Another way to look at gas prices
Ah yes, Doug Wright is still blathering on about how high Utah's gas prices are.
Here Doug, think of it this way:
You own a company that sells widgets. If you charge two dollars a widget, you sell a total of 500 widgets each month. But if you raise the price to three dollars a widget, you still sell 500 widgets each month. That being the case, wouldn't you raise the price from two dollars a widget to three dollars a widget if you knew that just as many people were still going to buy widgets from you?
It's the same thing with gas prices. Sure, retailers could sell a gallon of fuel for less, but they know that you'll still buy as much at a higher cost. The know you'll sit there and whine about it, but not actually change your personal habits, such as (gasp!) driving less.
Don't you believe in a free market economy Doug? In a free market economy, gas stations can charge however much they want, and consumers are free to decide how much gas they want to purchase. So if you really don't like high gas prices, then walk to church, carpool or take mass transit to work, and make sure that all of your local officials know just how harmful poorly planned, sprawled "development" is.
Here Doug, think of it this way:
You own a company that sells widgets. If you charge two dollars a widget, you sell a total of 500 widgets each month. But if you raise the price to three dollars a widget, you still sell 500 widgets each month. That being the case, wouldn't you raise the price from two dollars a widget to three dollars a widget if you knew that just as many people were still going to buy widgets from you?
It's the same thing with gas prices. Sure, retailers could sell a gallon of fuel for less, but they know that you'll still buy as much at a higher cost. The know you'll sit there and whine about it, but not actually change your personal habits, such as (gasp!) driving less.
Don't you believe in a free market economy Doug? In a free market economy, gas stations can charge however much they want, and consumers are free to decide how much gas they want to purchase. So if you really don't like high gas prices, then walk to church, carpool or take mass transit to work, and make sure that all of your local officials know just how harmful poorly planned, sprawled "development" is.
posted by Utah Peaknik at 7:05 AM
2 Comments:
The cries in Utah for socialist government oversight of the fuel industry continue to amaze me. The concept of an unregulated free market is held sacred here until some commodity owners are profiting at their expense. There is a message embedded in the rapidly rising price of anything. That message is "Don't buy me".
We have built ourselves into almost complete dependence on a mode of transportation that has existed for barely a century. We are already beginning to lose the ability to sustain and afford it. It is time to begin building and planning ourselves back out of that dependence.
PS i have a private email just for peak oil topics: lowonoil_AT_xmission_DOT_com
I heard Doug Wright ranting today about a Friday the 13th gas station boycott "to show the oil companies that we aren't fools". Reminded me of that scene in "All You Ever Wanted to Know About Sex" where mad scientist John Carradine explained that his bizarre experiments were meant to "Show those fools who called me mad."
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