You Control Gas Prices!

What can we do about gas prices?

It's the topic more popular than weather, baseball or Oprah. Ideas range from cutting gas taxes, to price control (capping oil company profits) or a long-range set of options to achieve "energy indepenedence."

Everyone's got an opinion - many of them very selfish.

Some people want to pay less at the pump and have developed an infantile yearning to have government grant this latest desire.

We all know the ignored statistics on gas and energy. But let's review'em:

-- For the first time since 1918, the pump price of gas and the inflation adjusted costs are the same. Meaning, in one respect, the current pump prices are the "just" rates.

-- Gas consumption drops as prices climb. Previously, the only long-term drop in gas guzzling was in 1974 and 1981. But now, highway traffic is expected to be the lowest this year, since 1991.

-- The United States consumes one-third of the world's oil production. (Or 20.7 million barrels a day.)

-- Unlike Europe and Japan, the U.S. is fairly independent of Middle East oil, with our imports at 22% or below. With heavier imports coming from both north and south of the border.

So a re-cap of the facts are:

-- Gas prices are actually fairly level in real-money terms between the producers and the consumer.

-- Consumer reaction to the relative rise in cost, is to consume less.

-- Consuming less gas will slow the rise of gas prices, help save the planet and without an act of Congress or any political promise, begin to cut our import of oil.

Of course there is no defense of high gas prices, but that's the point, there is no need for a defense. It is what it is. People consume more, products get scarce, prices go up. The opposite is also true.

We know that there is an immediate squeeze felt by all families. This makes challenging times even tougher. The smart policy response is to look at the broader issues in our consumption-based economy amidst new global consumption and manufacturing competitors . Picking out one commodity most Americans consume and target it for special treatment is myopic.

When it comes to "fixing" high gas prices, the option of lowering gas taxes (even temporarily) is a great idea. Then again, I believe the freedom and empowerment of people through lower taxes is always the right thing to do.

But should Congress set a wage and price control on gas pumps?

This may be an out-of-fashion view of price-controls, but it is no less valid. Capping oil profits, or price controls, is both constitutionally untenable and morally wrong.

Since Roosevelt packed the courts, Americans have steadily lost their constitutionally-guaranteed economic rights (Olsen v. Nebraska). Pre-New Deal courts believed Americans had a right to create a job and engage in enterprise. Pretty much everything that has followed from the Court since, on this topic, is bunk. But I do admit that there is now a precedent (with shallow roots) for such an authoritarian big-government action. Hopefully, this new-fangled tradition of suppressing economic rights will be swept into the dust-bin with Dread Scott.

The most important reason price-controls must be avoided are their immorality. By any measure of humanity, it is immoral to take the labor of one man and forcibly redistribute it to a tribe. Those who take risks, who drill deep into oceans and battle the elements to bring oil to market, fulfill both a public good as well as productive enterprise. It is the market which assigns them a just reward for their risks.

Think of the hubris needed, in a politician, to think they alone can calculate the wage and price controls for a complex market. I believe the word is demigod.

Simply put, price-control freaks are selfish socialists. They want what others have without the effort of earning it. Let's apply their price-control scheme to other parts of American life:

-- Food is clearly the highest public good, so farmers should till for free and grocers should be required to sell good as mere helpers. Demanding fees for goods and services is simply excessive profiteering.

-- Education is good, it should be free; ergo teachers should be required to volunteer their services for the common good. Teachers who demand pay are greedy.

-- Hair needs to be cut and trimmed in order to avoid a public health issue. So barbers and stylists need to clip without compensation. If they cannot contribute their skills freely they're unpatriotic.

And so the march of price-controllers would continue their silly path. The freedom to create, risk, produce and engage in enterprise is not a luxury we toss out in tough times.

To suggest that whenever a mob gets selfish we can simply curtail freedom in order to provide us objects of our desire is radically liberal and immoral.

The solution to high gas prices is to buy less gas. And by so doing, you can do what Congress and the President cannot - help protect the planet and lesson our nation's dependence on oil. Not to mention, you will lower the price of gas.

And of course, the converse is true. If price-control schemers get their way and lower gas prices by fiat - we'll be more dependent upon foreign oil and they'll continue the destruction of planet earth. So much for liberal do-gooders.

Gas prices are in your control, where they should be.