Somebody ought to do something!

Remember how just a couple of weeks ago all eyes were on North Africa, and concern about the price of oil was again the subject of news items?

What I find really stupid is that every time the price of gasoline jumps, we get the same shortsighted "man on the street" interview on the 6 o'clock news. The last time was in 2008. Some young reporter would be sent to a gas station to stick a microphone in the yap of some random lumpenprole who was filling up his Canyonero ("It's a squirrel-squishing, deer-crushing driving machine."). Invariably, the interviewee would bemoan the price of gasoline, claiming that s/he could no longer feed his/her children: "Somebody ought to do something about the high price of gasoline!" they say. But not they themselves, of course. Take the bus? Are you kidding? I'm important!

The uprisings a few weeks ago in North Africa spooked the commodities markets, and soon enough the same reporters were going back to the same gas stations to get a sense of what the average person thinks about the run-up in prices now. Why they don't just use the tape from a few years ago is beyond me. Predictably, the same short-sighted whining is the common theme. "At the end of the month, once I have paid for the Blackberry, the cell phone, and the specialty High-Def cable channels, why...there's almost nothing let to feed the children!" And nobody does anything.

Actually, I am wrong: one time the debate did go further than simple belly-aching and "somebody" DID do something about it. In the summer of 2005 there were populist protests against the high price of gasoline in New Brunswick. Mostly it was truckers who were complaining that they could no longer make a decent living and that the government ought to do something (sick of hearing that yet?). They blocked a highway with their rigs. In response, the government of New Brunswick began regulating the price of gasoline to prevent wild fluctuations. In a sense it was a tax that moderated the ups and downs. Thus gas was cheaper in N.B. when it was more expensive in Nova Scotia, and conversely more expensive when prices fell.

The people went ballistic. How dare they pay more for gasoline when prices were low just so that they could pay less for gasoline when prices were high? Apparently what they really wanted but were unable to express coherently was for gasoline to cost less when prices were high...and also (get this!) to cost less when prices were low. They wanted water to run downhill AND ALSO uphill.

Why am I writing about this now? Well, the earthquake in Japan will put a crimp in their economic growth for a while. As a result, their demand for oil will be reduced (because oil is synonymous with economic growth: they are really the same thing. There is as yet no way to run an economy on pixie dust). This will in turn lower the cost of dinosaur-juice at your local Stop & Go. And suddenly everyone is happy. Yesterday's "pain at the pump" news item is forgotten. Nobody needs to do something about the high price of gas after all.

Until the next time there's a crisis in a goat-infested part of the world and the lazy house of Saud finds itself hanging onto their repressive dictatorship by a skillful use of repression. THEN somebody is going to have to do something. But not the person at the pump, and not now.