The Definition of LAME: Gas Price Strikes

I’m sure many of you have received emails or Facebook invites deploring skyrocketing gas prices, and combating such “injustice” by staging day- or week-long boycotts of certain or all gas stations. Hopefully, you aren’t one of the hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) who have jumped on the boycott bandwagon, because it’s PLAIN STUPID.

There are two main strains of thought propelled by these boycotters:

1. a) Boycotting gas stations only by [pick a company such as Petro-Canada, Esso, Shell, etc.] will force them to lower prices, and thus everyone else will follow suit. b) Boycotting all gas stations for a day or a week will force all gas stations to drop their prices.
2. If boycotting isn’t good enough, the government MUST do something, like take control of the oil industry!

LAME LAME LAME. Unachievable, unrealistic, unintelligent. It doesn’t take an economics or oil expert to debunk these inane claims and demands:

1. Filling up at only certain gas stations will inevitable lead them to jack up prices, because demand will FAR outweigh supply. Simple economics, people.
2. Total boycotts will never work because people will either all fill up the day before (”Hey, I support this boycott but I still have to drive work!”), and/or gas stations will just increase the prices the day after to “compensate for the loss from the boycott” (irrelevant of the fact that there is NO loss).
3. Involving the government now, are we? Last time I checked, people were complaining that us North Americans are becoming too damn socialized. Even if they weren’t, what do these people expect the feds to do? Subsidize the price of gas? I don’t know about you, but I certainly DO NOT want to pay a crapload more of taxes. In the end, the money you save on “cheaper” gas will be given to the government that attempts to regulate the price of gas (in case you still don’t understand, it means that you don’t save ANY money).
4. A business exists to PROFIT. Oil companies don’t give a damn about your protests and claims that you’ll “never give them any business”…because they know you’ll come running back after that road trip to Montreal, and they’ll punish you with higher prices for stepping out of line in the first place.
5. The only ones who will truly suffer from boycotts are the gas station owners and employees, who have NO control over the price of gas. No matter how high prices are, they are NOT the ones who make more money. Have some respect and don’t put them out of business.

The funny/sad thing is, these gas-strikers (with the exception of those who actually depend on traveling for their business, e.g. courier service) who seem to be trying to enact so much change are actually doing…well, shit all. They’re lazy and fickle, period. They don’t want to pay a fortune to fill up, but they want someone else (such as the government) to fix the problem; they don’t want to CONSERVE, which saves them gas AND money, but rather they want to continue the same ol’ lifestyle without the financial consequences.

Conservation is the ONLY true solution to the issue of high gas prices. Driving less automatically reduces the demand for oil, bringing down its price (unless OPEC decides to drastically cut supply), and more importantly it encourages us to make walking, biking, taking public transit, etc. a permanent aspect of our life. Plus, it  ensures a more sustainable environment. Consumers control corporations only when they decide NOT to buy, not when they continue to buy but demand changes.

So if you’re a gas price striker, smarten up and quit relying on others to fix your problem, quit blaming others for your own faults. If you can’t curb consumption, then shut up and pay the damn price.

For more insightful reading, check out the articles over at Snopes (Gas Out and Pain In The Gas), which re-iterate the same arguments here but in greater detail.