As long as we’re discussing massive conspiracies by mega-corporations, can someone explain to me precisely who conspired to drive the price of crude down to about 12 bucks not 18 months ago?
Copper Tears, a quick look on Snopes finds this story about the magic carburetor. This quote sums up the essence of it:
Yes, they have reports of this same story dating back for over 50 years. Also this:
Standard urban legend material.
As for the cold fusion stuff, even if the patents were bought up and sat on by the oil industry, they would still exist. As a matter of fact, all patents since 1971 are available online. You can search here for one. I couldn’t find anything. If this were a true story, it would be easy to verify. Obviously, the author was more interested with sensationalism than accuracy.
And here we have Texaco being swallowed by another company.
Where will it end? Back at the old Standard Oil Monopoly?
(considering things here and getting pissed off at my poor tendency to recall where I read things)
Car recalls: The exploding Pinto, the Exploding Chevy (?) truck with side tanks, the Isuzu with the defective firewall on standard shift - the clutch cable pulled through the paper thin wall, the Isuzu that sucked exhaust fumes into the cab, the MAZADA that ‘hopped’ when the brakes were applied, the ever famous Corsair, the Suzuki that rolled over on a dime, the starter ‘film’ module on SUVs which over heated and stalled them out unexpectedly (an engineers report is on file concerning that [b[before** the vehicle was released to the public. The Yugo, well aside from it having the consistency of a beer can and having the spare above the engine where engine heat could deteriorate it, not much else was wrong and the full sized Ford truck with breakable plastic assembly parts in the carb.
The Plymouth Volare: Trunk leakage and front fenders rusting out, stalling problems, brake failures, front suspension pivot bar braking, and steering problems. The Chevy Chevett: Under powered, printed circuits that failed, chronic shaking that started over 45 mph and described by one owner as a ‘Saturday Night Special’ of cars, meaning a throw away vehicle The Chevy Vega: Defective rear end, prone to rusting almost as soon as it left the showroom, one split in half crossing rail road tracks. Many were chronic oil burners.
1991-1996 GM S-10 series pickup trucks; 171 complaints that the mechanism fails that holds the spare tire stored underneath the pickup trucks, allowing the tire to fall while motorists are driving. One injury has been reported and there have been more than 6,000 warranty claims on the parts holding the tire.
After a major lawsuit, concerning the death of a child because of a defective parking brake, Ford recalled 884,000 vehicles, including 1992-94 Ford F-series pickups and Broncos, 1993-94 Ranger pickups and Explorers and 1993-94 Massed Navajo sport-utility vehicles. Apparently, the defect was known about prior to or right after releasing the vehicals for sale but nothing done about it until the lawsuit.
Should I go on?
UncleBeer and PL, thanks for the info.
Copper (Mark) Tears (Serlin) - I think it’s great that you knew to NOT create an AOL profile with this user name, and over in GD you stopped capitalizing the word “black.” Really, it’s fantastic. It shows that you have the ability to learn. However, the way you ramble and harp on those conspiracy theories you evidently got out of “Junior Encyclopedia Brown” magazine just gives you away.
Yes, many vehicles have been recalled. Yes, the auto industry has done their darndest to minimize the availability of that information to the public, or at the very least put its own - more positive - spin on things. This is different from any other industry how? I’m not saying it’s good or right. I’m asking how this is ANY different than the status quo. OBVIOUSLY if this were top-secret info you wouldn’t know about it, right? So… it’s out there. The smart consumer just has to LOOK for it, right? OK. So hooray for capitalism, or the United States, or literacy, or whatever. You can pipe the hell down, or try to act less like He Who Was Sent to Enlighten Us. Thanks, kiddo. You’re a peach.
XOXOXO,
Valerie
PS- if you’re NOT Serlin, then you’re just another paranoid loon. How’s that work for ya? Also, how is it to believe everything you read from conspiracy theorists? Is that more fun that believing everything you read from the mainstream press? I’ll bet it’s a hell of a lot easier than trying to think for yourself, huh?
Valerieblaise: I’m glad you said it first and not me. I was this close to voicing my Serlin Suspicions in my last post. Now we’re going to get the standard screed about how the regulars on the SDMB are all paranoid freaks who accuse people of being other people, and then no matter what they say, people ignore it because they think they’re someone else. :rolleyes:
Anyway, some of those “famous” defects Ser . . . uh, Copper Tears discusses (particularly the “exploding” Chevy trucks and the Suzuki SUVs) were not as pervasive as some might believe; and I think we all recall the rigged “Dateline NBC” test on the trucks and the efforts Consumer Reports had to go to to flip those Suzukis.
