its a good idea but you need to get the message out, not just with mail links on forums. whoever wants to spearhead this needs to go national with the idea

-arcon
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I got the mail from work, and stuck it on that page 'cos its a bit long to quote

I work for quite a large company with branches all round the country and I think it has been forwarded to every body there

This scheme seems to have had a tiny bit more thought put into it than that idiotic "don't buy gas for a day" scheme, but this will never work either. You can't change the price of something without changing supply or demand. If people stop buying gas from some companies but buy the same amount of gas from others the demand stays the same. In fact what will probably happen is that the the companies this scheme is trying to hurt will sell gas to the other companies to make up for what they lose by not selling as much at the pump. Maybe some ma&pa gas stations will go out of business, but it won't hurt the big companies.

The price of oil is driven by artificial fluctuations in the supply. The OPEC cartel decides how much oil to pump and when they feel like increasing the price they lower the amount they pump. One way to offset their power would be for more countries to tap their own oil reserves, but here in the US we have a bunch of Enviromentalist wackos who want to block any attempt to make us more energy independent.

The real culprit when you're mad about the price of gas in Europe is your government because they're taxing the crap out of it. Here in the US taxes are about 30% of the price of gas but in Europe isn't it more like 60% or more?

Let's get those missiles ready to destroy the universe!!

Yeah tax is crazy over here especially in the UK

The idea for this is actually fairly sound, the biggest company normally has the biggest market share and therefore more power over its competitors, if this companies market shares starts to decrease then they will lower the price to gain it back again. If this happens other companies can either ignore this (Which hardly ever happens) but they will then loose market share, or they can also lower their prices.

But this all depends on how much profit these companies are making, because the cartels are restricting price and then there is the tax so im not sure how much they are able to alter the price without making a loss.

Edited by - NJS The Great on 18-03-2003 20:16:46