Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Want to know why the price of gas is going up? The oil companies are hoarding oil because they're expecting recovery from the recession relatively soon. When a product or service is no longer being controlled by supply and demand, but at the major companies discretion; isn't that the very definition of a monopoly?

GJ said about 1 hour later

Did you actually read that article?

They are not hoarding, they can't sell it. The demand market for oil crashed. Cars don't consume oil (usually--for the most part, they consume gas made from refining oil). So, if you can't get good prices for your product, you sit on it. It's not like oil expires--in fact, what will eventually happen (if the economy doesn't recover soon enough) is some *very* low prices as they run out of storage for their "hoard" and have to start getting rid of it at whatever price they can get for it.

The price of gas in this country has a lot to do with our refining capability (or lack thereof). All the oil in the world is useless to our gas needs if we don't have the ability to refine it to gasoline in the first place. If the price of gas was really killing people, demand for gas would shrink. It shrunk quite a bit with the recession in the first place, which is why prices began to tumble. The demand is still pretty high for gas, though, so prices won't drop back below $2/gal anytime soon--and the prices are high because we are limited in how much gas we can refine, not how much oil we can buy.
Marc said about 5 hours later

"The price rise is a function of optimism that better things are coming in the future." Optimism usually means lower prices, no? If they were so optimistic, they would keep prices stable, continue the normal output and be rewarded from customers by keeping prices low or at least competitive. But because the whole oil industry is corrupt and the demand for the product is to the point of a necessity, they raise prices with whatever explanation they deem appropriate and continue their 200% profit per quarter.

I'm sure food sales are down too, so farmers are suffering. But instead of coming together as a collection of farmers and raising rates, they find ways to keep the rates reasonable and competitive. Sure, farmers' profits suffer, but they should be equally hit by a recession as the rest of us. Why aren't oil companies held to the same standard?

They can sell it, just not as much as they'd like to. Too bad.
GJ said about 11 hours later

Marc, try reading this to learn what helps determine the price of gas.

Oil companies didn't create the need for oil. They are simply profiting from it. What's the big deal? If you don't want to pay so much for gas, there are ways to "beat the system" but mostly it involves loss of convenience. You pay a price for that convenience.

Marc said 22 minutes later

This certainly won't replace e-mail, but this will be a great tool to use for communicating in groups.

GJ said about 18 hours later

For those that use it, it will replace email. It looks kind of like a blackberry for the web. The key for me--does it work seamlessly with other users who do not use Wave? Can it interact with traditional email, IM, etc.? (I didn't watch much more than 20 min of this, so maybe they covered that).

Looks neat, but it's not definitely a home run--yet.

Marc said 1 day later

It doesn't look like it integrates with regular e-mail just yet. Integrating with regular IM is practically a given...they have a relatively extensive API, so you can bet that will be developed.

I can see this being extremely popular in the college scene. All of the team projects would benefit greatly from the threadlike e-mails and collaborative document editing.

GJ said 1 day later

It'll be popular with the Facebook crowd, too. :) Business crowd, I'm not sure if this will catch on or not. In order for it to be successful, it'll require a change to the mindset of the average business user in how they approach email. I don't see this necessarily reducing the amount of time people spend in email--and that's one thing that most folks want to see drop.