Who's Gouging Whom?

Free marketers are an odd bunch. They want a free market so long as it benefits them. Take “oil price crisis” for example. As they leave their suburban homes to fill up the tanks of their SUV, they are outraged by the one-dollar-plus a litre price. It is criminal, they say, to have to pay this much to go to work. Some of them even crying “price gouging.” They forget that “price gouging” is precisely what a free market economy does. Take their mantra “let the market regulate itself” for example. When the supply of oil is low and the demand is high, the price of oil goes up. It will be as high as the market can bear. Soon, so the theory goes, oil will be priced out of reach and demand will wane and price will come down. The market will then have adjusted itself. This is the core belief of free marketers. “Price gouging” is simply a part of market mechanism. The free market response to price gouging is not to ask for government intervention but to simply not buy gas. Stay home, bike, walk, swim and roller-blade should all be free market responses to the situation. Changing in taxations and government involvements in changing the supply of oil are all government interference in the market’s freedom. Oh, I forgot, free marketer want a free market so long as it benefit them; as soon as they are slightly inconvenienced, they are the first to cry for daddy. I forgot about this nature of free marketers. Am I red-faced! Never mind.