My coworker claims to be a libertarian, but he comes off as a leftist when he writes:
I am not going to claim that I know what's going on or why. Gas prices in the US are through the roof. (Welcome to what the rest of the has been paying for years now, America.) Folks are blaming an incompetent, geriatric president for single-handedly shutting down pipeline (that hasn't even been built) when he struggles to remember how words work. Personally, I don't buy it. There's more at play here.
You know who really benefits from high oil prices? Oil companies! You know who loves shutting down supply in order to raise the cost? Oil companies! You know who really doesn't want the market flooded with oil flowing down a pipeline, driving the cost down? Oil companies!
Look, you can call me a simpleton if you will, but it seems to me that the oil companies have more to do with the price at the pump than do sanctions and foreign policies and politicians.
I wrote this comment in response:
I don't know, man... you sound as if you've bought into Biden's rhetoric when you say, "You know who really benefits from high oil prices? Oil companies! You know who loves shutting down supply in order to raise the cost? Oil companies! You know who really doesn't want the market flooded with oil flowing down a pipeline, driving the cost down? Oil companies!" This is basically Biden's BS pitch to the people—as if rising fuel prices have nothing to do with his moronic turn to green energy (which, on the whole, is still not ready for prime time), his greenlighting of the Nord Stream pipeline while simultaneously nixing the Keystone Pipeline, and a host of other measures he took within a week of acceding to the Oval Office. Emphasizing oil-company greed also sounds more like a Bernie Bro position than that of a libertarian. Libertarians don't generally like corporate greed, true, but they're normally pragmatic enough to recognize it as a constant reality.
Here's libertarian Styx (9:32): "Yelling at the oil companies and pretending that they're price-gouging people by keeping up with the [Biden-caused] rate of inflation plus the rate of oil increase in [inaudible] terms, anyway, if you add those together, their record profits don't look so impressive!" His whole video makes for a good watch.
Then there's this interesting video by libertarian group Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), which makes the cogent psychological point that corporate greed doesn't account for the post-Trump rise in prices we're seeing. Start watching at 10:32. The guy in the video asserts that greed is a constant: if a sudden surge in greed accounts for price increases, then as a corollary, a decrease in greed must therefore account for price reductions. That doesn't make any sense if you assume greed to be a constant, which it is. Does greed ever decrease? This is what I mean about libertarians being pragmatic: they recognize greed as a simple, brute reality.
The FEE video also notes the scary statistic that 80% of all existing dollars have been printed over just the last two years. That's on Biden, who has unleashed the dollar-printing hounds—ruining the economy by producing masses of new money, thereby decreasing the dollar's worth and truncating buying power.
So I'm not sure where your perspective is coming from, but it strikes me as more nakedly leftist than libertarian, and that's based on just the two libertarian sources quoted above. I'm not saying I disagree with your basic cynicism about Big Oil; there's definitely much to be cynical about, and Big Oil shows us the nasty underbelly of capitalism. But the chain of causation you've set up in your post strikes me as, well, not quite accurate.
A partial solution to our current problem would be for Biden to admit Trump was on the right track by allowing fracking (something even Obama did, as Styx has repeatedly noted), making the US a net exporter of fuel again (as it was under Trump), and allowing the US to supply Europe whatever fuel it no longer gets from Russia. A US-European partnership would be lucrative in the long term (even with the added shipping costs for sending US fuel to Europe), and Europe wouldn't have to constantly worry about someone like Putin messing with its fuel supply as a way to dictate EU policy from afar.
My two cents, anyway.
Styx continues to talk about fuel prices here.
3 comments:
Being self-reliant in any commodity is a good thing and it improves national security when you don't rely on imports. It really is as simple as that. Trump was no genius but he certainly understand the value in putting America's interests first.
I posted this on Twitter last week:
"Just going to throw this out there…
People know that the price of oil is set by commodities trading markets around the world. It isn’t just an oil company or refining company stating that the price is X.
Y’all know that, right?"
I didn't think last week, and still don't think this week, that most people know that oil companies don't set the price of oil. A few liberals in my TL were good enough to ask how pricing happens. I had to refer them to some websites that explain how commodities markets work. And a bunch of them threw out the "Keystone XL pipeline hadn't been built so canceling it can't affect prices" line. I had to tell them that there already is a Keystone pipeline. The "XL" is the key part. The Keystone XL was to increase the size and capacity of the Keystone pipeline. To allow more oil to flow to refineries and processors across the US. The issue with Keystone XL is that with its cancellation comes uncertainty. Uncertainty in markets produces higher prices. To be fair, the oil companies do bear some responsibility as they determine (at least in part) how much oil they pump. So they aren't off the hook. But there is another factor, refining capacity. It does no good to pump more oil when your refineries are already at capacity. Which they pretty much are in the US. And there hasn't been a rush on building new refineries, due to many factors ranging from environmental concerns to NIMBYism. Oil prices, like so many other things, are not just a question of greedy oil companies giving consumers the shaft.
But that doesn't make a soundbite...
Mike,
Very educational comment. Thanks.
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