I recently got a 'please forward to ten friends' e-mail advocating a mass boycott of the two biggest oil companies, Exxon and Mobil, to force them to lower their prices. Exxon and Mobil merged years ago which shows either how well-informed the originator was or how old the message is. This is a variant of the "Don't buy gas on Tuesday" scheme a few years back.
Prices are set by supply and demand. If aggregate demand remains the same, it doesn't matter which distributors it is sold through. The motive behind these schemes is denial. There is a solution to high gas prices but we do not want to hear it -- smaller cars with smaller engines that get better gas mileage. When demand goes down, prices will go down also.
The other thing that is driving up prices is the decline of the dollar. The price of gasoline is based on the world price. American buyers pay in dollars which keep going down in value compared to the euros, yen, yuan, rubles, and rupees that other buyers are paying with. Which means that we have to pay more and more dollars to be paying the same world price everyone else is paying.
To support the dollar we have to reduce the federal deficit and the trade deficit which means higher taxes for some (ideally the rich) and paying higher prices for consumer goods. And getting rid of those V-8 gas guzzlers. Higher taxes, higher prices, smaller cars? Accept personal responsibility? Yikes! Nobody wants to hear that! Better go back to schemes to boycott Exxon and Mobil.
P.S. If anybody from Exxon Mobil's PR department is looking for a paid stooge, I am eminently available.
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