The High Price of Gasoline

and Laissez-faire Justification

I'm writing in response to Alex Epstein's recent guest editorial column printed in my local newspaper.

Epstein's byline reads "is the junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute...." His duties, according to their web site, include "writing op-ed and giving media interviews." The Ayn Rand Institute promotes rational self-interest (the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness) and laissez-faire capitalism that opposes governmental regulation of or interference in commerce.

The Ann Rand Institute seems to be an organization that believes in being selfish, and being selfish should extend not only to the individual, but also to corporations. If an individual's or corporation's interest is profit above everything, it means profit comes before clean air, profit comes before safe drinking water, profit comes before the health and safety of the employees, and profit comes before affordable necessities of others.

The first part of Epstein's column is dedicated to justifying high gasoline prices and to convince us that American citizens and our government should have absolutely no business questioning those high prices.

Epstein proposes that "no matter what the price of gasoline", the call for government involvement is wrong." In the realm of business, a higher price means that firms will only purchase oil or gasoline to the extent that they can make a profitable use of it at those prices.... and to use the government to coerce lower prices ... causes destructive shortages.... (as in the 1970's)."

I ask­if the oil companies decreased the supply in order to raise the price to $7 a gallon, would it be wrong for citizens to question the increase? Should the average person, who depends on gasoline for transportation to work, quietly plan their walking route rather than ask their elected government officials to find out if the price is being manipulated? If the oil companies are monkeying with the supply, are we wrong to ask our representatives to investigate and take action against those companies?

Global multi-billion dollar firms can spread out their cost of doing business, but small businesses can not. Doubling or tripling the price of gasoline can drive a small business out of business, such as a restaurant owner who has to pay prohibitively high prices for his supplies and food products because high gas prices affect the cost of every product being transported.

Mr. Epstein needs to go back to history class. Lower gas prices didn't cause long gas lines in the '70s. The shortages in the 1970's were a result of the Arab oil embargo against Western nations who supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. They wanted to teach us a lesson. Shortages were a result of manipulation of the supply of oil to America, a manipulation that our government was unable to regulate and a scenario that we citizens should have learned from. We were on the right track when we began driving more fuel efficient cars. Today, we're right back where we were before. We are again driving gas guzzlers and are even more dependent on countries and companies that can increase the price of the oil just by shutting a valve.

Every citizen in America is dependent on gasoline, whether we use it directly or depend on it to transport milk to our local grocery store. Laissez-faire capitalists want us to believe that the law of supply and demand dictates the price of oil as fairly as it does any other product. It doesn't.

Everyone needs clothes, and until the clothing industry is gobbled up by five or six major global producers, you can continue spending $10 rather than 30 times that for a shirt to cover your back, because economic competition is still working in the clothing industry.

That is not the case with gasoline. Find a station selling unleaded for 10¢ a gallon, 1/30th of the $3.00 we've been paying. A dollar sixty to fill our tanks certainly beats the sixty dollars we've been paying lately. Filling up your tank for $1.60 is a fantasy because, at this time, there is no competition.

Epstein complains that "the refining industry has spent over $47 billion over the last decade to comply with environmental and fuel regulations...." If one stops to think, this cost is spread out over ten years, and among the multi-billion dollar companies that own the refineries. Keeping their employees and their neighboring communities safe and producing fuel that is safer for our environment is a small slice of their operating cost. And I, for one, am not going to listen to their whining.

All of the nonsense the ARI wanted us to believe in the first part of the op-ed, was a setup for the propaganda to follow, which tries to convince us that gas prices would drop if we allowed the oil companies to drill in the "ANWR". I expect Epstein used the acronym for two reasons. A web search leads to sites written by pro-drilling groups, more propaganda he'd like you to find, and had he written the "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge", the reader would realize that this land was set aside for American citizens and the plants, animals, and other nature we wish to protect.

Epstein even goes so far as to describe the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a wasteland. Corporations interested only in economic value of land see it that way.

But is there no value other than economic value? Is there no value in listening to a free concert in the park? Is there no value in a viewing a glorious sunset? Is there no value in rocking an already sleeping child? Of course, there is. There is also value in keeping the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the caring hands of "We the People," and out of the selfish grip of laissez-faire industrialists.

Epstein would have us believe that to expect less expensive, clean fuel is wrong and that the only way to keep driving is to let the oil companies keep drilling where ever they want with as few regulations as possible. But I know better. You do, too. Write your legislators.

Lisa B. Wilkinson is an author and former public school teacher and librarian.

More information is available at:

Defenders of Wildlife

answers.com

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