June 5, 2006
Now I'll admit I don't watch sitcoms any more, so the bar might be pretty low.
There's a commercial out by some kind of special-interest group, talking about questions the American people should be asking the oil companies. Some of them make sense if you think about them: What are you doing to research alternative energy sources?
That really does make sense: If the peak-oil people are right, the oil companies are going to need to find new sources of income. Likewise, if prices keep going up and people start getting sick of paying for gas and the companies are going to lose some of their economies of scale.
But like I said, that's not the dumb one. The dumb one was: Why does worldwide demand for oil affect the price I pay at the pump?
Let me repeat that for you, since you may not believe you just read it: Why does worldwide demand for oil affect the price I pay at the pump? The sheer stupidity of that question is almost too much for me to bear. I realize not everyone out there has gone to college. Maybe some people slept through their high-school economics class. But are there so many people out there who are so dense as to be unaware of the law of supply and demand that the commercial will encite them to question the way things work?
I'm guessing these people are already pissed at the oil companies because gas was cheaper when they were kids (90ยข for me, if I remember right) and now they're looking at $3.00 per gallon to fill their H2s.
So, just in case any of the tools who would write to ExxonMobil, or Shell, or any of the oil companies are reading this: Yes, the more people who want a good or service, the more expensive it will become. If you want to question Big Oil about something I'm sure you can find it -- the record profits do seem suspicious to me given their oligopolic nature, but I don't know if they track well with crude prices -- but if you're going to question supply and demand you should probably just walk everywhere.
