The Free Market, price of gas, class warfare or socialism?

[FRPLG]

Originally Posted by dmek25

why cant the price be capped? a gallon of milk is regulated by the govt.

This is a fantastic example of why the government shouldn't cap gas prices. The capping of milk prices has created an completely imbalanced milk market that essentially killed milk farming in the US as it existed for decades. Because of the costs involved with producing milk it is near impossible for small and even medium sized farms to operate at a profit. Large incoporated farms milking thousands of cows a day drive the market now and put small farmers out of work. These farmes now have no job and probably lose their homes since they can't pay off their farms where ther homes are. Financial disaster. So what does the gov't do? THEY GIVE SUBSIDIES TO THEM SO THEY CAN OPERATE AT A LOSS. This therefore eliminates their motivation to work more efficiently and keeps the entire market in a state of flux with people on the daily verge of losing everything.

Now this is not anything like what would happen with oil but it shows how introducing false outside pressures on a market can easily destroy it and make things worse. Almost always the consequences of such actions are difficult and even impossible to predict.

Two sayings come to mind:

"No good deed goes unpunished"
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

It is time to start thinking about SMART ways to affect markets. Promoting healthy markets is the best thing for consumers and for companies.