Nathan Scandella (personal)

All Mucked Up

There's hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil per day gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. BP, and the Obama Administration, claim they're sparing no expense. But, two weeks into the spill, they haven't even dented the flow. We put a man onto the moon, built pyramids without machines, and run trains under water. We can't find a way to plug an oil leak? Or maybe BP just knows that they won't be paying for but a fraction of the cost to cleanup, and they're concerned about halting the flow in such a way that makes it as easy as possible to restart.

President Obama clearly stated that BP will bear the full cost of this cleanup effort. He's either stupid, or corrupt. Probably both. At this point, I don't care any more which it is.

The oil consumers will be paying for all of this, regardless of what Obama says to appease Americans' feeble, and short-lived bouts with conscience. My response to a CNN article about the cleanup effort:

Nathan Scandella 1:39 am
It's a pretty simple economic concept. Whenever you have a product that people must have, any taxes or other costs born by the sellers are passed on to the consumers, in their entirety. (See "elasticity of demand")

It really doesn't matter whether the cap on damages is $75m or $10b. We, the oil consuming public, are paying for every dollar needed to clean up this mess. You can chase the illusion of sticking the evil oil companies with the bill, but it's all passed on to the consumer, one way or the other. The oil companies will charge whatever it costs them, plus profit. And that's what you'll pay. If BP gets "stuck" with the bill, and even goes out of business, you'll see higher prices from the remaining oil companies.

The only way to avoid this reality is to stop using oil. If you're still consuming oil, whether you drive a Hummer or a Prius, you're to blame for this "accident", too.

Posted at 01:52AM May 06, 2010 by Nathan in Environment  |  Comments[0]