"Crisis is Opportunity" - ancient Chinese motto
Whether or not Peak Oil is at our door, the real story is how demand has begun to outstrip supply, which shall lead to more-or-less permanent shortages, and sooner than later. A diary by Jerome a Paris from last year shows what happens to market prices when demand gets ahead of supply, whether the cause is dwindling supply or increasing demand, using molybdenum (recent) and whale oil (19th century) as examples. In the case of whale oil, prices may well have gone higher had not kerosene (i.e. petroleum), and electricity later on, replaced whale oil for lighting some time after the peak.
Using molybdenum as an example, prices climbed fairly steadily for a few years (sound familiar?), suddenly tripled almost overnight, then doubled again over the next few months before falling back a little. If gasoline and diesel fuel follow the same trend, we could hit $15/gallon in the US! That is, when we can get it.
Keep reading, then take the poll...
Everyone who is paying attention understands that transportation depends nearly exclusively on petroleum products, and that just about everything in the stores and supermarkets travels long distances, and that our ability to produce food also requires a large amount of petroleum for fertilizer and fuel. In short, our entire system of commerce depends on easily-available oil. When oil runs short, commerce won't dry up — nobody is completely self-sufficient, after all — but the system of commerce will reconfigure itself breathtakingly quickly to re-adjust itself to the new reality. There will certainly be a crash, and nearly everyone will be worse off than before, but a new (perhaps shaky) equilibrium will be reached.
When you can't economically schlep parts or food across great distances, markets and manufacturing will necessarily become highly localized. When traditional energy is hard to come by, people will want alternates. And between those two facts lies the opportunity for those who are willing to give it a try. Personally, I would rather see most Kossacks reap what benefits there are to be had, because you are the people most likely to spread the benefits around. There were plenty of "advanced" civilizations that ran without oil or even coal, but they largely depended on slave labor for energy. I doubt any of us would even want to be the masters (let alone slaves) in such a dystopian scenario. Nor would any of us want a return to the Gilded Age, where a privileged few benefitted from the hard labor of the many.
There's nothing that says you can't start a business that pays employees well, provides good service (a necessity in a localized economy), and thrives. Indeed, left-leaners are the most likely to do it. What lines of business are we talking about? One line that should be obvious is wind power generators -- the materials are going to be readily available, in the form of all those permanently parked vehicles. Take the sheet metal to make blades, attach them to the alternator, use the frame to build a rooftop tower, and use the existing wiring to charge the car battery. Eventually, such a business could — like the hog butchers of old — find a use for everything but the horn.
Farming will be a necessity; unfortunately it will return to a more labor-intensive operation as it was in the past. Farm hands will supply labor (and security, at least during and shortly after the crash). There could well be a die-off after the crash, during which people will try to survive by any means necessary — which means protecting a crop could be a cold-blooded (and unfortunately necessary) business. This, like security services, would hardly appeal to any of us. Aquaculture (fish farming) might be a "safer" business, since it would be more difficult for raiders to catch a few fish than to strip a field of corn.
Unfortunately, the post-oil world will probably resemble Mad Max II more than the ecotopian ideals of sustainable communities. If we survive the crash, we can help to shape the aftermath — but we need to be in a position to do both.
What other lines of business will be useful?