Indeed. UK gallons are bigger than ours, not smaller: about 4.5 liters.
ROFLMAO! However, both will still need Henry Rearden’s (prolly spelled that wrong) magic metal, so its all good. 
Besides, Wyatt’s oil can still be used as lubricant and for plastic and such. 
-XT
Yeah, but it’s not WHAT you own, it’s WHO you own.
It’s “Hank”. No one calls him Henry. And it’s “miracle metal”, not magic.
Time to dust off the copy and reaquaint yourself. You’re allowed to skip Galt’s radio speech the 2nd time…
Only the looters called it “miracle metal”, because in their savage altruistic-on-the-surface-but-dictatorial-at-heart incompetence, they couldn’t conceive such a metal coming from the noble creative mind of man, hence it must be a miracle.
And I skipped Galt’s radio speech the first time. Fifty-six pages?! I ain’t readin’ this!
Anyhoo, in Rand’s universe, industries would inevitably be monopolized by the best businessmen, who would naturally shun power for its own sake because that’s the craven desire of the second-hander.
:smack: That’s right…miracle metal. I had forgotten.
Definitely…and Galt’s speech was a doozy.
You know, its been so long that it IS time to dust off my copy and re-read it. And to break out my copy of Fountain Head and get back into the adventures of ‘Red’.
I wonder what Rand would think of the world today. No gold standard, but more wealth than she could ever have imagined. The ‘looters’ never quite won, but I’m surprised by how many of the caricatured ideas and thoughts of the bad guys still get repeated as if they were gospel.
You think so? I mean, in Rand’s universe there was plenty of competition, and no one really had a monopoly on anything…until the government stepped in and created artificial circumstances that allowed monopolies. Granted its been a long time, but that’s how I recall it.
-XT
Nobody caught the real drift of this. Monolithic Oil has been allowed to eat up all of the competitors in the gasoline business. It therefore is able to enforce one price for regular…$5.00/gallon. You cannot get a lower price because Monolithic owns all of the gas stations.
However, at this price, plenty of gasoline is available…and nothing else has changed.
I asked, would such a price lead people to conserve or seeek alternatives to gasoline-powered vehicles? Or would people continue their irrational (to me, anyway) behavior, and continue to consume gasoline like a drunken sailor buys beers?
Or would the government stepin to “protect us”? I can see the Congress now, speeches by dolts like Sen. ted Kennedy:
“the people of this great nation are suffering…think of the poor children, unable to be bused to their schools!”
Ralph, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. You started out by talking about monopolies, and people challenged your premise. But is your question really: what would happen if the price of gasoline were $5.00/gallon, but there was still the same gasoline supply?
Then a better way to ask the question would be to imagine that Ralph Nader gets elected president (Ayn Rand with her natural Russian pessimism would expect it to happen), and slaps a $3.00 a gallon tax on gasoline, bringing the total price to somewhere around $5.00/gallon. This scenario has the advantage of not encouraging increased oil production, or price competition from other companies.
Would this have an effect on people’s driving habits? You think? I have a sneaking suspicion…just a hunch, mind you…that changing the price of gasoline would have some effect on the consumption of gasoline. Call me crazy.
You complain that people irrationally buy too much gas at $2.00 gallon. But obviously different people have different values than you do. Gasoline is too expensive for you at $2.00, but for other people it may be a bargain. As gas prices creep up, more and more people start to think like you. You did notice all the hand-wringing when gasoline prices rose from ~$1.50 to $2.00, right? A $0.50 rise in the price of gas might not get you to trade your Hummer for a Vespa, but a $3.00 rise certainly would.
If you tax gasoline another $3.00, but not ethanol, hydrogen, biodiesel, natural gas, or electrics, then of course you are going to see a massive switch to alternative fuels. Gasoline is the main fuel for cars because it is cheap and plentiful. Once gasoline becomes expensive then other fuels become relatively cheaper. Overall transportation fuel consumption will go down, but the percentage of alternative fuel use will rise. The amount it will rise will depend on the how high the price of gasoline rises. As of today, $2.00 gasoline is still cheaper and more convenient than moonshine whiskey. $5.00 gasoline wouldn’t be.
And of course you have infrastructure costs too. Who wants to convert to a hydrogen powered car when you can’t fill up your tank at the corner hydrogen station? Gasoline is like Microsoft Windows…everybody uses it because everybody uses it. So the first people to switch will be fleet operators, who don’t fuel at the corner gas station, but rather at their headquarters. Plenty of buses use natural gas right now. Jack the price of gasoline through the roof and natural gas buses are a huge cost saving. Hydrogen engines and hydrogen distribution channels for fleet vehicles become economical for consumer vehicles at some unknown tipping point of gasoline prices. And once the infrastructure is already built, then hydrogen (or whatever alternative you wish to imagine) established relatively permanently, since the infrastructure owners have such huge sunk costs.
The trouble with your Monolith Oil scenario is that we would have to assume a radically different political situation for it to occur. In real life the government would never allow it to happen. In real life competitors could jump into the transportation fuel business. In real life we could develop alternative fuels. The fact of Monolith’s existance would mean that the situation has changed, and we no longer live under a liberal democracy, and that any developing free market in alternative fuels or transportation systems can be squashed at the orders of Monolith Oil. In that case, the price of gasoline would be the least of our worries.
This is a similar problem I had over in the “Ethics of Fertillity Repression” thread. The classic science fiction technique is to postulate one change in technology and examine the consequences of that one change. If you are primarily interested in the effects of $5.00 a gallon gasoline, postulating a monopoly oil company that jacks up the price of gas to $5.00 a gallon is a terrible way to do that, since the changes in our society to allow that monopoly oil company to exist would be much much greater than the trifling increase in the price of gas. That’s why everyone is talking about Monolith Oil Company and Ayn Rand, and ignoring the question it seems you really wanted to ask.
Wow…nothing to add to Lemur866 excellent post. Hell, I didn’t even know THAT was the question.
-XT
Nah. Remember that Stockton guy in the valley who said he’d work for Rearden as a cinder sweeper, once he showed up? That was just about the only case where two of the “hero” characters were in the same industry (the only similar case I can recall was Dagny’s early meeting with Dan Conway, when she thought her railroad and his could coexist in Colorado, though she’d force him out if she had to). You never had two “hero” characters going at it all-out. They all respected each other too much and were too similar in spirit and would find it astonishingly inconceivable that you’d bother to do anything to undermine a competitor etc etc…