Some things about oil

Yes, having to pay $4 a gallon sucks. In the long run, though, it's a good thing.

I firmly believe that paying this much for gas has been a long time in coming. As much as I hate to pay upwards of $50 every time I fill up my car, my long-held beliefs were vindicated by this article from The Motley Fool, a useful investment resource and employer of Ruddiger. This was the most-recommended article on the entire site for the past four or five days in a row, and was only taken off the "Most Read" board because that board only tracks articles published in the last seven days. For those of you who don't like reading, I'll sum up the argument.

Basically, we all want cheap energy, which, in today's world, just isn't happening. As much as we all want to tax big oil and declare gas tax holidays, the only answer is to consume less.

So... what if we did carpet-bomb all the muskox, caribou, and polar bears and start drilling in ANWR like a dentist at a free clinic? Aside from having an exotic new kind of ground meat to sell in delicacy stores nation-wide, where would that leave us? We'd get a poopload of oil, sure, but people somehow think that will solve things. Same thing with gas-tax holidays and windfall taxes on oil companies. Any of these things would temporarily reduce oil prices; however, to quote this excellent article, if we found a way to reduce oil prices, "no one would care about developing new technologies, no one would bother driving more efficient cars, and no one would give a horse's patoot about conservation."

Therein lies the benefit of the current situation. Sure, it'll be painful to pay this much for gas, but in the long run, we'll get our shit together and start developing techonologies to wean us off of the oily tit. Interestingly, this article pointed out that the current situation is quite Malthusian. Malthus said in 1798 that the world could not support its rising population -- there was just no way we could farm that much food. But he was wrong. When demand outpaces supply, people naturally look for ways to increase supplies, and if the current methods for producing something can't yield more supplies, new methods will arise.

The free market reinforces this. Nowadays, people are starting to look for the next big thing in energy production. Will it be wind? Will it be solar? Something else entirely? Fact is, someone somewhere is going to really hit it big with the next big form of profitable alternative energy. Look at any recent news in the stock market, and you'll see people saying how investing in alternative energy companies is a big play for the future. What's motivating these innovators? They're not in this because they feel bad for ruining fucking penguin habitats... they're in it because if some engineer in a little startup company comes up with the next big thing in alternative energy, he could afford to live the American dream: using 50-dollar bills as toilet paper and toilet paper as dog toilet paper.

People love to point at the oil companies and cry foul, too. Oh, look at how much profit they're making!! And of course, the eyes of these hippies burn with the fire of a thousand doobies when the word "prrroffittt" comes out of their mouth, as if "profit" is a dirty word. Well shit, the oil companies do have us by the balls; however, people who drive Durangoes will feel the tug a lot harder than people who drive Civics. And that right there is a choice -- no person or market force is compelling you to drive around in a Suburban using a cigarette-lighter-powered deep fryer all day. If you're pissed about having to pay $100 per fillup, get a different fucking car. If enough people get pissed off and actually do something about it (something to counteract forces they can control) rather than going into tantrums about big oil, then we'll slowly overcome our bondage to big oil.

Until then, oil companies have every right to charge $4 for a gallon of gas, or more. They should. This is how capitalism works. That's why I can still be against that spotted-owl-hugging she-clown Pelosi for trying to kill recent proposals, which aim to decrease government regulation of offshore drilling. All of these democrats seem to forget that oil is an integral part to the US economy. Not only do they employ hundreds of thousands of people (ExxonMobil alone employs 100,000), but they have hundreds of thousands of shareholders, many of whom, like me are not "big oil." Once again, more meddling in the free market, where government has no fucking business.

And shit, if you're all so sure that gas will go higher and higher for the next 10 years or so, buy some goddamned oil stocks and be smart for a change. If you legitimately think that $4/gallon is here to stay, crack open your swear jar, get a Scottrade account, and fill your portfolio with stocks like ExxonMobil, Transocean, PetroBras, ConocoPhillips or the like (most of them pay decent dividends too). All these whiners need to sell their SUVs and stop bitching, because honestly we all know we need to reduce our dependence on petroleum, if for no other reason than for security. The only way to change our ways is to get spanked by the invisible hand for getting addicted to oil. Americans just need to get smacked around quite a bit before they get up off their lazy asses and do anything about anything.