In any case, all cars are going to have some engineering defects and compromises, and some are going to cause injuries and even deaths. You have to offer your products to the market at some point, and sometimes that will come after performing a CBA that tells you something about the relative safety of the product being offered vis a vis how many/what types of injuries might result from normal use. Nothing immoral about that–it’s what engineers and actuariesdo.
The only perfectly safe vehicle is one that never starts or leaves your driveway. All of which, of course, has nothing to do with oil prices.
Yes, nothing to do with oil prices or the homeless. I’m still tryin’ figger that one out.
I’d also just like to pop in that the Chevette was NOT the “Saturday Night Special” of cars. My father was in an accident in one. Him vs. a semi. In a Chevette. WALKED AWAY. Twice. I know other people who had one and loved it. Yes, this is anecdotal evidence, but so was yer “Saturday Night Special” comment.
So Ser…I mean, Sent…erm, Pris…oh hell. So Bob. Just leave. 'k? Thanks ever.
I’m not this Serlin person.
oil prices.
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/crudeoilprice4797c.gif
Now I’m going to have to apologize to OPEC and reinforce my ‘major corporation’ conspiracy theory.
I was wrong. My data was out dated. I apologize to all. I was basing my figures on barrel prices of $45 to $50, for some reason. However, prior to 1973, gasoline was around 70 cents per gallon for high test. When the barrel prices jumped up to $50, the pump prices hovered around $2.00 and up per gallon for high test.
From what I can tell, when barrel prices fell, the pump prices did not fall accordingly. High test at local pumps never even approached 70 cents a gallon again. With current barrel prices around $15 a barrel, close to, if not the same as 1972 - 73, high test per gallon pump prices remain locally between $1.40 - 69. Regular has dropped as low (locally) as 89 cents but continues to sell at over $1 per gallon.
Even with some inflation tossed in, the costs are too high. Considering that newer cars get better fuel mileage than in 1973, that would indicate less gas being used. Considering also that new houses are more energy efficient, which means they use less power, electric and pressurized gas charges are still too high. Here, city power is on a steady fuel increase charge, which never goes down. In fact, one of the guys in the city power management, told me that it is on a real slow upward spiral and not based on barrel prices. So, housing uses less fuel.
So, why the heck are we paying so much for gas and why the heck is it that every winter the price jumps up even though the fuel companies know far in advance that the demand will be higher? Could it be greed? Could it be less gas use cuts into their profits so they jack the prices up?
The Beef analogy*: Less beef, higher prices. More beef, lower wholesale costs, but the public will still pay higher prices for it, = bigger profits for retailers which = no return to previous post shortage counter charges.
The results of the oil company greed: we get screwed.
Homeless:
Jimmy Carter in 1974 or 1975 removed major funding from State mental institutions and cut government grants and assistance to private ones. The response was that the State institutions kicked out any mental patient they judged reasonably able to survive on their own. Private institutions which used to offer low cost treatment started turning away patients who could not afford treatment.
That was the central core for the majority of the homeless.
My error in blaming Carter for the Social program rapes. It was Reagan, who further slashed the budget by cutting back on State assisted social help programs, which dumped more people out on the streets.
It is funny though, that with these people oriented programs being butchered up, the government did not slash assistance to ‘Arts’ programs nor do much to funds available to restore historic buildings.
The cuts were blamed on high costs due to high barrel prices. Well, barrel prices are down, so why have funds not been restored to these programs.
Yep. You remember me telling you about my friend Matt and I rolling his car? It was a Chevette. We flipped that baby over and rolled four or five times before coming to rest upside down. And we walked away, uninjured. Climbed right out of the smashed winshield and had nary a scratch on us.
Chevettes were popular first cars with people when I went to high school because they could be had relatively cheaply, and would handle a lot of abuse.
Serlin:
You aren’t. Fucking baby. You pay less for gas than anyone in the world, even adjusting for inflation, even counting in all the taxes. You should be thankful that you live somewhere that you pay this little for gas.
Gas prices high? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet! When it became obvious that MTBE was a problem, all the corner gas stations had to dig up their tanks and replace them with better ones. They had until Jan. 1, 2000, and many a local “independent” station shut down rather than comply. Then, in California, we lost a big amount of refinery capacity due to legitimate environmental concerns and had a big gas price hike as the supply dropped. As other areas get some real smog (So. Cal. lost its place as #1 last year), it looks like the rest of the country is going to mandate the California gas formulations, so while the refineries gear up for that we will see some more shortages, and therefore higher prices, but at least the rest of the country will “share our pain.”
What will drive the prices higher in years to come? We got rid of lead to help with air pollution. MTBE is causing groudwater and land pollution, so it is on the way out. What will replace it? No one is sure. The MTBE thing adds a whole lot of uncertainty, so less people will build new refineries, so capacity will stay short, and prices will go up. The estimates I saw have it at $3.00 per gallon in just a few years. Ouch.
