Many here and around the nation are screaming about price gouging by the oil companies.  Screaming.  And what else are they doing about it?  Nothing.

Yet we seem to have selective amnesia when it comes to price gouging, or a double standard.  For while the oil companies are indeed making a lot of money on the run up of the price of oil and gas, it is not their fault.  It is our fault.  The supply of oil and gas has been cut by Katrina.  Before that the demand had and has been increased due to the emerging economies of India and China, number 1 and 2 in terms of the country's population.  So we have a situation where demand is outstripping supply, and was only exacerbated by Katrina.  So, like the law of supply and demand dictates (you cannot legislate this law - it is one of the natural laws of nature), the price has shot up.

So how many have cut back on their consumption?  A show of hands please.  Hmmm, less than 10% of you, and then not by a lot.

We blame a corporation, but all a corporation really is, a bunch of people who have invested money in a company hoping to earn money (most likely you and me and our retirement accounts or even Individual investments) and a bunch of people working for a living, 9-5.  IN short, it is people like you and me.  It may even be you and me.

About 15 years ago, members of my profession had an epiphany.  The realized that literally millions of programs, with billions of lines of code, would stop working come the year 2000 because of the Date being record as 05 instead of 2005.  Knowing that these companies would not be self terminating on December 31, 1999, they decided to act to correct the situation.  So they started hiring a bunch of programmers who could fix the programs.

The demand skyrocketed!  Such that by the late 90s, a good Cobol or RPG programmer could and often did demand and get 6 figure salaries!  These people were taking advantage of the Y2K bug to extort more money, far above their normal worth, from companies (that collection of investors and workers).

Yet where was the outrage then?  I myself benefited (not that well, but by the end of that decade, I was pulling in 90k with the OT I was pulling in).  I never heard of anyone talking about Price gouging then!  Yet clearly there was a collusion of IT workers that was running up the price of their services. 

Was it a natural disaster like Katrina or Isabel (or the Alphabet soup of Hurricanes in Florida)?  No, but it was a man made disaster of short sightedness that brought it on.  And the IT workers took advantage of that disaster to price gouge the employers. 

So where is the outrage?  Where was the outrage?  Because today, salaries have dropped back to pre Y2K levels.  The crises is over, and the law of supply and demand has restored the equilibrium so that a high end IT worker probably is only earning high 5s, not big 6s.

And so it will be with oil and gas eventually.  But for now, you can no more blame the gas companies for price gouging than you could have the IT workers.  For in reality, the IT workers were not dictating the prices, the companies were bidding the prices up!  Just as we, the consumer today, are bidding up the price of gas.

Can the oil companies artificially keep the prices low?  Sure.  Just as the IT workers of the 90s could have.  But that will just mean shortages.  Why?  Because with the reduced supply, people will not reduce demand, and the companies will run out.  It is already happening.  Just as in the 90s, if Workers had not accepted the higher salaries, other companies would have run out of talent to fix the problems.

So get on your horse and demand government action.  Condemn the oil companies for price gouging.  Then sit back and watch the shortages occur.  And if you then demand the government step in and distribute the gas in an equitable manner, just remember the old Soviet Union where the government did that very exact thing.  Worked real well didn't it?  Bread lines that made our gas lines pale in comparison!  Yep!  It worked real well.

And all the while, you will sit smugly back, demanding your $2/gal gasoline that is no longer available, but smug in your righteous indignation that you 'stuck it to the man'.

Even as the root cause of the problem was not 'the man', but YOU.

Nice going.