It's been ages and ages since I've posted anything here, because I've been too busy.  But I've gotten a bee in my bonnet, and you lot are the unlucky sods who get to receive my prosaic wrath.

Driving this morning with kass_rants, our route required a refueling stop.  It's been a couple of weeks since I last purchased fuel; I remarked to SWMBO that $3.27 was up from my last pit stop.  That led to an interesting discussion about fuel, biofuels, the effect of biofuel crop diversion on world hunger, and other things.  But that's not what I'm upset about.

I'm upset by the shrill twonks who continue to harp on their conspiracy theories surrounding Big Oil, Big Government, and the huge profits that Big Oil is making on the backs of poor drivers.  Because those twonks are idiots.

First, Americans pay less per liter of over-the-road petrol than any other First-World nation.  By rights, our price per gallon ought to be at the First-World average of ~$5USD, but it's not. 

Second, oil companies produce an essential product for what is actually quite a reasonable price.  Much of the cost of a gallon of gasoline consists of tax: 18.4 cents per gallon for the Feds; a combined 49.5 cents per gallon for Pennsylvania (plus excise and other taxes I can't seem to find online), and local taxes to make up the rest, minus a pitifully low markup, between $3.27 and the average wholesale gasoline cost of ~$1.50.  The filling station owner makes on average 25 cents per gallon.

Let's take a look at what those evil Big Oil companies do to produce a product. 

1. Prospect for possible oil-producing areas.
2. Figure out a way to get it out of the ground without doing too much nasty stuff to us or the environment, while fronting hideous amounts of money.
3. Build a refining facility at hideous cost, which is never adjacent to the actual drilling site.
4. Transport the bulk product to a refining site in hideously expensive tankers or pipelines.
5. Refine the bulk product into a vast array of useful distillates with hideously expensive equipment run by highly-trained (and highly-paid) experts.
6. Repackage the product with expensive equipment.
7. Expensively transport the packaged product to a hideously expensive distribution site.
8. Repackage the product again (another expense).
9. Expensively transport the repackaged product to the distribution point.
10. Heavily advertise how excellent is your product - well, these days, the only petroleum advertising I see/read/hear deals with how environmentally responsible the "energy" company is imaging itself, but the economic principle holds.  That leads to...
10a. Conduct hideously expensive R&D for new products, preparing for:
            i. When the oil runs out, or
            ii. When the public good will for oil companies runs out
11. Pump it into the consumer's vehicle.

And then only charge $1.50 for the base unit of the product, making a profit for the shareholders. 

That's a business I don't want to be in.

Contrast that with the bottle of imported bottled water I saw in the cooler at the filling station, which was priced at $3.99USD.  Imported bottled water sells wholesale for ~15 cents per bottle.  Domestic, uncarbonated bottled water was labeled $1.59, and that wholesale cost is less than 10 cents per PET bottle.

Hm.  You do the math on the markup differences between the two products, and tell me if you've revised your estimation of Big Oil vs. the people who bottle their own tap water and sell it to you.

Speaking of which, that makes you a complete and utter defined-by-P.T.-Barnum sucker.  Hey, I've got a well; howzabout I bottle it and sell it on to you for $1.49?  It's charcoal filtered, with a specially-modified mineral content for great taste!  (I've got a filter and a softener, after all.)  Would you buy it?  No?  Cheapskate.  Then why on God's Green Earth would you buy a bottle of Aquafina?  Get a filter and drink your own damn water.

So unless and until you stop buying bottled water, STFU about Big Oil getting fat on gas prices.