Capitalism Is So Last Century
Melanie at Just a Bump in the Beltway wonders: Who Is Clogging the System?
She comments on an article describing the current high gasoline prices as being driven by accidents and mechanical breakdowns at refineries and some of the reasons there are so many problems.
What isn’t addressed is why there are so few refineries. The answer is simple – greed.
After all of those oil companies mergers the resultant companies began to eliminate all facilities that they deemed were redundant, which meant anything that wasn’t required to operate 24/7/365 to cover the current market demand. There were a lot of refineries shut down. There is no slack in the system which keeps the price of gas high, but, like just-in-time inventory control, makes no provision for problems or increased demand.
When asked about the problem the oil companies will give you a song-and-dance about eco-terrorists making it too difficult to build new refineries, rather than admitting that more refinery capacity would increase competition, and they have no intention of competing.
If you look around you will probably notice fewer and fewer gas stations, the brands disappearing dependent on the area in which you live. Too many gas stations increase competition and they are corporations, they aren’t interested in risk or competition. Capitalism is for the little people, not corporations.
