I received an interesting e-mail yesterday suggesting how consumers might be able to help reduce the price of gasoline without undue sacrifice.

Basic economics suggests that a substantial drop in the demand for gasoline will result in a price decrease, but asking people to stop buying gasoline is impractical.

However, as Exxon and Mobil are the largest gasoline retailers in the US, perhaps a substantial drop in demand for their gasoline will have a similar effect.

I encourage you to stop buying from these two stations. Furthermore, I encourage you to encourage others to do the same. It will be interesting to see whether Exxon's and Mobil's prices drop if the demand for their gasoline drops; in the meantime, motorists are not severely inconvenienced, as they might be if they were asked to curtail their driving.

 

repost...but its a good idea.

 

I wonder what percentage of gas sold in America comes from Exxon/Mobil? I wonder how the other companies would meet the increased demand if everyone started buying more and more of their gas? Would BP turn around and buy some excess from Exxon/Mobil in order to meet the increased demand from their own customers?

 

OMG, this has been posted so many times, and this happens every year to top it off.

 

Gas is an ostentatious good, they can charge whatever they want, and there will still be a great demand for it... good idea though..

 

My apologies for the repost. I'd not seen this before.

Even if BP buys excess from Exxon & Mobil, they'll not be paying retail, so Exxon's and Mobil's bottom lines will still hurt. (BP, of course, will make out like a bandit. Wait a minute, don't they already . . . ?)

 

Check out this link:

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/gasout.htm

 

I was about to post the same thing.

Did I mention that I invested heavily in BP stock before advocating this course of action?

 

Magician, I figured you wouldn't fall for something like that. It's a waste of time. If the American people want gas prices to go down then they need to stop driving three ton SUV's that get 10 MPG. Lowering consumption is what will work but nobody wants to do that so they come up with stupid schemes like this to try and solve the "problem" without having to make a sacrifice.

 

I hate SUVs.

But yesterday my wife showed me an ad for the Porsche Cayenne; it looks like it might be able to pull a two-horse trailer safely, and get better mileage than a Ram 2500 pickup. And I like Porsches. And I like cayenne.

Is it OK as long as I promise I won't use it for anything other than pulling the trailer?