The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

The senate voted today to stop strategic oil reserve shipments by the Bush administration.  You can read about it in this article at CNN.Com.

Sadly, I think this will do nothing to lower gas prices.  70,000 barrels of oil a day is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to American oil usage.  This reminds me of the idea that some have to tax oil companies’ profits heavily.  How will that help?  It won’t since the oil companies will just pass the price increases on to the consumer and continue making the same profit margin as before.

As oil company executives have pointed out, their margin is only 10-15%.  The thing is, when you are dealing with such enormous sums of money, 10-15% comes out to billions in profits.  Many other companies operate on much larger margins (jewelry anyone?) but don’t get yelled at because the economics involved are smaller.  I firmly believe that messing with capitalism when it is working just fine is a bad and dangerous thing to do.  In the end, we’ll only end up hurting ourselves.

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