Just a little quick note here to keep the blog alive 
I have comments waiting for response as well, and I am working on a review of Bob Martin’s very informative "49 Ways to Make a Living in the Philippines book. I’m also almost ready with the next "Moving" installment … but time is always a factor and my Internet access hasn’t been what if should have been the last 24 hours or so. Poor me LoL.
I put this little note and graphic up, though, because ever since I wrote my last installment on gasoline and diesel prices I’ve been troubled by the vast difference in what diesel should cost in many countries and what it does cost.
A lot of college professors and other pundits spend their days getting paid to deliver ‘book’ knowledge that tells us over and over again how the laws of supply and demand apply to the free market.
If you take a look at the real market … that is what people have to pay at the pumps, you’ll soon see that the idea of a free market in oil is nothing more than a lie being promulgated to the population in general.
Now I don’t know who is behind the lie(s) … I have my suspicions, but I’ll not start a flame war here (you might ask yourself who the last male person you saw kissing a Saudi sheik on the face was, but then again, why bother) but the bottom line to all of is is that the multinational oil companies … many of whom are not even US-controlled any longer, are allowed to just run roughshod over we, the people, without any regard for the actual costs they incur or the simple economics of what products one can actually make for sale out of the proverbial barrel of oil.
Whether you plan to live out your years in the US or in the Philippines or somewhere else, you might want to question the oil policies (if they even have one) of whichever candidate you choose to support. I doubt you’ll have much problem in evaluating either the Republican or Democratic party’s oil policy in the US … a blank sheet of paper and a ‘do whatever you please’ ticket to the oil companies are pretty easy to understand.
Here in the Philippines, as I mentioned, the oil companies essentially have free reign as well … they actually publicly announce when they, the oil companies inform the government regulators when they, the oil companies have decided to change prices … and not one3 government official even makes a statement.
But you can tell from the fact that diesel is much less than gasoline here that it’s a good place to own a diesel car. I’m not mad, by the way, just disappointed that governments all over the world just ignore the situation and if they do anything, use the money of the people to prop up one price while chopping the others, all the time telling the people an untruth abut the laws of supply and demand
Popularity: 5% [?]
Diesel is actually MORE expensive than regular unleaded in Australia.
We kept getting told here that the price is going up because the $US dollar per barrel price is going up, but the $AU has appreciated in value against the $USD, so I fail to see how that argument holds sway.
There’s an old work chanty used by the workers on the Us transcontinental railroad, I think. It’s called “Drill ye Tarriers, Drill”. It uses a slang definition of tarrier meaning one who is covered or looks like he is covered in tar (or perhaps cruse oil).
But ‘tarrying’, as in the more common definition, staying too long in one place and perhaps missing the boat, seems to be the order of the day.
Last night I saw two items on US TV which made me want to throw a shoe at the screen … lucky I never wear them any more LoL.
the sitting president of the US breating Congress for not voting to rape one of the last natural wildlife resources in Alaska for, in the prisdent’;s own description … possibly 10 more years of oil … in other words just enough to let he and his big oil buddies die even richer.
Then came his heir apparent, a man whose educational achievements include vying for the position of being the very last in his class (he failed there too, after four years at Annapolis he was solidly in the second from last position) who has the ‘long term’ solution. 400 plus nuclear power plants! (hey, at least he can pronounce the word). He’s statistically closer to death and to dying rich.
And both of them share the attitude of, “who cares about tomorrow if we can buy a vote today?”
There are thousands of tales here in the Philippines about politicians lining up prospective voters before an election and handing out 100 peso notes in return for a promise of a vote. How undemocratic and sad. I wonder where they could have learned such a practice?
those two remind me of Whimpy on the old Popeye cartoons….”I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today”…
…when I lived in in the Cajun area of Louisiana a few years back, I heard stories of the local political bosses using big black limos to pick up little old ladies in the bayous to go cast their vote…with the candidate’s name written on a 10 dollar bill…
Indeed they do, Marshall. And today I just saw a news item that said Hitachi and General Electric have signed a joint venture agreement to go into the nuclear (or is that new-clue-lar) powerplant business. Shades of the 1970s. There is not a single nuclear power plant that has _ever_ made money for the company who built it, they all exist by government subsidy and they all create waste which the next 20 or 30 generations will suffer for … but hey, if it will get someone elected today, why worry? *sigh*