transportation was beneath most people.
I hope there are some long term good results as the nation learns less wasteful means of getting around.
