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Oil Companies are Eeevil! (except when they’re not)
It’s become quite fashionable in some quarters to blame the oil companies for all ills — a position verging on hypocritical. Either they’re greedy for the big bucks, or they’re sitting on oil they could produce but won’t. (Can’t really make that argument work both ways.)
Along those lines… last night, while flipping through the TV channels, I stumbled across C-Span, and a Democratic congress-critter droning on about offshore drilling, and current oil leases, and how the oil companies aren’t doing anything with them.
This argument has always struck me as specious, but never more so than lately. With the current price of oil, how can anybody seriously think oil companies would deliberately ignore any possible source of income?
And now, there’s another debate kicking up now around leases, and production… only this time, some Democrats see the oil companies as the good guys.
I’m getting dizzy. Are Democrats pointlessly obstructing offshore drilling, and simultaneously being pragmatic about oil shale?
56 Responses to “Oil Companies are Eeevil! (except when they’re not)”
“Those liberals sure do want to be told what to do.”
They want to tell others what to do — beginning with regulation, as you went on to note.
Neocon: No one ever told me that if I make 5000 dollara a month and I take on a 6000 dollar a month mortgage thats not good economics.
And yet somehow many people got loans like that. Go figure.
DLS and Neocon, The American (and Western European) social welfare state demonstrates that there is a substantial segment of the population who disagrees with you. This in itself does not mean that your strong libertarian position is objectively “wrong.” But it does mean that if you are “right,” then a lot of people make WRONG choices–which is the reason we provide a safety net. It is a society of human beings, not economically rational actors.
To paraphrase, just because I'm for regulation, it does not follow that I'm for dumb regulation.
Perhaps if we let them live with their mistakes, They wouldnt make so many.
No one is advocating disbanding and removing safety nets. The problem is that the safety nets in place are never enough and the left/liberals continue to want more and more and more…………until its a Nanny state socialism experiment.
No longer do they issue doom and gloom. Now the new talking point is that we make mistakes and we should be picked up when we fall. But now its going beyond that to we must regulate the banks, we must save the people from evil banks who lent them money to buy a house.
Nothing is more evident then the first thing the democratic congress does when the energy crisis becomes a problem. Yep they try to legislate fear out of commodities traders. With REGULATIONS.
Lord have mercy.
Neocon: No longer do they issue doom and gloom. Now the new talking point is that we make mistakes and we should be picked up when we fall. But now its going beyond that to we must regulate the banks, we must save the people from evil banks who lent them money to buy a house.
That's not exactly it. Then again, maybe it is. The fact is, most people don't have the financial acumen that people employed by lending institutions are presumed to have. Thus, they present themselves in good faith (more or less anyway), expecting the lending institution to judge them according to their established criteria. Many of said people should not have qualified. Yet amazingly, the lending institution went along with it. Why is that?
More importantly, what are the ramifications for the lendee and the lendor? Motivations and ramifications are both important, don't you think?
Personally, I would never have gotten myself in that situation. My RE transactions set me up for life, but I never got suckered into a situation I didn't think I could handle. Heaven knows the offers were there though. And if I took them up on them I didn't have to be dishonest about anything — just stupid. But the fact is, had I been stupid it would have ruined me. The lending institution could either fold up and walk away (assuming they were sufficiently small), or have the government bail them out (if they were sufficiently large).
Looking back over the last several decades, I'd say shady lending practices have accounted for most of the major economic melt-downs. The current mortgage crisis is the most recent incarnation. But similar mechanisms explain the dot com bubble in the early 00s, the FSL fiasco in the early 90s, and Black Monday in the mid 80s. If I were old enough, perhaps I could walk it back further, lol!
“DLS and Neocon, The American (and Western European) social welfare state demonstrates that there is a substantial segment of the population who disagrees with you.”
Without a doubt. The more that people expect to benefit, the more they would disagree, as a rule.
From the next part of your posting there is the essence of what you were trying to say:
“a lot of people make WRONG choices–which is the reason we provide a safety net.”
Actually, the most-supported basis for the safety net concept is that people can experience misfortune that is not their fault necessarily at all.
(Separate issue — regulation, rather than the safety net)
“To paraphrase, just because I'm for regulation, it does not follow that I'm for dumb regulation.”
Good to know. My concern is that many are in favor of dumb regulation (for dumb reasons) or it becomes that way even with good intentions.
Note that regulation, as opposed to welfare-state entitlements, brings government back to being government rather than a provider of services, which is good. (It becomes more than that when regulation is used to force “progress” on something that business won't do on its own because — as I once told Pete Abel — the first businesses to do things that cost more only lose. Regulation can force all business to do X, for example provide safety glass in automobiles, that wouldn't pay for anyone to be a pioneer, even in today's “enlightened” post-1960s era. Businesses can all wink at each other while publicly decrying the Big, Bad Government while they're relieved that everyone else has to play by the same rules. (Of course, this is to the advantage of bigger business who can best afford the regulations' effects, so be warned. It's no surprise that the big trucking companies support 68-mph limiters for trucks while smaller independent firms do not, for example.)