High Gasoline Prices and How to Protest Them

The reason gas prices are so high lies in two facts. One is that our society is based primarily upon the ability to travel in a personal automobile. As a percent of the price of a car, $3 per gallon gas going into a $30,000 car is little different than $.30 per gallon gas going into the $3,000 cars of 40 years ago. The oil companies have figured out that people did not stop buying cars because they became egregiously expensive. So, if they can afford the car, why can't they afford the gas?

The second reason and really the primary one is that oil executives believe no one can stop them from charging whatever they want. The shrinking number of oil companies has created a virtual monopoly as they now work together to get and sell oil. Because these companies are for the most part now multinational in nature, it is hard for the trust busting policies that broke up Rockefeller's Standard Oil and A T & T do not always apply to companies whose headquarters is in England or France or Germany, but do business in the United States.

Other countries adapted to the higher gasoline prices years ago by not building their infrastructure to cater to only the private auto. They have faster and more reliable trains. Bicycles are a transportation staple. Many roads are designed to only carry very small commuter vehicles.

So, how do we protest this choke hold that big oil has on the United States economy. The first way is to simply lean on legislators with sufficient numbers of their constituents to convince them that laws are needed to control gasoline pricing. They will argue that in a free-market economy price points are set by competition. This is a fallacy in this case because there really isn't decent competition to have natural price controls.