What is Digg?207 Comments
- OneBallJ, on 10/12/2007, -7/+110 Break the Chain
http://www.breakthechain.org/
when ever some one sends you a "stop the..." "how to prevent..." "I just found out the about.."
find the exact email they sent you and Link the site reference to them... that usually cuts down on my forwards for a couple weeks. - Jaymoon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+103Exactly...
Tuesday: "Well I'm going to stick it to the man and not buy ANY gas today!"
Wednesday: "Fill 'er up please" - therealrico, on 10/12/2007, -24/+121What I don't understand why people are so pissed off at gas company's! Its our fault we are so dependant on gas, why be mad at the gas companies for profiting on it. I say good for them, this is what we get for driving SUV's in the suburbs, and so forth. Not to mention our country has been pretty spoiled for a gallon of gas, compare it to what the UK pays which comes to somewhere around 7 bucks a gallon, last I heard. You wanna hurt the gas company's FINE!! Sell your Hummer, or Jeep, or truck you don't need and buy a Prius.
- FishPoisonCon, on 10/12/2007, -3/+59doesn't this happen every summer? ...and isn't the response the same every single time?
- wheremyarm, on 10/12/2007, -5/+57Sorry for the comment abuse, but this issue is also addressed in more detail at Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/nogas.asp
Plus I think it's better to send these people a link telling them their plan is a well-known urban legend than just a write-up about it, but both are good. - PhoenixAvatar2, on 10/12/2007, -2/+50I'm surprised that people are still dumb enough to try this.
- mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -5/+47The bus is a rip off, my job pays for bus fare, so I take it anyway. But if they weren't paying for it, i'd just drive my car.
A single fare bus ticket is $2, gas is $3.50 per gallon.
I get about 47 MPG, and my job is about 30 miles to and from my house. I'd pay roughly $2.75 for that trip. Where as taking the bus would be $4 a day. I thought buses were supposed to be cheap? - Langford, on 10/12/2007, -2/+41The only way it could work, is to reduce consumption over a long long long time period, with every oil company. If it's a short time period, it will fall and jump right back up, if it falls at all.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+40This is so ***** retarded. This is all based on supply and demand. People think that if they boycott one company (destroy demand for their product), the company will lower its prices...which is probably true, if done over a prolonged period of time.
But what the hell do you think the other companies, facing increased demand for their product, are going to do? That's right: they're going to increase their prices. You're not actually decreasing demand for gasoline during this "boycott," you're just shifting it from one company to another. All that'll happen is you'll pay more for gas during your idiotic boycott, only for prices to return to where they were before once you start buying from Exxon-Mobil again.
If you were truly intelligent, you'd get out of that SUV of yours and buy yourself something that gets decent mileage to actually decrease demand for gas. But the key word there is intelligent, and intelligence is something the general public lacks. - ruz322, on 10/12/2007, -7/+41Heck no. My office is 30 miles from my home. Not to mention I don't think the police would take very friendly to my riding a bicycle on the interstate.
- thatsmyaibo, on 10/12/2007, -7/+40@therealrico
Believe me I would love to. I have a low emission and high mileage/gallon car, but the public transportation system in LA doesn't give me much of a choice. People in Europe have the luxury of good public transport. We are nearing the 4$/gallon mark and not given much of a choice by our local government. - DEEd33, on 10/12/2007, -1/+27Cant ride a bike to work. I cant be a sweaty mess at my job. I do ride a scooter. 100 miles to the gallon. It works out really nice and I feel I am doing my part.
- strangewill, on 10/12/2007, -6/+31@therealrico:
You realize that like greater than half of that $7 is taxes? We pay like what, 20 cents in taxes per gallon? This is companies price gouging, not that it's cheaper.
Not to mention, you guys have a higher minimum wage, and less distances to travel to and from places, and a way better mass transit system, let along awesome engines that can get like 50mpg on diesel (which can be biodiesel...).
I thought you guys were suppose to be smarter than us. ;) - AnteChronos, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25"Most people won't ride a bike to work, because they are too fat. ...or feel they would be embarrassed by riding on two wheels."
...or because they live too far away to make manually-powered transportation feasible. Believe me, I'd love to be able to ride a bike to work (weather permitting), but riding a bicycle 10+ miles in rush-hour traffic on a major thoroughfare just isn't going to happen. - newsheatdotcom, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21Give me a reliable public transportation system in the North Atlanta Metro area, and I'll take it. Waiting at least an hour at the station for a MARTA bus or train right now isn't reliable.
- ELCad, on 10/12/2007, -4/+23Why is it always some douche with a SUV that sends me that email?
