An Effective Protest Against High Gas Prices

The picture was taken near Cambria on California’s central coast.

Quote of the day:
"Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious."
--Brendan Gill

When gas prices go up, it is simple, popular and fashionable to criticize the government for not doing anything about it, or the oil companies for being corrupt or greedy.

Sometimes politics, worldview or boiling anger require the label “obscene” attached to the term “oil company profits.”

At these times, we lose touch with the following facts:

1. Large companies make large amounts of money.

2. The percent of each dollar of sales that oil companies keep (the profit margin) is much less than in other industries.

An example of fact number two is that, in 2004, 126 Fortune 500 companies exceeded Exxon’s profit margin of 9.8% Citicorp’s margin that year was 15.7%. Software and internet companies regularly exceed 50%. When was the last time someone called Google’s or Microsoft’s profit “obscene”?

This is not to say that oil companies are as pure as the driven snow--unless the snow is covered by an oil slick. These are big companies, and they sometimes have big problems. And they need to be regulated.

But al the whining, screaming, and yelling about oil prices, and all the blaming of oil companies, does nothing but score political points. And it keeps the biggest helping of responsibility for high gas prices away from where it belongs. With us.

If you are concerned about high gas prices, there is a very effective way to protest. Buy less gas. If you genuinely cannot get by with less gasoline, and rising prices present a hardship, call the office of your congressional representative for help.

Please don’t plan to protest by not patronizing gas stations owned by the big oil companies. It doesn’t work. The independent stations and small chains buy their gas from refineries run by the big oil companies.