Thus said Shane Hathaway on Wed, 31 Aug 2005 17:25:25 MDT: > I did not suggest new legislation or price fixing. I suggested the > government should react by:
My apologies for misunderstanding what you meant. > - looking for ways to raise the capacity of other refineries for a > short time What makes you think the government can do any better at this than the businesses? Remember, the businesses have the customer to cater to. To whom does the government have to cater? Ever hear the phrase ``Customer is King?'' The same cannot be said of the people with respect to their government. In this case, if the price of crude oil goes to high, and hence the cost of producing gasoline which gets passed on to the consumer, the consumer will react by purchasing less or finding alternatives. If companies in this business want to stay competitive, they will be forced by market forces to become more efficient or go out of business. If this means raising the capacity, so be it. No one is forcing consumers to buy oil based products. > These kinds of reactions require a level of agility that the free > market does not have. I tend to disagree on this point. I think the market reacts much more quickly and deftly than any bloated governmental institution can do. Andy -- GnuPG ID 0xA63888C9 (D2DA 68C9 BB2B 26B4 8204 2219 A43E F450 A638 88C9) [-----------[system uptime]--------------------------------------------] 8:59pm up 72 days, 5:37, 2 users, load average: 1.10, 1.11, 1.17 .-----------------------------------. | This has been a P.L.U.G. mailing. | | Don't Fear the Penguin. | | IRC: #utah at irc.freenode.net | `-----------------------------------'