- Homunculiheaded, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22"The problem is people just don't care enough to go out of their way to make a point." The point that we all need cheap gas no matter what the ultimate cost? I think the frustrating thing about all of this is the "but we deserve dirt cheap gas! I need it to run my giant truck/suv etc! Protest big oil so that I can have unlimited cheap fuel!" How about start cutting down how much gas you use, period.
You realize that the price of a gallon of gas is less than (or close to) the price of a gallon of OJ, one is renewable resource harvested from trees and processed the other non-renewable, drilled from the ground, shipped across oceans, refined then retransported, isn't it cheap enough as it is? - op12, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Not to mention the people reading this site aren't typically the ones to forward such a thing anyways. Tell your moms to stop forwarding those emails :)
- coolcutter, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17You'd be surprised how much I hear this crap all the time. I'm a newspaper reporter, and everyone's always looking to me for reasons why they're (We're) paying so much.
Sometimes you just have to realize when a company has you by the short hairs, acknowledge the fact, and move on. - nicepants, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17If I owned a gas company, I would double the price of gas on the morning of May 16th, just so that these idiots would get what's coming to them.
Geez...that's like saying "reduce our demand on the earth's oxygen...don't breathe for 30 seconds at noon" - BohicaTwentyTwo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16Ah slacktivism. Changing the world by not doing stuff. If only every problem could be solved by doing nothing.
- deuceswilde, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17@rooster
Using bottled water prices is a pretty suspect way of measuring clean water. To put it another way most tap water (clean and drinkable by any standard, the rest is up to taste) is along the lines of $5 per 1000gal, so in that case gas is more... much more. - Otto, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Of course it won't work. Gasoline is a fungible commodity. Boycotts don't work on fungible commodities. You have to use the laws of supply and demand. Reduce demand and you will lower the price of the item. That's the only way to affect the price of a fungible commodity.
- undershirt, on 10/12/2007, -7/+20noah, it's $72, not 72$
- billybibbit, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15it drives me crazy when people think they could really make a difference, and are appalled to find out that you dont support the boycott
- modifiedbears, on 10/12/2007, -7/+18Anyone defending an oil company is a ***** tool. The amount of profit they are making is ridiculous and unjustifiable.
- mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12"Also, if you're gonna take the bus long term, you don't use single fair, you pick up a monthly pass, which frequently cuts the price of daily fair by at least 50% if you ride 5 days a week."
A monthly pass is $95, it's still cheaper to drive my car. And my bus stop is 3 miles away, so I need to get there somehow. - chazbone, on 10/12/2007, -0/+10If I don't buy gas on Tuesday, and you don't buy gas on Tuesday, and all of our friends and their friends and their friends don't buy gas on Tuesday....They'll just buy gas on Wednesday...
- Quellman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Think this blogger can do anything besides paraphrase snopes?
- jaybob007, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11@roosterjm2k2
Yeah, but you can also get a gallon of water for usually under a dollar at any grocery store. - deuceswilde, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16@ apputenance
Despite being dugg down, you're right on the theory side. Cross brand elasticity of demand is significantly different than simple elasticity of demand (elasticity= measure of necessity), so while people would always need gas, they would not need Shell, or Exxon specifically. By boycotting a single company you could potentially create a genuine drop in earnings. However, this only works if everyone targets ONE company and even then the profits are going to the other oil companies and it would require a huge number of people, organization and determination, and frankly that just wouldn't happen.
@DiggsOnlyNeoCon
Kinda, aggregate demand would probably be the same but the individual firm demand curves would change, so it could still affect a single company, although like I said above people would never be able to organize that to the point it would work.
@therealrico
Exxon made $39.5 Billion in profit last year ($110 million a day). That is off of total earnings of $377.6 Billion, and in a perfectly competitive system the profits should approach zero and even in a profit gaining model this is excessive. The oil companies are hegemonic and can control prices however they want. Like the market for diamonds, when only a few companies control all the output they can simply limit their natural output to raise prices artificially, and yeah it sucks. - loungechair, on 10/12/2007, -6/+15@mywhitenoise
"The bus is a rip off, my job pays for bus fare, so I take it anyway. But if they weren't paying for it, i'd just drive my car.
A single fare bus ticket is $2, gas is $3.50 per gallon.
I get about 47 MPG, and my job is about 30 miles to and from my house. I'd pay roughly $2.75 for that trip. Where as taking the bus would be $4 a day. I thought buses were supposed to be cheap?"
You forgot to factor in the fact that you also paid for the car and pay insurance and repairs on it. 4 bucks a day for the bus is a lot cheaper over a month than paying a lease or car loan, paying insurance, and putting gas in your car. - Antitheft, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@ Dattaway- or maybe is has nothing to do with physical condition, but rather physical distance.
