Are High Fuel Prices necessary – Yes
It does not matter if high fuel prices are necessary or not. They are here to stay and we brought them on ourselves. When gas prices were relatively low, lower than any other country in the world, did we conserve? No. Did we buy cars with better gas mileage? No. Did we consider the impact on our environment? No. It's not like any of these was a great secret. We all knew, but we just did not seem to care. We continued in our addiction to both gasoline and the internal combustion engine. Now, we are paying the price. Just as with all business in this country, oil companies are free to charge any price they want for their products and, if we want to have those products, we will pay the price. You don't see people complaining that the price of cars is too high, do you? If the price is too high, people just do not buy. It is simple economics.
If you consider supply and demand, they have the supply and there is a high demand. If it were I, I would charge as much as the market would bear, or more. Why not? Oil companies are in the business of making money and not in the business of giving away free gas. If you owned a gas company and you knew people would pay $10 a gallon or more, would you still sell it for $1.89? Closer to home, if you knew your house was worth $1,000,000, would you sell it to the first taker for $200,000? You know if you did, the buyer would turn around and sell it for the million its worth. People who really think gas prices are unnecessarily high do not have to buy the product. How can we presume to tell oil companies how much they should charge for their product? It just does not make business sense. Sometimes, it hurts to change, but, if high prices bring on that change, the long-term benefit is worth it.
If high gas prices get people to walk more, get people to ride their bikes more and get people to consider alternative modes of transportation, I am all for the increases. In a sense, high gas prices are necessary because they keep people from wasting a limited natural resource while, at the same time, promoting alternative modes of transportation and alternative fuels. Other means were tried to break people's addiction to gas and the internal combustion engine. Nothing worked very well. So, if it is necessary to charge $10 or even $20 a gallon to make people more environmentally conscious, so be it. In that respect, high fuel prices are necessary because that is what it may take to get people to use less and to consider using alternative sources of energy, even if it means drying out their wallets completely. It may be painful for a while, but, in the end, everyone wins, and who can complain about that?
