Lighting a Candle

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, July 18, 2008

I am sure that I am not unlike most of the other car owners in America who have to stifle a curse word or two when we slide that nozzle into our fuel tanks and watch those digits spin in a blur before our eyes. It is painful when we realize that those digits represent real dollars taken from our wallets and bank accounts.

While each of us may feel the urge to curse, I believe, as a faithful, optimistic conservative, that our energy is better used by lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. In regards to the current dark days of high gas prices, let me offer the following candles.

My fellow columnist seems to believe that the laws of supply and demand, which have served to provide us with the necessities and luxuries of life for several generations, should somehow be repealed or at least seriously rewritten. According to his thesis, our economic model of capitalism is the primary cause of the “crisis” and therefore, we should seek an alternative model. He also believes that if we just “refuse to accept the status quo, we can achieve real change”. I am not sure how that refusal should be demonstrated or how we can just un-consume our way out of this situation when the global demand (read China and India’s rapid industrial growth and accompanying increased demand) dictates the international price more than our SUV’s or consumer-driven lifestyles.

So, let’s get back to the candle lighting. First of all, it should be noted that this challenge did not just develop in a short period of months, therefore the solution will not come in a few months either. The soup we are currently swimming in has been simmering for several years with all the necessary ingredients being added by several different chefs in several different administrations.

As mentioned in an earlier column, I believe one major ingredient of our soup was thrown in the pot when our government failed to limit the merger-feeding frenzy of the late 90’s, either through collusion or ignorance. As a result of rabid buyouts and friendly mergers, we saw the number of oil companies melt from over 43 independent – and mostly U.S. owned – competitors to the current level of less than 17 major, international companies.

In an effort to stimulate competition, I believe we should challenge investors and innovators to an energy race – much like President Kennedy challenged us to a space race, when we watched in embarrassment as the Soviets launched into space exploration ahead of us. I believe in the “can do” more than in the “can’t be done” or the “never been done before”.

If we would give new oil companies an incentive to explore new fields of endeavor and to lift some of the heavy restrictions placed upon them by well-meaning but short-sighted conservationists; I think we could see domestic production increase to the point where foreign producers would have to lower their prices to compete for the global market.

In spite of what my fellow columnist believes, I know that the natural law of supply and demand, like the law of gravity, i>does always work. If it is allowed to work without subsidization or manipulation by governmental agencies and regulation, competition for market share always lowers prices and increases quality. On the other hand, state-controlled entities and industries always become less productive and ultimately, more expensive.

To suggest that perhaps Congresswoman Maxine Waters was somehow smarter than the rest of us because she “knew that opening up domestic oil exploration was no guarantee that prices would come down” suggests that several centuries of human history has simply been poorly written. Time and again, history has proven that the best approach to economical challenges is the tried and true laissez faire philosophy.

I firmly believe that the life we live here in these glorious United States, in which we enjoy technological, medical, educational and informational advances beyond the fondest dreams of most of this planet’s inhabitants, was made possible because the government got out of the way and let the inventors invent, the investors invest and explorers explore.

We do not need Congress to open the strategic reserves and falsely flood the market with short-term supplies of oil. We do not need higher taxes on windfall profits – as if the government should decide on what is a justifiable profit level or CEO salary. We do not need to cower before foreign suppliers as if we were too impotent to discover our own sources of energy here.

We need to re-ignite the candle of American ingenuity that brought the world through the dark days of Nazism, Fascism, Economic Depression, and Communism.

We are Americans! We can develop alternative energy sources! We can remove and refine oil without destroying the environment! We can tell the OPEC countries “Thanks, but no thanks!” and threaten them with a flood of good old American oil on the global market by becoming an oil producer ourselves. God has placed beneath our American soil and near our American coasts enough oil to not only meet our current and future needs, but also, according to more than one source, enough to alter the global economy.

There were those who said Ronald Reagan was wrong to believe in American ingenuity and the market forces of a free society in the battle against Communism. Today those same pundits are telling us we are not strong enough to face down OPEC with those same tools. I say they are still good tools and they still work.