- Jozer99, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8How do people think this is gonna work? If you boycott gas for a week, unless you sell your car, you just buy twice the gas next week. Oil companies get the same amount of money, they just have to wait an extra week. I'm sure they are quaking in their boots. If you really are such a hippie environmentalist, sell your f**king car and get a bike, or a lama, or whatever REAL environmentalists ride around on.
- mywhitenoise, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11@loungechair
"You forgot to factor in the fact that you also paid for the car and pay insurance and repairs on it. 4 bucks a day for the bus is a lot cheaper over a month than paying a lease or car loan, paying insurance, and putting gas in your car."
You forgot to factor in that the transit system is not your personal chauffeur and stops picking up around 6:30 (in Sacramento, CA at least), and no weekends. What if i want to go to San Francisco for the weeked? Then i need to take a Greyhound, and how am I going to get to a Greyhound station? People need cars to get to bus stops (I'd ride a bike if they were in a mile or maybe 2 proximity). Either way,it only costs about $35 to fill up my tank, which will get me close to 500 miles. 500 miles divided by 30 is about 16.5 round trips to work. That's about $40 a month to get to work, less than half of what it would cost to take the bus. Not to mention I got my Prius for $17,500, and insurance is pretty high...$160 a month, but that's because i'm a 21 year old male...whatever, I'm not losing anything. Way better value than buying any other car. Repairs on a Prius? Haha! It's a ***** Toyota, dude. There's not going to be any repair expenses. - merreborn, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12"Heck no. My office is 30 miles from my home. Not to mention I don't think the police would take very friendly to my riding a bicycle on the interstate."
My office was 60 miles from my home. I moved. Now my office is 2 miles from home. I'm saving $6,000 a year that I would have otherwise spent on gas. - ISurfTooMuch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Sure they can. These are the same people who think that Sesame Street is being canceled, people are hiding AIDS-infected needles in gas pumps, Bill Gates will send you money for forwarding an e-mail, you can get anything you want through good luck if you just forward a message to ten people in the next 30 minutes, a congressman (who doesn't even exist, BTW) has introduced a bill to tax e-mail, and your cell phone number is about to be released to telemarketers.
Never underestimate the bounds of human stupidity. - txgentleman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6Most people don't realize the way gasoline is distributed in this country. An Exxon/Mobil station doesn't get their gas only from Exxon/Mobil, there are times when they get gas from other companies. The distribution system is much more complicated than most people realize. In the end the gasoline is coming from the same place, the only difference is some of the additives that are added in before it is delivered to the gas stations.
- mefinney, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7[Fictional]
My company manufactures pens. A LOT of pens. We supply them to Staples, Office Max, Office Depot, Wal-Mart, and many other major companies. Then, many years ago, Congress decided that no one should be allowed to build any more pen manufacturing plants. It wasn't a big deal, because we (along with our competitors) could supply more than enough pens to the country. Prices were reasonable.
However, after 30 years of growing pen demand, we are starting to feel strapped. We need to build more pen manufacturing plants to keep up with the demand. Because supply is low, cost for pens is going up. Sure, it doesn't cost us any more money to actually produce a pen. Therefore, our profits keep rising. But, we would sure love to be able to produce more pens!
But, things got even crazier. A hurricane wiped out several competitors' pen manufacturing plants. Supply got even tighter. But demand, no matter the cost, continues to remain high. The price of pens keeps going up. But it doesn't cost us anymore to manufacture the pens than it did before the hurricane. Therefore, our profits keep going up! It seems to us that as long as demand stays high and we aren't allowed to build any more pen making plants, our profits will just continue to rise.
Privately, though, I am really scared. I understand that at some cost the demand will fall. We just haven't figured out how much people are willing to pay for pens before they will stop. If we had the power to control the price, we would. But, we can't control price. And we can't control demand. All we can control is supply. But, we legally aren't allowed to do that either. because Congress limited our production expansion.
People blame me for the huge profits. That makes me sad. All I do is produce is much is I am allowed to and then sell it at the price the market dictates. Yeah, we are making a whole lot of money. We just have to be sure that we are wise with the extra profits and start investing in future writing utensils.
Moral #1: The pen companies control the cost of what it costs to make a pen, nothing else.
Moral #2: The price of a pen on the market is determined by supply/demand.
Moral #3: Can the pen companies be held responsible for high prices if they aren't allowed to make more pens?
Who is really to blame here? The pen companies? - notman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5The local news here in Detroit decided to cover this email as if people were actually going to attempt it. Goes to show out out of touch the media is with what goes around on the internet.
