I recently had someone tell me "I can't believe that year in and year
out these fat cat oil companies make money hand over fist and no one
has done anything about it yet". He blamed the high price of oil on
George Bush. I said "I put more blame on Ben Bernanke and the
so-called environmentalists - Ben for destroying the currency and the
environmentalists for needlessly restricting new sources of energy
supply."
I took him down the well-worn path of libertarian laissez-faire
economics with the following comments:
1. If you want less of something, then tax it. If you want less
incentive to bring on new sources of supply that will lower future
prices, then tax the profits.
2. If it's so profitable with not much risk, maybe you should start
your own oil company
3. No one suggests giving money to the oil companies when oil prices
drop and they lose money
4. Life is about tradeoffs. The people (of which he gave me a few
"examples") that can't afford gasoline to get to their jobs have
surely made a tradeoff - I want to know how many of them have large
flat screen TVs, how many of them gamble at casinos, and how many
smoke cigarettes.
5. "Where is it written that being able to drive your own car is such
a fundamental right that if one cannot afford to own and operate a car
at current market prices, that others
should be forced to pay for it?" The same people who would never
dream of putting a gun to their neighbor's head and saying "give me
money so I can go to the doctor" are perfectly fine having the exact
same thing done on their behalf through the ballot box.
He was unimpressed with all of these arguments. He started talking
about breadlines and "working stiffs making $6 an hour". It's the
politics of envy and it's coming very very soon to Capitol Hill. If a
60-year old employed white male living in suburbia thinks this way
(the person I was speaking to) , then I'm afraid the situation is
hopeless.
Then someone else present during this discussion made even better
points than I did. I think they worked much better than what I said,
so I'm sharing them here. He asked if there ever was a time when the
price of gas was "fair." "Oh, yes," my other friend said -- and then
said when it was $1 a gallon. Then he asked if the businessmen then
were greedy. He admitted that they were not. So, businessmen are
"greedy" now, but weren't in the past?!! He then acknowledged that
that is so --- but his heart wasn't be in it! He then asked if the
price of oil were to go down, would that show that our greedy
businessmen were at least getting less greedy?
Ultimately however, I think that leftism is based on emotion, and not
logic, so it's rather hopeless.
Here's some more info but I must admit it requires logic and not emotion
to understand...:>)
Note the 25% of gross capital regulatory expense...and that there are no
new refineries built since the mid-70s.
Mike
Gas Prices and Greens
A 1972 bestseller, The Limits to Growth, predicted that a crisis of
natural resource exhaustion and pollution would soon lead to global
economic collapse. Those prophesies never materialized. Instead, the
discovery of new fuel sources, such as tar sands and geopressured brine,
has increased known energy reserves; U.S. air quality has improved over
the past 40 years; and the global economy has somehow managed to grow
year after year.
Environmental apocalypse may be a mirage, but bad policies inspired by
it are very real. One result can be seen at the gasoline pump, according
to Craig Marxsen (University of Nebraska, Kearney). In "Politically
Contrived Gasoline Shortage," Marxsen argues that regulations fueled by
false visions of eco-catastrophe have discouraged the expansion of
gasoline-refinery capacity and thereby have contributed to persistently
rising gas prices.
Not one new-site refinery has been built in the United States since the
mid-1970s, Marxsen notes. Overregulation has greatly weakened the
incentives to invest in expanded capacity. Regulatory compliance costs
refiners up to 25 percent of their total capital spending. Frequent
changes in the specifications for reformulated gasoline also reduce the
profitability of a new refinery: they frustrate refiners' efforts to
maximize volumetric efficiency during peak demand periods.
Also see, "Prophecy de Novo: The Nearly Self-Fulfilling Doomsday
Forecast," by Craig Marxsen, in Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to
Environmental Bureaucracy
<http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=58> , ed. by
Robert Higgs and Carl P. Close.
Try logically debating a social policy to a right winger whose social positions are based on superstitions and the lefties may suddenly appear quite rational in comparison.
Personally, I've had much more luck convincing economic leftists to reconsider their positions. The key is to show them how government does more harm than good to the poor and middle class. In the case you mention of oil companies, show how government subsidies *are* bad and how the tax and subsidy system will always favor those with more money. Once you've convinced them of that, it's a short step to getting them agree to no subsidies and a low flat tax.