Nothing draws ire so quickly today, as the price of gasoline. Accusations of price gouging and collusion on the part of oil companies run rampant from water coolers to Congress. I have grown accustomed to hearing the same specious arguments from the same people, groups and parties. However, I was shocked recently when a friend, whom I would consider to be an intelligent man, made the following statement when it was mentioned that the government’s taxation on oil is a significant portion of the price paid at the pump:

“Just because the government rips us off doesn’t give the oil companies the right to do it too.”

The oil companies do not have a right to charge what they wish for their product? Their rights as the owners and producers of said product entitle them the ability to set the price they wish to charge. It is their product, they own it. When you voluntarily pay for a product, you are not being ripped off for two reasons. First, you paid money in exchange for gasoline and received just that. Had you paid for gasoline and received Kool-Aid, then you could justly proclaim that you were ripped off. Second, no one applied coercive force to make you purchase gasoline. The fact that you had a choice not to purchase means you were not ripped off. The vast majority of consumers do not seem to realize that non-consumption is still a choice. Non-consumption often comes at a higher cost than consumption, especially in the case of oil, yet the fact remains it is still an option.

The people who are truly being ripped off are the oil companies whose profits are pilfered by the US government, which in turn affects we the consumer because that loss has to be made up somewhere. The oil companies are justified in passing on their increased cost of doing business to us, just as any business would. Have we lost all touch with reality, where we shame a company for daring to make the greatest profit possible? So many today are of the belief that corporations are moral entities with an obligation to community and the welfare of all. Corporations are amoral bodies whose sole purpose is to deliver a profit to its shareholders. Even the president of a corporation is not tied to a moral duty, as he is acting as an agent for the principals, the shareholders, to secure a profit. Asking a business to disregard the pursuit of profit is asking for their suicide.

Our economically illiterate electorate encourages legislators to continue enacting new taxes on the oil companies, neglecting to see that it is to their own detriment. What educated person could honestly think that taxing the profits on the sale of a product, would lower the cost of the same?