[John W]

While I don't disagree with what you have pointed out, don't you think there is a tipping point beyond which we have serious economic problems simply due to the cost?

[mysterio]

The stock brokers are making too much money to ever look at the situation objectively.

The solution is to eliminate boutique blends right now, start building refineries, and start giving funding to new energy research. And the lion's share of that money should go to companies that do not have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

And if there's ever any evidence of collusion or supply manipulations, break the oil industry into a million pieces.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

While I don't disagree with what you have pointed out, don't you think there is a tipping point beyond which we have serious economic problems simply due to the cost?

We don't live in never-never land.

Reality is what it is.

Prices go up when demand exceeds supply.

Period.

A rise in price causes demand to decrease to the point it matches supply: when gas prices go up, people buy cars with better gas mileage and start car-pooling, which decreases demand.

Artificially depressing price causes demand to chronically exceed supply, which eventually results in shortages. Shortages lead to rationing. Rationing leads to corruption.

Bottom line is, what do you trust more? The free market system, or government bureaucracy?

Government bureaucracy has caused health care costs to increase from 1% of GDP to 15% of GDP in the last fifty years.

Government bureaucracy has created dangerous inner-city public school systems that resemble prisons rather than places of learning and cost $10,000 per year per student, half of whom are functionally illiterate at graduation.

The choice is up to you.

[the OlLine Rebel]

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/williams083105.asp