Neither has the cost of a candy bar even approached $0.25.
Less gas used per mile travelled, sure, but that doesn’t mean less gas used overall. I’m sure that the total number of miles travelled (by car, airplane, etc.) is way up over 1973.
Same argument – just because energy efficiency has increased doesn’t mean that total energy usage has decreased.
Could it be that oil companies don’t know how much demand will increase? What happens if we have a warmer than average winter? What if Southern California has record low temperatures and Minnesota has record high temperatures?
Just for the record, Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia during this time, not president of the U.S. I’ll second UncleBeer – what does this have to do with gas prices?
Homeless and gas prices. I think I’ve got it now. It must be that the homeless were sleeping in their cars and running the engines at night when it got cold in the northern climes. This obviously created too much demand for the limited supply of gasoline and drove the prices up. It’s all Reagan’s fault.
I’m not so sure you haven’t got that backwards, UncleBeer. I think maybe they were homeless because they spent all their money on gas, so the homeless are really the fault of greedy oil companies.
Hmmm. I’ll see if I can dig up a source on that. I may have to reconsider my thinking.
While I can’t speak to other areas using California gas formulations, do have an issue with this So. Cal lost its #1 ranking last year. The EPA doesn’t “rank” smogginess of cities. What happened was that Houston had more smog alert days than L.A. What I have heard on NPR (I think) is that weather conditons made smog more likely than normal in Houston, and less likely than usual in L.A. Like people using data from the last 100 years to “prove” global warming, using “smog stats” from the last year doesn’t address the whole story.
No, no no. The were homeless because the produce too much gas. The greedy oil companies, afraid that this low-cost methane production system would be harnessed by some entrepreneur, conspired to destroy their lives and leave them destitute.
According to my memory, in the early 70s, Jimmy Carter was president, because I have friends who worked in psychiatry who were real pleased at first because his wife was heavily into mental health. They expected big funding to take place. They were shocked when he slashed the mental health budget because of the impact of the high cost of the fuel shortage.
They also felt and still feel that his actions because of the oil crisis created today’s generation of street people, starting with the thousands of mentally ill, but potentially harmless, people kicked out of State institutions to survive or die on their own.
I, personally, remember rents and living expenses skyrocketing during that time and banks were running around foreclosing like mad, loan interest went up and the cost of living started climbing. Within a year or two, unemployment rates jumped as businesses cut back or closed. People lost their homes by the thousands and there were not enough shelters for them.
I recall that time because before then, I rarely saw anyone living on the street and that was usually the local drunk. Afterwards, I found people living in deserted buildings, digging through dumpsters, setting up camp in patches of woods, living out of their cars and in card board boxes. A huge amount of the people were obviously mentally ill.
Reagan, I think, came along and slashed social programs of assistance, which royally fucked the poor and homeless, because of the financial problems still going on because of the high oil prices. To my understanding, very few of those programs, in this day and age of budget surplus, have recovered even to the pre-1970s standard, especially the mental health systems.
We have low pump prices here in comparison to other nations because our States don’t tax the crap out of gasoline, though some try. However, if I am correct, our monthly power bills are higher than in other nations because the government doesn’t subsidize them. (I’m not real sure on this last one, having been told it once by a traveling friend of mine who was pissed over his power bill.) If I’m wrong, then I apologize.
The correlation of the homeless to high oil prices has been discussed before in other places, along with the curious way that the major banks hastily repossessed property when people were in dire straits, wailed about the potential of going out of business and came out of it consolidated, richer than ever, more powerful and with more service charges than before.
Other friends of mine noticed the many businesses being built on preying on the tragedy of disposed families where companies started offering bank repossessed properties for sale, expounding on how one could cheaply turn them around and make money. We were somewhat appalled by the huge rush by the well off to do just that, ignoring the plights of the previous owners.
In my city, in pre-oil rape, a single bedroom apartment could be rented for $119 a month and the power bill ran something like $20 a month. By the beginning of the 1980s, the same apartment went for $350 (now $450) and the power jumped up to $75. (Now, $98.)
Everything was blamed on the high cost of oil. Now, locally, while oil prices have dropped to around the level of the early 70s, rents have leveled off at steep costs but never dropped. The cost of housing, however, never even leveled off but continues to rise.
So, yes, I can see where barrel prices for crude and the mass of homeless correlate.
Your memory fails you, as Carter was elected in '76 and was sworn in in '77, which is really stretching the definition of early.
I’m not sure why you think anyone should care about your obviously less than reliable memory, but Richard Nixon was President through mid-1974, and Gerald Ford through Carter’s inauguration in January 1977. Why you insist on even attempting to debate this point is beyond me.