It's past time

valhalla360 wrote:

JRscooby wrote:

Do I understand this right? We can't limit the chance for profit for investors, even short term? Even if we limit that profit at historically high levels? But it is fine to charge working people unlimited amount for what for most is a necessity?

Not to play tinfoil hat paranoid but what you describe is pretty much a socialist/communist system. The govt decides the winners & losers and decides what is produced and in what quantity.

The problem is human nature. Once you hand those controls over to a govt bureaucrat, its' almost impossible to take them away...and they will keep finding more and more reason to use them. Look at the TSA, supposedly short term but still going strong and expanding 20yrs later.

Look at Venezuela, they decided bakers were making too much, so they mandated price caps, so people could afford to buy bread. It resulted in not only the opposite but the opposite in the worst possible way. Bakers simply stopped making bread or they made small amounts secretly and sold it at higher prices on the black market...the result was finding bread at the govt mandated price was near impossible. Many did without and others paid far higher prices.

Of course, a lot of the issue is govts induced. It's been made very clear that the govt is against the petroleum industry, so even with high prices currently, there is little incentive to invest in new wells that could be mandated out of use in a year or two...basically it's a poor risk even if it looks profitable today.


But bottom line, Do you really think the govt can accurately assess the correct and fair price for petroleum products? I sure don't trust them.

Have you ever read a history book? The last time there was a major war in Europe gas, and many other things where rationed.
Your Venezuelan baker boat don't compare. The price of bread limited at a price too low for profit. I want to hold profit at record high, until the end of war. If that breaks a oil company, they're dead now.
My limited info is imports from Russia amounts to less than 10% of supply. I have know doubt that those of us that just pull in fill up, witch about the total, could reduce our use by at least that much. That would reduce demand/price increase for the people that always just put enough in tank to get back and forth to work. But the last 2+ years have proven a large percentage of population will not change behavior to save others lives.