Ah, gonzo, did you even read your link? In it there is an interesting tidbit from the Federal Trade Commission:
Renob (and others), gonzomax is notorious for his drive by posting style. He rarely (and I’m overstating :)) actually engages in the debate, but instead just posts links that he leaves up to you to sift through to see if he has a point or not…mostly not. Just giving you a heads up to avoid your own frustration down the road as I’ve already dealt with this in other threads.
I’d just like to ask him (again) why the prices are going up in his neck of the woods but not in my own if its some huge conspiricy. I mean, did the big bad corporations forget that the election already happened, or do they hope that it was all a bad dream and we will have a re-do or something? Or maybe they just forgot that they artifically lowered prices here and so haven’t raised them back up again yet? Or, er, something?
-XT
Yes, so many articles from which to choose. I’m glad the consolidation in the media industry hasn’t prevented you from gathering information from lots of sources. I think that you, like me, have more information from more sources than ever, despite the consolidation you seem so alarmed about.
Here are some facts about gasoline prices from AAA.
National Unleaded Average
Regular Mid Premium Diesel
Current Avg. $2.233 $2.371 $2.457 $2.639
Yesterday Avg. $2.230 $2.367 $2.453 $2.638
Month Ago Avg. $2.219 $2.355 $2.441 $2.604
Year Ago Avg. $2.266 $2.407 $2.494 $2.74
You can see it without my pathetic attempts at putting it in columns here. I don’t see evidence of election-rigging via price collusion here, do you? And a good real-life history of supply collusion with the intent of controlling prices, you need look no further than OPEC. They do their colluding right out in the open, and then the members erode the effects by cheating, leaving the world market to set prices as usual. OPEC has at times caused some pretty dreadful impacts with their shenanigans, but they have not successfully controlled prices over time.
OK, so my columns were even more pathetic than I thought. Please check it out on the link if my chart makes your head hurt. The punchline is that prices have fluctuated quite a bit over the past year, but that the prices from a year ago, a month ago and yesterday are vitrually identical.
To back up a little what Crotalus was saying, if you head over to IEA at http://omrpublic.iea.org/currentissues/full.pdf
(note large pdf download)
and have a look at page 8 youwill see the US total oil product demand and the gasoline demand over the last 5 years superimposed on each other.
This shows that, within a 0.5 million bbl per day range for gasoline and a 1 million bbl/day for all oil products, that for the last 5 years the demand has been high in summer, low in fall and spring and all over the place in winter. Gasoline demand sees a significant drop every year in September/October
The spread is due to countless reasons mentioned throughout this thread.
If you are prepared to accept this pattern and that the demand is one of the factors driving the NYMEX/Rotterdam/IPE price for refined gasoline and that the NYMEX/Rot/IPE price is in turn driving the pump price you can possibly draw the conclusions that either
a) the price fluctions beeing seen are partialy cyclical and seen every year or
b) the oil cos and the republicans are just hedging in case there is a november election every year for the last 5 years.
Another interesting side effect of low gasoline prices is that it helps out Iran who imports 200k bbl a day (50% of demand) of refined gasoline. Why would the republicans do that?
Thanks for the esteem. nearly every cite on this thread is mine. This thread is an extremely long one. I have not been a notorious drive by like your link was implying. I have answerered every reasonable question. Sorry to have wasted so much of your valuable time dealing with us low lives.
These guys are not retarded. They know what they are doing. Just shoving huge prices down our throat would be too obvious.Do you believe price changes twice a day are logical.
Its in the trend. As time goes by the line moves where they want it. You will excuse the prices when they climb, so whats the point. It is not just raising. It is the ability to control it. This to make it simple for you meand they can make it go up and down as they wish. If someone blew up all the oil wells in the world they would rise and I would not hold them responsible.
And your cites that actually relate to the question of whether or not oil companies manipulate prices for political purposes are few and far between.
You do realize, don’t you, that oil companies do not run your local gas station? A local businessman runs it and he, not oil companies, is ultimately responsible for the price of gasoline you pay.
I really have no idea what you are saying here, but let me just repeat that you have given no evidence to back up your assertion that oil companies collude to manipulate prices. Even the Public Citizen document you provided quotes the FTC report that explicitly denies this.
