Originally posted by Pete D:
Elasticity has a huge amount to do with it from a customer standpoint. There are no subsitute goods for most oil products (gasoline for example), so if price goes up you can only use less. If Microsoft decides they want to charge $1000 for Vista, what will happen? Nobody will buy it, they'll pirate or, switch to linux, or Apple or choose a bunch of other options.

ExxonMobil has huge amounts of fixed costs (tied up in a lot of PP&E) where as Microsoft has a lot more variable costs. You can't compare the industries for a logical argument.

While most Americans don't understand why, they see that Oil companies are making record profits and they are paying record prices. When they put the two together they are understandably pissed.



I don't know about you but I don't see mothers and johnny myspace switching to Linux, nor do they have the money to switch to Apple. Windows really does not have a substitute good.

I'm not comparing, nor do I care, nor is it the case here the sources of their production costs. It doesn't matter. Any industry works to keep production costs as low as possible, they don't artificially inflate it especially in the ultra competitive oil industry.

Business is business, and the oil industry is the perfect microcosm of the principles and ideals that the country is built on. Unfortunately it's not very pleasant when you're on the other end of the capitalism stick.

Originally posted by RT and his SE:
When's the next time you'll buy a new OS compared to your next fill up. Would you rather get 30% every 2 or 3 years or 8% every 3 days?

As far as supply manipulation goes Enron(with electricity)did it so it's not beyond the realm of possibility. He11, big oil could be helping to feed the uncertainty in the speculators!



You fill up every 3 days ?? Holy cow man, you need to reassess your transportation [censored]. How the hell do you burn through 55 gal every three days ?