- j0hnc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Six years ago when the oil industry took over the government, I:
- bought a more fuel-efficient vehicle (18mpg -> 25mpg)
- started working from home every day
- moved closer to the places I drive to
I used to burn a few gallons a day. Now I burn that much in a month. It's not a boycott, it's real change. Don't whine about how you can't make a difference because it would be too inconvenient. It's not that hard, it just takes a few smart choices. - Stumblinforward, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Ill let you use my Chevy 4x4 with performance built 350, if you bring the beer :)
- ultrafine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Instead of bitching about the forseeable continual rise in gas prices, do what I did and buy some Exxon-Mobile stock (XOM). They continue their profits, and the stock rises during these times. Sell in a few months and you should be all set!
- skinfrakki, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6The only way this would work is if people stayed home the whole Memorial Day weekend. If you don't use gas, you won't buy it the next day
- dfeifer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Actually, I have been riding my bicycle the 10 miles each way, to work. Also, I don't know if this is particular to my area or not. According to the name brand station at the end of my road, the gas is owned by the company, and all profits are to the company, they receive no money from the sale of gas period. They make their money from the sale of items within the store itself, food, sodas, water, etc. So not buying gas from their specific store hurts their livelihood, and not the gas companies. Pricing ranges are set up by zone, with individual stores having perhaps a 3 cent leeway either direction to manipulate prices to get customers in the door.
- epicstruggle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I wish people would realize that 2 relatively simple things could save us a lot of money.
--Cut down on the types of fuel offered throughout the country. Last I heard there were over 20 different types of blends offered. Having more choices means more time for refineries to switch from making one blend to another.
--Build more refineries. We haven't built a refinery in the last 3 decades. It's the refineries that are making a bundle of cash. - harrier666, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Breaks my heart. I hear from my cousin for the first time in three years and it was the gas email. I don't have the heart to snopes her, though I usually snopes anyone I can, just because I never hear from her. How about a "hey, how ya doing. I'm gonna spend some gas to come visit you" email instead?... sigh. Maybe I'll reply with the "mormons own pepsi" urban myth. She's LDS and they HATE that.
- derek20la, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I agree, I'm also tired of seeing all these bulletins saying "BOYCOTT GAS STATIONS ON MAY 15!".
For some reason, most of them begin with saying that there was a sucessful boycott in in 1997 and that it made the price go down 30 cents in one day.
A gas boycott in 1997? I don't know why they'd have one back then, because prices were on average about $1.25/gallon ( http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/mg_rr_usw.htm ).
A general boycott of all gas stations for one day will not work anyway. Unless you used a bicycle or the bus, on May 16 you end up buying that gasoline you "boycotted" the day before.
And a boycott day occurs yearly - Christmas Day. If you notice, on Christmas, streets and freeways are nearly empty, a gas boycott day by default. Does it affect prices? Not really.
A boycott of a specific company, say Shell, wouldn't work either. If every one were to boycott Shell but continue to buy other brands, the extra demand on the others would push up the price of the other brands for as long as the boycott held.
Probably the biggest reason prices have gone up so much recently is gasoline inventories have been low for the last few months. Refineries shut down or minimize production in early spring and late fall to make the switch to/from winter and summer gas blends. They also use this time to do scheduled maintenance. A lot of them were down longer than expected and demand started increasing earlier this year too. They haven't really had a chance to catch up yet.
BTW, gasoline is still one of the cheapest liquids you can purchase in the US. If you tried buying a gallon of a Mocha Frappuccino at Starbucks, it would cost $30! (a grande size, 16 oz, is $3.75. theres 128 liquid ounces in a gallon. 128/16 is 8, times $3.75=$30) - geoboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I like to compare this "boycott" of pumping gas to the tactic of a 4 year old child who isn't getting their way. Their tactic is to hold their breath for as long as they can in hopes of freaking out their parents. Smart parents know the child will most likely always give up, or in a rare and extreme case will simply lose consciousness and go back to breathing autonomously in their unconscious state. Anyway, with smart parents, the child will ALWAYS lose at this game.
Oil Companies = smart parents
People Boycotting Pumping Gas for One Day = stupid 4 year old children
The children need to grow up and develop a new tactic. - lowerdown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Just paid $3.09
Don't care how much it costs to fill up. If you can't afford it, DON'T DRIVE. Get a bicycle. You can buy one for what it costs you to fill up. If your too lazy to pedal, BUY A MOPED OR MOTORCYCLE, and then you can get 50mpg on a sport bike, 80mpg+ on a moped. -
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