What's going on with Big Oil today is analogous.


Perhaps, but it's not a certainty. But even if the analogy is accurate, it
is still conceptual in nature. Much like the concept of price gouging, the
definition of excess profits is very obscure and vague, if it exists at all.
There is a reason that price gouging charges are rarely prosecuted and
almost never successfully so. Without a clear and precise definition of the
concept, proving a case is nearly impossible. At this point, one man's
definition of profiteering is another man's definition of capitalism in its
highest form. Who gets to choose who's definition is the most just? And
it's not just a simple matter of numbers. There is clearly an element of
morality involved here, and any attempt to legislate morality is always a
bit of a sticky wicket. And so goes the perils of a free market society.
At any rate, it would seem that the general gist of your solution to the
problem would be to redistribute wealth from a particular corporate sector,
in this case Big Oil, to the government, via a special provision in the tax
code or a piece of legislation. What a surprise. In other words, robbery,
as you see it, by corporations is unmitigated evil, but robbery by the
government is chaste and just. This has rarely been a good plan, but it is
very Sherwood Forest chic.

But never mind all that. Let's assume for a moment that you indeed were
King of the Forest, and that your heist and shakedown of those that actually
generated the riches through legal means of production was complete. Now
that the coffers of your administration have been enriched in the name of
social justice, what next? From my perspective, your blatant act of
thuggery simply replaced one crime (assuming you believe one has been
committed in the first place), with another. The deck chairs on the Titanic
have successfully been rearranged, but the ship is still in peril. Women
and children first. The true root of the problem has not even begun to be
addressed. And without that, the status quo is pretty much maintained.

The root of the problem is so obvious, it amazes me how little attention it
gets in the banter that always follows a run up in gas prices. Well not
really. It's human nature to point a finger of blame 180 degrees away from
one's self, and Big Oil is such an easy and readily accepted target. Fish
in a barrel, as it were. Much easier than a true analysis of the real
problem, for which there are no easy solutions at hand. We have met the
enemy, and he is us. And it's not a pretty picture.

Are you aware of the astonishing rate of daily conversion of bicycles and
oxcarts to motorized vehicles in China and India, as well as other
developing economies? Do you realize that this process is in its very early
stages and is irreversible? Do your realize that as global wealth and
affluence increases exponentially, so does energy consumption?

Are you aware that all the dino juice that exits today and will ever exist
tomorrow has long since been produced, and that it gets increasingly more
difficult and expensive to find and extract from the ground as time goes on?

Can you tell me the last time a new refining facility was built in the
United States? A new nuke plant?

Are you able to draw any parallels from the above questions with the
irrefutable economic laws of supply and demand? Do you think any of this
might be responsible for the price of a gallon of gas?

Perhaps the central issue is not one of excessive profits, but rather
excessive consumption, of which we are all guilty to some degree. But just
as there is no standard for the concept of excessive profits, there is no
such standard for the concept of excessive consumption.

It seems to me that the only sure way out of this mess is a real and viable
alternative to oil-based energy. It is as obvious as it is elusive. So, I
guess that if I was to expend a bunch of my bodily energy banging a drum for
a cause, it would have much less to do with the evils of profiteering, and
would have more to do with creating epic-sized incentives in the area of
alternative energy research. So, if I were King of the Forest, I'd be
thinking of ways to get the energy companies and the scientific community to
get all over this issue. The promises of riches usually will get most
people's attention. You prefer the stick, I prefer the carrot. I'd also
try and find a way to address the sad state of our educational system, with
one of the targeted goals to increase the level of interest and competence
of students in the sciences. Technology got us into this mess, and it's
going to have to get us out of it. There should be a national sense of
purpose and dedication to the cause similar to the one of putting a man on
the moon in the 1960's. Maybe in a decade or two, we can think out way out
of this. In the meantime, fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy
ride.