I don't see what you guys are complaining about, my oil company stocks are going through the roof.:hihi: :hihi: :hihi:
1. if it was true that you are screwed, and you are stuck buying something you cannot afford, you have made some bad decisions, and you shouldnt expect the government to bail you out. 2. almost everyone can easily afford to drive to work, probably alone, in a car that is larger than necessary. again, if what you say was true, there would not be such a ridiculous amount of massive cars on the road. it isnt true that people arestruggling to buy gas. it is true that they often favor any policy that they think helps them, not realizing that free trade is what helps them. if gas is out of control, how do explain all these suvs on the road? we could very easily burn far far less oil than we do. it is our choice that we do not. nobody forced us. we choose to drive as much as we do. when gas is so expensive that you cant afford to drive to work, buy a motorcycle and enjoy your 75 miles to the 30 dollar gallon. like i said, if people cant afford gas, they will be driving smaller cars. when this happens, and the oil companies are selling so little gas that they are not maximizing progit, they will charge less. of course by then they might run out, according to you. red panic reason number 1: gas companies collude to screw us. red panic reason number 2: the gas we must have is killing the environment red panic reason number 3: peak oil shos us that the earth is running out of oil, we are in trouble see a pattern here? you are just looking for reasons to be scared. you buy too much into the scare tactics the media uses to sell newspapers.
I didn't offer any solution nor did I say there was a problem, just making sure you were not confused on that one point. However I think the opposite, less industry involvement in our government would help.
I'll make an effort, at least. STATEMENT 1 -- fuel prices in Africa High oil prices are hurting many countries in Africa, including Zimbabwe, Eritrea and Tanzania. High oil prices have created an oil supply instability, per barrel price instability or both. In some cases this has led to fuel rationing being enacted. Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa lack the foreign exchange reserves to purchase enough oil products at increasingly higher prices. These nations must resort to limiting imports or rationing their existing supplies. -- from Wikipedia STATEMENT 1 -- Collusion There is already congressional interest. Link: Senators Say Oil Executives' Memos Indicate Collusion Oil Companies are regularly charged with violations of Federal Trade Commission Acts. FTC Complaint 9710026 in the matter of Shell/Texaco
All of this is about conservation measures that make good sense and with which I have no problem. But it is not the subject at hand. Your notion that we can just stop buying gas is not backed up by any of this. It ain't practical. Translation: "Red splintered my logical arguments and no one is agreeing with me, so I'll just distract attention from my plight by trying to make fun of Red. What Me Worry?" :grin:
Gas prices hit record high Lundberg survey has self-serve regular hitting a national average of $3.07 for a gallon May 7 2007 ATLANTA (CNN) -- The price of gasoline has hit a new record high, averaging $3.07 for a gallon of self-serve regular in the United States, a survey reported Sunday. When inflation is factored in, the new price trails the all-time high in March 1981. At the time, gasoline cost $1.35 a gallon -- in today's dollars, that's $3.13 a gallon, said Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the Lundberg Survey. Still, in raw numbers, the $3.07 beats the previous high of $3.03 in August of 2006. Read the rest . . .
it is practical to drastically reduce your use, but you dont need to. you would rather lean on the government to hurt your opponent in a perfectly fair and voluntary free market exchange. the pretense that americans cannot afford enough gas to operate their lives is false. the average american can "just stop" buying gas at the rate they do now, but they do not. like i mentioned earlier, we have built this suburban sprawl lifestyle on cheap oil. it wouldnt bother me if this sprawl and white flight from urban areas was reversed and we all enjoyed living in an actual town and having a walk now and then. baton rouge is a good example of what cheap gas does. downtown baton rouge used to be something, i am sure you know. people used to actually be downtown. there was an actuall community. now everyone lives far from town in the suburbs. now nobody lives downtown and the govenrment has to think up revitalization projects to bring people back. this is because of cheap oil. let me ask you this. have gas prices caused you to change your use even slightly? have you gotten a smaller car or carpooled with your pal, or ridden a bicycle more or been smarter about your planning? if not, shouldnt you do things like that before you ask the government to make changes? the point is that regarding one issue, oil, you have three different fear-generating scenarios for the government to fix. i think that is interesting.
