Real_Trouble
Posts: 471
Joined: 2/25/2008
Status: offline
|
quote:
I certainly don’t think the Saudi’s are boy scouts and have the economic well-being of the US as a priority but nor do I think the price of oil is strictly a supply and demand issue as you seem to think.
Okay, but if oil is not governed by supply and demand, then what is it governed by?
If there was no demand, the price of oil would be $0! And if there was infinite well-distributed supply, the price would be whatever the cost of transportation and extraction was!
Of course it is governed strictly by supply and demand.
Now, there may be ancilliary factors (monopolistic behavior by oil producing nations, our fucking around with our energy policy), but none of these would be possible without the supply / demand issue.
quote:
We subsidize them now! See:
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/fuel_economy/subsidizing-big-oil.html
I'm well aware of the current round of oil subsidies, but these aren't out of line with a lot of other incentives we offer many other kinds of corporations. Perhaps a better line is 'would we additionally subsidize them'? We don't take profits away from other industries currently.
quote:
What is the Iraq invasion but a protectionist move to aid the oil industry?
Please. That's giving far too much credit to the planning of this war; it was driven by blind idealogy. Bush is on the record claiming God told him to invade Iraq. Likewise, if it was a push to support big oil, why did we fuck up the infrastructure heavily in our initial attacks, then have failed to secure the oil pipelines and production facilities to sell to US companies at a discount in the name of generating revenues for 'rebuilding' Iraq?
If this was an oil play, it's the most pathetic and worthless oil play in history.
quote:
Big business is subsidized in about a thousand different ways. Open your eyes.
I don't disagree, but at who's expense? This is a question that I don't often see asked. If we, say, raise the taxes on Apple computers or lower tariffs protecting them against foreign competition, this leads to one of three things:
1 - Shareholders make less money on reduced profit margins, which means less people in the US are deriving gains from their investments, which means less money for them to spend when they retire or currently, which reduces jobs since we need less people producing services and goods.
2 - Apple employees get pay cuts or get fired, which means less money for them to spend when they retire or currently, which reduces jobs since we need less people producing services and goods.
3 - Apple raises the price of all of their products, which means that everyone else cannot purchase as much as they previously could.
Most subsidies are ultimately meaningless unless they favor specific firms; general industry subsidies (barring egregious cases, and I will grant you those exist) tend to have a net zero impact. Money in, money out. It primarily enriches investors and employees in those industries, but since anyone is free to invest in public companies, the only reason that can't be you is if you aren't smart enough to invest in them.
Lastly, if you check my other posts, I actually do decry government subsidies (and tariffs / windfall taxes) repeatedly. There is an inefficiency expense to administrating all of this, and occasional gross abuses do occur.
I would be thrilled if the US (and the rest of the world) actually tried a free market for once (keep in mind corporate subsidies are antithetical to a free market system); I'm not about to hold my breath, though. I doubt I will see one before I die.
quote:
As a country we must lead with our political might or step aside and let a younger more vibrant nations do it. But right now Big oil rules the world.
What, exactly, would you have us do?
Invade other countries and take their stuff (oil)? Refuse to buy oil and cripple our economy because now we can't produce anything? Or maybe drop some of our senseless restrictions on the kinds of energy we have much more reliable access to (nuclear, coal - pollution issue aside here, so don't take me as advocating coal, solar, wind, hydro)?
I am all for the last option, but the former two seem like more problematic situations than our current one. Tanking the world economy (and ours with it) or rolling out our tanks are not winning strategies here.
quote:
The problem is coming from the OPEC nations. So to get the price of oil and ultimately gasoline to drop, you have to find a way to exert pressure on the OPEC members, not the oil companies.
I concur with this entirely.
The best way to force the price of something down is to reduce demand (if nobody is buying the price is zero); we need to reduce our energy usage where possible, switch to more readily accessible forms of energy, and then watch the bottom fall out of the oil market.
While I think the temporary measures Bashful suggests are useful for the symbolic value, we also need to look at long-term and permanent measures to solve this problem conclusively.
_____________________________
Send lawyers, guns, and money.
|
RE: Should We Litigate With Gas Companies? - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread