Originally Posted by
BlkCobalt2.0SS
maybe i missed that eco class but please explain...if everone was buying alot less gas the price would stay steady and drop slowly if any at all.. gas in economics is "inelastic"
An inelastic good or service is one in which changes in price witness only modest changes in the quantity demanded or supplied, if any at all. These goods tend to be things that are more of a necessity to the consumer in his or her daily life.
For the longest time, oil companies have been able to set the price, just recently, because of all the bitching, this is under a lot more digression (Last summer oil companies becoming open towards lawsuits for unfair pricing). It really doesn't matter if the good is inelastic or not (and that's one hell of a
modest price change). The simple truth is the we 'need' gas, they have gas. We use less gas, they loose a lot of money, they raise the price of gas, then we're sitting at "even" once again.
The other point is that it's non-renewable, whenever the availability of something already valuable decreases, the price price increases.
Use more, we're fucked, use less we're fucked. So it really doesn't matter in the end. Though I do wonder, if in fact we do run out during our lifetime, what will happen to the oil companies?