The local station gets information from a fax machine telling him what he will pay for gas at this moment. His impact is minimal. Since the stations all pay approximately the same price, due to incredible coincidence, they tack on a profit margin and hope business comes in.
Their impact is close to zero.
Not all gas stations pay “approximately the same price.” Depending on when they buy and from which company they buy, their price for gasoline fluctuates. Therefore, their profit margin also fluctuates. Gas stations that bought expensive gas must sell at lower prices if their competitor bought less expensive gas and lowers his prices. The reverse is also true.
Yes they do. CEO President | HuffPost Latest News This is about our corporate friends and why we should love them.
A little distracted here. I am in Michigan and watching endless programming about Bo Shembechlers death.
Thanks, once again, gonzo, for providing another citation from an anti-corporate drone that has absolutely no relation to this post.
Believe what you want, gonzo, just realize you have no facts upon which to base your opinion.
Yet another opinion piece about evil corporations and no mention at all of how or why petrol stations all buy their gas at the same price, which I think is what your link was purporting to explain. Did I miss something or have I been wooshed?
I didn’t answer this post earlier it is frighteningly ignorant and didn’t deserve response. Your grasp of economics is deserving of Fox Network.
Then please refute it if it’s so nonsensical. You’re the one saying that the govt is manipulating the price of gas to the nickel to get Republicans reelected despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. What’s your background in econ, btw?
Show me some examples where you actually debate and I’ll gladly take back what I said. I can show you plenty of examples (in this very thread) where you do your standard drive by posts.
As for the majority of the cites in the thread being from you…even if I except that, what of it? The majority of your cites, as usual, are simply links with no explaination, no commentary by you, no pasted text from the cite pointing out what you think is important about the link…in short, drive by posting. Had you bothered to read the pit thread I did on you the LAST time you and I ‘debated’ in a thread, you wouldn’t be so confused now…as I took the time to explain EXACTLY why your posting style (such as it is) is so bloody irritating.
I believe that the price at the pump where I live HASN’T FUCKING CHANGED! Again I ask you…why? How about, I don’t know, actually addressing this seemingly simple question in a post of, say, a paragraph or more? Not a sentence, not a drive by link…but actually, I don’t know, debate the point? Just as a refreshing change…
And I suppose that the fact that oil has become an increasingly scares commodity, the fact that its in demand world wide…such things don’t factor in at all, ehe? You really don’t understand how markets work…do you? Even though several people have tried (with more patience than you deserve) to explain this to you…you refuse to get it.
Lets see another drive by link explaining how its all a government/Big Oil™ conspiricy now gonzo…its what gonzo’s do best.
-XT
Your being silly so quit crying. As a matter of fact the fact that my local stations are going up is irrelevant. It is all about the big picture and prices overall in the nation. I responded about my stations simply because that is what we have been doing. I realize it is meaningless. I am surprised you don’ t know better.
Not a government conspiracy.A corporation simply acting as a corp will when it is unfettered. Government simply allows it to happen.
This is where I say you will follow with a drive by remark denigrate whatever
follows.Don’t you tire of such childish antics.
Your method of “debate” that resorts to throwing out some platitudes about evil corporations without actually demonstrating that their activities are genuinely evil, (as opposed to being the result of the overall world market over which the corporations have nearly as little control as the local dealer has over his supplier), does not provide you with the right to mock other posters.
Your opening and closing comments, while perhaps technically attacking the argument, are clearly insulting observations regarding the poster and are on the edge of earning you a Warning.
This is not some 1972 college dorm where simply evoking the word “corporation” wins an argument. Given that nearly all your multitude of citations have failed to support the claims that you have made, making claims that other posters are “crying” or accusing them of “childish antics” is unnecessarily insulting.
For example:
In actuality, if you had a reasonable refutation for that poster’s claim, it is pretty much your responsibility to debunk it with facts. Your persistent use of platitudes and links to off-topic web sites does nothing to persuade anyone else to your position. Make the assumption that the posters with whom you are arguing will never change their minds. If you want anyone in the peanut gallery at home to come to your position, you need to make the effort to explain your position with actual reasoned discourse. Links to sites with editorial beliefs that are similar to your beliefs are not evidence of anything except that there are others who share your beliefs. You are the poster who introduced the word “mantra” to this thread, but you are the poster who is actually reciting a mantra, throughout: “corporations are e-e-e-evi-i-i-illl.” It may be true that corporations are evil, but your posts have not provided the evidence to support your belief.
