Let me take a stab at this

In business there is no requirement for any relationship between what the consumers pay and the production costs as long as the selling price is larger than the production costs. If I have something that costs me $1.00 to make, I can sell it for $100,000 if that is what the market can bear. In capitalism there is no such thing as "too much profit". There is nothing in business methodology that requires any limitation on selling price based on production price.

That smell is called success. Successful businesses make profits. Very successful businesses make huge profits. Any oil executive that is not motivated for larger and larger profits would be fired by the stockholders and for good reason.

Not common sense but emotions. It sucks paying more profit to some company!!!

Oil companies (and pretty much every other company) are not non-profit organizations nor are they providing a public service for the betterment of the citizens. The oil companies only reason for existence is to make profit. As long as they are not breaking any laws or anti-trust regulations, they can make as much profit as the market can bear.

It is unfortunate that for the past 100 years we have chosen to become dependent on one single product for our energy needs -- oil. In a capitalistic society, which American has also chosen to abide by, one can not blame a company from taking advantage of our self dependance.

It is a businessman's dream -- a product where your customers are so used to it that they simply have to buy more. This is money in the bank.

Now it sure would be swell if the oil companies would be nice, considerate, and caring about the people who want the oil but don't want to pay high prices. Unfortunately nice, considerate, and caring are not successful business models when you have a product where the demand is higher than the supply.

For every regular joe who can't afford to buy oil products there are plenty of industries/corporations/countries waiting in line to pick up any surplus. No oil will be going unsold.

I think the oil companies are charging too much for oil.

But as a capitalistic consumer, I think that all merchants charge me too much.

The market is defined by the conflict of two dichotomous desires

The customer wants to buy the product at the lowest price.
The provider wants to sell the product at the highest price.

Perhaps the solution is to find another product we can buy instead of oil for our energy needs? This will take a long long time I am afraid. For 100 years we have never seriously considered any other energy source but oil. We are now paying for that laziness.

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Julius Caesar (act I scene II)

Don't you think the Iraq dingie wingie goody two shoes nice Bushie-hoochie plays a role?

Yes you can. Today you can sell it for $15.00 a gallon and it will still sell because we move on oil. Thats why pricing is a matter of national security and why the oil companies shouldn't be allowed to artificially inflate prices. If something stopped the flow of oil to the U.S. and prices rose because of it the government would get involved and remove the problem. We have 12% more oil available this year then last yet the inflation has skyrocketed way past last years rate. Thats profiteering.

Profiteer: One who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods.
Some types of profiteering are illegal, such as price fixing.

And in the meantime pricing should be regulated.

In any meaningful analysis, the result is that Americans have been paying too little for their oil.
Environmentally, it doesn;t make sense.
For infrastructure in the US, it doesn;t make sense.
For preparing to cope with a post-oil landscape, it doesn't make sense

Take taxes out of the equation and we're paying as much as you Europeans.

Most likely, yeah.

So did i miss the point?

What August said about taxes.
As far as Environment and Infrastructure until there is a way to shrink the U.S. to move everything closer together there will be no change. The U.S. is too wide open still and mass transit is a joke because what mass transit we have all runs at an operational loss. The states oversees buses and the feds oversees passenger trains. You couldn't get a public sector company to run either without jacking prices way up which in the end would drive people away from it's use so nothing would be accomplished.
A post oil landscape is a century or more away. The rush should be just to get away from the reliance on oil. Oil companies aren't going to bother doing squat because they have a cash cow in the here and now and there is no incentive for them to change. Getty pushed oil (kerosene) as an cheaper alternative to whale oil. Some whiz just needs to get on the stick for an alternative to oil so they could be wealthier than their wildest dreams. The only never ending alternative is nuclear power and electrical cells. There is no other realistic long term alternative resource out there without causing some other dependency crisis. Bio-fuel just isn't realistic. Hydrogens realistic main supply would be water so thats not a good long term alternative either. The only doable option is some form of high capacity electrical cells.

Certainly valid arguments about the size of the country, that's not going to change. But there are ways to get around it. I know France isn't the size of the US, but a proper high-speed rail network could cut an awful lot of those journeys out.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/200...0/the-eh-team/

Decent urban public transport in cities as well. Didn't the car companies buy up the streetcar companies and push everyone onto buses, then shut down the buses to get people into cars? That's an absurdly generalised narrative, but i vaguely remember hearing something like it. Ah well, could be wrong.

But I think that on a cultural, human-geographical level, cheap oil has changed America. The urban landscape is centred around the car, there are even sidewalk-less cities. And let's not get onto cycling :)

August, you didn't miss the point at all, really.

We have high speed trains. The problem though is that most of our rail infrastructure is in such a state of disrepair there isn't much high in it's speed.
It doesn't help much that congress keeps lowering the budget so the only money they have is for essentials.

There's the Acela (I think). I was thinking more along the lines of the TGV/ICE, or the new Spanish Madrid-Barcelona line.
Then again, there's no point in connecting cities by fast trains if you need a car to get around the city when you get there, so this all necessitates a big investment ion public transport. Which means either new taxes or higher existing taxes.

Well the Acela can do 150mph but our rail and bridge infrastructure is so bad it can only reach an average of something like 74mph. In my state there are more than a few parts that 20mph is the highest speed because of the condition of the tracks. The Acela also only runs between Washington DC and Boston. Also over the years the amount of rail lines have reduced and now in many parts of America the track usage is maxed out but nobody wants to build new lines and the freight business is going through a new boom. All in all everybody is aware of our rail problem but nobody and especially our government wants to pay for it's upgrades and repairs.

http://gas2.org/2008/05/13/californi...ancisco-to-la/

Good news :)

In 22 years. Better late than never I guess.