All Your Rights Are Belong To U.S October 29, 2005
Posted by Resident Egoist in : Uncategorized , trackbackDemonstrating the fact that our present culture stinks rotten of altruism and envy, several members of Congress have decided that they simply can’t stomach the fact that oil companies are making a profit — i.e., they are achieving the very goal for which they went into business in the first place.
Oct 27 — via the Christian Science Monitor:
NEW YORK — Many oil companies have seen their rigs get battered in the Gulf of Mexico this hurricane season. But now, the companies are facing a new kind of storm, as Congress wants to show constituents it is concerned about oil companies reporting record profits.
At the moment, it’s mainly just a windstorm. Warnings swirl about price gouging. Some in Congress are urging the oil companies to reinvest their profits in new US refineries and energy sources. But some Democrats are also proposing windfall profits taxes, which would make the companies either spend their money on new energy projects or send it to the US Treasury.
Well, there you have it. One group of thugs wants to tell the oil companies how to handle the profits they’ve made by directing their future investments, and the other simply wants to have its share through legal looting. The common theme? The owners of energy companies have no right to property — that the justification of their existence is the welfare of unthinking masses and the puny grace of incompetent politicians.
Today, Oct 28, the Los Angeles Times reports:
WASHINGTON ? Oil industry executives will be summoned to Capitol Hill to explain why gasoline prices are so high ? the latest effort by Republican lawmakers to head off political fallout from high fuel costs.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called Thursday for hearings into fuel prices, becoming the second congressional Republican leader this week to raise questions about the soaring profits of an industry that long has been a GOP ally.
With the industry posting record profits, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) earlier called on oil companies to plow more money into increasing fuel supplies and lowering costs to consumers.
“Our free market works best when all know and follow the rules of the road,” Frist said in a statement on his request for hearings. “If there are those who abuse the free-enterprise system to advantage themselves and their businesses at the expense of all Americans, they ought to be exposed, and they ought to be ashamed.”
What on earth are those supposed “rules of the road” that Mr. Frist is refering to?! The rules [read: regulations] which he sets — i.e., the criminality of making a profit? But then why call the market “free”? Why even call it a “market” at all when the State is the entity charged with directing investments?!
True to his unacknowledged teacher, Karl Marx, Mr. Frist seems to think that not only are prices mere numbers to be stamped on goods by businessmen regardless of the circumstances prevalent in the market, but also that all profit must come at the expense of someone else. Of course, this notion has been disproved both theoritically by countless capitalist economists, and historically by the unrivaled success of capitalism in creating abundance and material progress on the one hand, and the bloody failure of socialism on the other.
But Mr. Frist’s ignorance of economic theory and history notwithstanding, one would expect at least some degree of logical consistency from him. He is a medical doctor after all. If one person’s gain can only come at the expense of another, then the difference that exists between a high and low rate of profit is merely one of degree — not of kind. But if such is the case, then why let any degree of injustice / oppression / profit-making to exist at all? If the goal of privately going into business is to make a profit, i.e., to oppress and take advantage of those oh-so-defenseless masses, then why let individuals start businesses in the first place? Why not have the Omnipotent State simply take over everything, put a final end to injust, oppressive profit-making and hence bring about Selfless Utopia?
I suspect however, that the above questions are for the “extremist” to ask. Mr. Frist is not an “extremist.” Hence, thanks to him and his ilk, present American businessmen are trapped in a hopeless mess of irreconcillable contradictions: if they happen to charge a “high” price for the goods/services that they produce, they are accused of price gouging. If they charge “too low” a price, they are sued for predatory pricing. Nor are they safe by charging the same price as their competitors, for then they can be accused of price fixing — i.e., conspiracy! What if they take their business elsewhere? No; I mean: what if they choose to take the injust and oppressive profit-making elsewhere? Then the unpardonable sin, of course, is outsourcing.
Economist Joseph Schumpeter once wrote that
[c]apitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment.
So far he has proven to be quite prophetic.
Technorati Tags: Capitalism, Oil Prices, Katrina, Price Gouging
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