GAS PRICES! What kind of Capitalism is this?

YAHOO News, May 25, 2007

Traffic up on gasoline price Web sites

By ROBERT WELLER, Associated Press Writer Fri May 25, 1:19 AM ET

DENVER - The higher gasoline prices go, the more money business
Web entrepreneur Jason Toews makes.

He started an Internet site, GasBuddy.com, in 2000 to track daily
gasoline prices using volunteers to e-mail what they find. "Hardly
anybody ever used it," Toews, of Brooklyn Park, Minn., recalled.

By 2004, 1 million people were visiting the site daily, although
the numbers dropped when prices went down.

But at the pace hits were being recorded Thursday, the site was
likely to break its record of 4 million visitors, Toews said. As
gasoline prices have risen, so have the hits on his site and another,
GasPriceWatch.com.

"We have had to buy more servers and it looks like we will need
more," he said.

GasBuddy.com offers information from 180 locations in the U.S. and
Canada, including every major city. The site said the average price
nationally in the U.S. was $3.22 for unleaded Thursday afternoon,
compared with $2.86 a year ago.

Brad Proctor, founder of GasPriceWatch.com in Centerville, Ohio,
said his site has added prices for ethanol, biodiesel, truck diesel
and ultra-low-sulfur diesel. Hits on his site have doubled. As many
eight people log in every second during peak periods, he said.

[-And here's the really IMPORTANT revelation: ]

Dan Gilligan, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Petroleum
Marketers Association of America, said the system is a good idea
but warned consumers to remember that if they drive more than 10
miles to save a nickel, they are losing money. He also said there's
no guarantee the price will be the same when they arrive.

"Many retailers are getting price increases twice a day. You may
have a price increase within six hours," he said.

(emphasis mine)
[-did you get that? "TWICE A DAY!" -]

Other businesses are also tying technology to drivers' increasing
efforts to find a deal.

Toews' company, GasBuddy Organization Inc., claims to monitor
900,000 stations with several hundred thousand registered
volunteers. GasPriceWatch.com says it tracks 170,000 stations.

People can send a message to gas(at)gasbuddy.com with a ZIP code
in the text area, and the site will reply with the cheapest nearby
stations.

The Web site also has a national map for those planning trips.
_____________________

Commentary:

How many trips to the supermarket do you make in a weeks
time? How many Department Stores do you visit each week?

When you're looking over the tomatoes or the cans of
soups in the grocery store, does some clerk run up and
change the price on the can, or the posted price? And
do they do this perhaps TWICE while you are shopping?

Of course they don't.

And why don't they?

Because apparently unlike the oil industry, the owners
of farms, manufacturing plants and other service industrys
know what their costs are and know how much they need to
sell of a particular product in order to make a profit.
They pay humans to project these figures and make sure
that expenses are covered no matter what happens.

The price of tomatoes do not rise twice daily just because
some government official is out in the field and notices
that one plant has a dead leaf or another sees storm
clouds on the horizon.

That coat you are looking at doesn't rise in price, as
you try it own, because that incoming shipment from
Nebraska is stalled out on Interstate 55 or it is
reported that the next shipment of coats sank in the
Gulf of Mexico due to a hurricane or the cotton field
in Guadalahela had an increase of employee layoffs due
to a virus going around the town.

Yet, these are the types of reasons being given to justify
price rises as often as TWICE DAILY at the pumps, only
substituting electronic and technological words instead
of saying it in words that reveal its whimsical causes!
One is just as valid a reason as any other. A refinery
goes down for a couple of hours, the price at the pump
goes up. A Futures bidder in New York suddenly thinks
that the swarm of locusts in Pixapan Chile may, just may,
affect that amount of oil that will be produced and
exported next year and so he bids accordingly, driving
the price of an imported barrel of oil into the
stratoshpere, and the price at the pump goes up.
But wait, there's more.

The refineries in Texas accept more and more oil from
the Arab emirates and less and less of American oil.
With less and less American crude oil being processed
there is less and less gasoline at the pumps (because its
being exported). But of course this is hidden in charts
and tables that jump around and back and forth from
thousands of BARRELS per MONTH being imported
and exported to millions of GALLONS per DAY of
refined gasoline getting to market. That's the same
as a reading a book that compares apples to pancakes
or listening to that joke that ends; 'I guess you had
to be there.'

This is not Capitalism.

And how does it work? Ask your Congressmen. It is all
compliments of your government. It is your government
that gives special concessions to the oil industry.
They are not driven by markets (regular Capitalism)
but by congressional special privileges and concessions.

Let President Bush turn all of those vacant military
compounds, posts and reserves that have been shut down
over the past 15-20 years into oil refineries. Let the
Arabs, the REALLY rich people in the world, build their
own refineries. Let the Arabs and the Oil Industry lay
in the bed they have so craftily built. Let the Queens
of Industry know that there is competition out there and
they had better get their ship in shape .... or ship
out.
Make them answer .... to you.