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With diesel fuel, the taxes used to be paid by the main users-truckers through a different system so the tax wasn't included in the pump price. Back then if you had a diesel vehicle you paid very little for fuel and avoided the fuel tax. I worked at a shop in the mid '70s that did diesel conversions on pickup trucks, pretty cool stuff; a 3-71 or 4-71 Detroit in a one ton pickup with a Road Ranger  .
As another note to price, gasoline costs roughly ten times what it did 25 years ago. I make quite a bit more than ten times what my dad made in 1973.
Now I know that's not a very accurate guide to inflation, but it seems that gasoline is in the ballpark with everything else.
The father of one of my high school buddies had a Mercedes diesel that he kept in a garage heated with fuel oil. He had a 200 gallon fuel tank out back of the garage that occasionally ran empty in the middle of the summer. Seemed like most of the farmers had diesel powered pickups.
As opposed to the price of fuel. Electronic equipment is a fraction of what it used to cost. Much of the stuff we have now didn't exist when I was in college and it's dirt cheap. Cars and motorcycles are much better and, adjusted for inflation, usually cost less.
We all like to think of ourselves as rugged individualists. But when push comes to shove most of us are sheep who do what we are told. Worst of all, a lot of us become unpaid agents of whoever is controlling the agenda by enforcing the current dogma on the few rugged individualists who actually exist.
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