Some have qualities much worse than ignorance, arrogance for instance. Is there something you disagree with?
You're entitled to your opinion, of course. There's nothing wrong with ignorance per se...we're all ignorant about something, most of us about a lot of things. Ignorance becomes a problem when someone doesn't respect the limits of their knowledge. IMO, the indispensible trait of an educated person is not that he's impressed with what he's learned...but the acceptance that there's a lot more he doesn't know...which informs his opinions.
What you call "arrogance" is the result of a 15 year career with oil companies, a sincere interest in economics as a science, 10 years of work in financial industries and a current Series 7/66 license. Yes, I know what I'm talking about...that doesn't make me arrogant.
This statement is arrogant...I thought I saw somewhere that the ban in many of these areas expires in 2012, not a huge leap into the future. Since new facilities coming on line and word of increased output, and ME countries storing oil offshore have no impact whatsoever, I have ruled out supply and demand...
Imagining you're so brilliant that you don't need any background to draw conclusions as sweeping as yours...that's arrogance, IMO.
There should be no shame involved for you, there are a few guys who post on these threads who know a great deal about the subject. You can learn a lot by asking questions and reading posts. Your statement about "ruling out" supply and demand means you're headed away from the answer, not toward it.
My education, background and experience leads me to conclude we've got a market defined by growing demand and artificially restrained supply.
Per your complaint...Thomas Sowell said it best:
All of us have thousands of things happening around us that we do not understand. We use computers all the time but most of us could not build a computer if our life depended on it — and those few individuals who could probably couldn't grow orchids or train horses.
In short, we all have grossly inadequate knowledge in other people's specialties.
The idea that everything must "justify itself before the bar of reason" goes back at least as far as the 18th century. But that just makes it a candidate for the longest-running fallacy in the world.
Given the high degree of specialization in a modern economy, demanding that everything "justify itself before the bar of reason" means demanding that people who know what they are doing must be subject to the veto of people who don't have a clue about the decisions that they are second-guessing.
It means demanding that ignorance override knowledge...
Every time oil prices shoot up, there are cries of "greed" and demands by politicians for an investigation of collusion by Big Oil. There have been more than a dozen investigations of oil companies over the years, and none of them has turned up the collusion that is supposed to be responsible for high gas prices.
Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their "greed"? Or could it all be supply and demand — a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like "greed"?
If you're to be an informed voter, a proper citizen, you need to know about issues such as this. Otherwise you're a prime target for demagogues who are too skilled at exploiting ignorance.