Don’t Get Crude

As watchers of the world developments that send us more speedily into a downward spiral of doom, we thought we’d bring up some current observations. We’ve already seen the financial affects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most notably and instantly on the prices of gas at the pump. Filling up your car’s tank after the war has likely cost you ten or twelve bucks more than it did the day before the war (depending on the size of your tank). Prices were already on the way up, but they’ve gone up even more now that heavy sanctions were imposed on Russia who supplies crude oil and natural gas to much of Europe. Even though you may not live in Europe, any rise in price or lack of availability elsewhere in the world causes a strain on the worldwide supply, or at least a reactionary desire to crank up prices “just in case” things get worse.

Here is a little graph of average fuel prices over the last year, according to YCharts

What Does That Have to Do With Discs?

So why do we care? Aside from the fact that we also buy fuel for our cars, and our grocery prices are rising just as quickly, it also bleeds into the disc-making market. Did you know that most plastic polymers are made from byproducts of crude oil and other fossil fuels? Yes, that plastic that makes discs for the disc golfers of the world comes from the same sources that supply the fuel that we pump into our cars. If crude oil prices go up, plastic prices can also rise.

The disc golf market has already seen a rise in disc prices since the Covid-19 Pandemic. At first, those prices went up because the manufacturers saw higher demand than they could meet with their manufacturing capabilities. If the demand exceeds the supply, prices naturally rise (Business 101). But then many raw plastic material become allocated from suppliers because of the different shutdowns and shipping problems. If you get get the plastic raw material because of shut-down ports and factories, then the supply runs short. While the supply chain might be catching up now, the real implications of the rising price of crude oil are not heartening. Will the cost of raw material rise with the cost of their source of those raw materials? It makes logical sense to expect prices to go up.

But we’re fairly certain about one thing– we’re all going down anyway, so prices wander where they may. As long as you can order plastic, you might as well keep buying because there won’t be a lot of raw material left after modern society is sent back to the stone age.

                                       — Go Down Throwing