Stop making snide or sacastic comments regarding the abilities of others to present an argument.
Everyone else: if a poster has absolutely nothing to add to a discussion but platitudes and invective, it is perfectly permissible to carry on the discussion as if that poster was not present.
[ /Moderating ]
Tom a bunch of cites is. evidence as defined by rules of argument. I do not do invective ,but the snotty drive by gets old. For my part I apologize ,but in no way feel your viewpoint is any more valid than theirs. I disagree with the characterization of the evidence. When I constantly am told thing like thats, not true or ,thats a lie ,the degradation of the debate does not lie on my shoulders. I started long before I got snarky.
Las Vegas: up 15 cents since the election. However, we’re one of the few states that kept our Pubs in Congress, so…Idunno.
I’m sure you meant that it started long before you got snarky, but I would disagree.
Your style, whether ranting against evil corporations, against Israel, or against any other of your several enemies of the people, is to generally fail to actually explain your short declarations of “truth” and, when pressed, linking to a site that does not even support your argument.
Some of the snarky comments were directed to you, first, in earlier threads, but only because your style of “debate” is so irritating, both in its presumed condescension and its lack of substance. In this thread, you have provided far more snide remarks with far less provocation than the entire complement of your opponents.
Shall we look over the recent posts? Beginning with the day before the election and continuing, there were several one-liner posts about the price of gas. You began to contribute around post #150. The point that is fairly easily discerned when reading the posts in aggregate is that gas prices did rise! and did drop! and did stay the same! all over the country, with no particular correlation to red state or blue state or any other political factor. In other words, the premise of the OP (that you tended to support) was in error. Do we see you back off from your claims? No, we see a straw man sarcastric comment that corporations are benevolent, (straw man because it had not been argued).
When posters provided facts regarding the market forces on petroleum, and asked you for specific claims of monopolistic growth or manipulation, you provided the rather silly link to Rich Zubaty’s opionion piece (also not supported by factual evidence) with the snide comment, “Are you living in a vacuum ?”
When asked to provide evidence for Zubaty’s claim that corporations are doing lots of dastardly things to hide themselves from public inspection, you replied with a link to a site showing that there has been consolidation in an industry different than the petroleum industry. You then made the factually false assertion that Iraq might have more oil than the Saudis and claimed that you could find lots more evidence from a "hundred schollarly sites " of corporate perfidy, even though you had not yet provvided even one site demonstrating the claims you were making. Zubaty’s beliefs were not supported by evidence. Consolidation of major media outlets does not prove that they are attempting to “… conceal their holdings and their operating procedures from public scrutiny. They brainwash their employees and their customers to gain compliance. They control our behavior, thoughts, information and emotions.” Their ownership is public knowledge (and widely reported and commented upon at every buyout and merger). You have provided no evidence of “brainwashing” in any event. And while I would agree that they wish to “control our behavior” through advertising, there is rather little evidence (and none provided by you) that they have succeeded in overthrowing the democratic process.
So you have a mixture of pure opinion and actual false information that you throw out as though it means something, and then you want to make snide remarks to other posters? Providing a site that is nothing but personal belief is not the same as providing a citation of actual evidence supporting the claims you made. Link does not equal evidence. It is merely a sign that you can manipulate the vB code well enough to insert a url.
Let’s be clear, here. I agree that media consolidation is probably not a good thing. I also suspect that it would not be difficult to demonstrate that Renob’s claim that “No, it is not logical nor has this happened. Companies do not get together to drive up prices. Companies compete against each other to serve consumers and make money. Please provide an example where companies banded together to drive up prices.” is silly and false (although it may be true in the more limited sense of the current petroleum companies in the last few years), but you have provided no EVIDENCE to contradict him, only odd opinion pieces and irrelevant lists of company names.
You are welcome to continue to post in such a fashion that will cause people to dismiss your claims; you are not welcome to try to insult them for not accepting your (poorly) supported (or unsupported) declarartions.