The meat of my liberal friend's reply on gas-gouging:
I make no excuses for signing the petition to stop gas price gouging. Exxon (and whoever else) was doing just fine without $15 billion profits 5 years ago. Why the price hike now? Maybe a certain war has to do with it. For simplicity's sake, big oil just doesn't need that much money, and they shouldn't have to rely on the consumer for it. On top of that, (note: the following is speculative only) if we hadn't invaded Iraq, prices would still be at ~$1.19, and everyone would be happy.
To my liberal friend,
You have brought up a few objections that I should have anticipated before sending my first message. So thank you for giving me another chance to address them.
So let's think about your objections together seriously for a minute here: big oil *doesn't need* that much money??? How do YOU know how much money they NEED??!! And most importantly, what makes YOU, or the GOVERNMENT, or anyone else besides Exxon executives think they SHOULD be the ones to DECIDE how much Exxon needs. (Exxonmobil, is really small fry oil, by the way: 3% market share in 2001 according to the Wall Street Journal—the REALLY big boys are the Saudis, OPEC, Iran, Venezuela. In other words: state-owned companies which are in states run by dictators who use the power of government to take their country's resources to line their own pockets and keep their own people impoverished—not exactly a free market there).
But back to WHO DECIDES…What you're proposing by signing on with a bill to have government control a gasoline price is that the government should be the one to decide, not the company. To be even more charitable in my description: you're suggesting "We the people" should decide a fair limit for our gas price, right? Isn't that a little bit covetous?—they've got what we want, so we're going to make sure they can't do what they want with it until we get our "fair" share…How fair is that really? It's THEIRS. Isn't it a little like stealing for "we the people" to dictate a price?
Really, I don't think you read much of what I wrote to understand it. You've demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of what a profit even IS, if you can even think the thought: "they don't NEED that much". And, again, if you would read yourself with an open mind, you'd realize how truly nonsensical it sounds to claim that an oil company (or ANY company for that matter) should "not have to rely on the consumer for it". Really? On whom SHOULD the company rely? Who else SHOULD pay them? The government? No one? It really is nonsense! Should gas be free? Of course, but it DOES cost SOMETHING to get out of the ground, doesn't it? There's no such thing as free oil OR a free lunch! A profit is PROOF that you have PLEASED YOUR FELLOW MAN. Nothing more, nothing less. When you think about it that way, pleasing 15 BILLION dollars worth of your fellow man means you've done WONDERFUL THINGS FOR HUMANITY. Seriously, think about it for a minute. What do you have in your bedroom, house, car, that isn't made of plastic that an oil company originally got out of the ground. How free are you to roam about as you please because these companies gave you the fuel you use? Can you even imagine how much of a grinding halt all the good things Americans produce and do in a day would come to if there were no oil?
It may be true that Exxonmobil was doing fine before their record profits in the past few years, but who are you, who am I to judge? Do you know how much it costs to explore and produce an oil well? I don't, but I bet there's no Mr. Exxon sitting in his bank vault counting his 15 Billion all day. What do you think is done with those profits? Are they greedily horded, and perhaps used to give lavish pleasures to a select few off the backs of the world? Maybe they do make some few people rich. But why do you care? It's NOT injustice for them to earn lots and lots of money, or to be rich. Their trading is done FAIRLY already: no one is holding a gun to your head to buy gasoline!
Of course it's more reasonable to assume that the vast bulk of those profits are USED to buy new equipment, explore new drilling, make new wells, improve fuels, develop new sources of energy for when the oil dries up (there's WILDLY varied reports on when that might be, by the way, most of which suggest it won't be in our lifetimes or our childrens'), improving shipping, refining, storage technology, etc., etc., etc. The money is NOT sitting around in a bank, and EVEN IF IT WAS, what do you think the BANK DOES with money? Banks INVEST IT BACK INTO THE ECONOMY!!! No, the solution is NOT a government price control, it's MORE capitalism: it's time for YOU to buy some STOCK in Exxonmobil and SHARE their profits!!! (That's the REAL answer to where the money goes: the millions and millions of Americans whose pensions depend on investments in such wonderfully productive and profitable enterprises as Exxon. When they do well, WE ALL BENEFIT!!!)
That's the economic issues, but again, on the political and military issues involved, I'm sorry, but you just don't understand what you're talking about before you make your opinion. It's preposterous to believe that the invasion of Iraq was based on a need for oil. It makes NO logical sense. I know that's not exactly what you said, so only take this as it applies, but I WOULD like you to think through the following: Even if you believe that Bush is WRONG, it would be completely IRRATIONAL (which I don't think anyone consistently claims—some do think he's nuts, but then the same people grant him brilliant powers of conspiracy—both can't be true at the same time, so I think we can agree he's at least a rational human being) for him to use military force to control oil markets by taking over Iraq: 1. We're the richest country in the world, why not just buy it?, 2. There are a hundred cheaper ways of getting oil which DON'T require the investment of TRILLIONS of dollars in military expenditures NOT TO MENTION loss of life (in this sense it's MUCH MORE REASONABLE to actually BELIEVE the administration when it says it went in there to overturn the cycle of dictatorial tyranny in the Middle East by striking its military epicenter, which at the time was Iraq), 3. Iraqi oil supplies wouldn't make that much of a difference to the world so Iraq would have been the wrong place, 4. The war made INVESTORS jittery about the world supply and what OTHER countries with big supplies would do (i.e. Iran), and the OTHER countries withheld supplies (which if you remember drives prices up) because it helped them earn more money faster, NOT the oil companies (In other words, the profiteering was done by the other state-run dictatorship-owned companies, NOT "Big oil", Not America!), 5. Even without the war the world DEMAND is rapidly increasing because of economic booms in India and China (that's roughly 2 BILLION NEW drivers coming online in the next decades!), so prices would have jumped sharply anyway.
Please read and think very carefully about what a profit is, and how a free exchange benefits both parties, what the law of supply and demand implies, and especially how government intervention in a free market always produces the opposite result than the one it intends anyway. That last one by itself should be enough to convince you to back out of supporting this bill IF you're willing to base your attitudes on logic and fact, rather than emotion and misunderstanding.
And the kicker is to think about this question: how does it help YOU to know that someone ELSE was punished for making money? When you're honest with yourself you'll have to admit that it really doesn't. It makes you *feel* better, but it doesn't help you any other way. Don't tax them, rather applaud them, buy stock in their company, and change your attitude from "I don't have it, so you shouldn't" to "I don't have it, so I want to find out how you got it and try something like that myself." THAT'S the attitude that will help you get over it. Whatever the gas price is, if you resolve to make that much more money, you won't have to worry about it, will you? You're not a potato, you're a talented human being with skills—go out, use them, take a risk, and reap the rewards. But don't try to take anothers' rewards away: that's breaking the two commandments I talked about earlier.
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