Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Flipside on May 15, 2013, 09:38:48 am
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22533993
Following raids on BP, Shell and Statoil, evidence is found of over a decade of price fixing in Europe. The investigation is ongoing and the companies refuse to comment, but already there's a growing level of anger about this in the middle of severe Austerity across the entire Eurozone.
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Wouldnt surprise me the slightest bit if the prices were being fixed for even longer honestly...
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Yup, it's not exactly a 'shock-horror' moment in European fuel-price history :)
What's going to be interesting if this is found out to be true is the tax aspect of it in countries like the UK, because it not only means we've been charged at a falsified rate but also, by proxy, we've been taxed at that same false rate.
Sad truth is, the actual victims of said crimes are unlikely to see a penny of compensation for it.
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Unless the British government actually enforces the law and takes 10% of their turnover (https://www.gov.uk/competition-law-unfair-pricing-agreements). I could see that paying back the UK population quite nicely.
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What I suspect is that the Government will make a ton of cash from it, and then the public will face an uphill climb to get any of it back, with the usual forest of red-tape being thrown up in an effort to hang on to as much as possible.
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What I suspect is that the Government will make a ton of cash from it, and then the public will face an uphill climb to get any of it back, with the usual forest of red-tape being thrown up in an effort to hang on to as much as possible.
I don't think that would be very smart if they got such money. This I would see as a golden opportunity if I was in power. An opportunity to create goodwill among the voters. This issue effects everyone. Every single voter.
On the flipside, it will be seen (and rightfully so) as stealing money if they don't give it back. The only way they can get to keep some money is if the fine exceeds the money the people were screwed out of. It would also be good for the economy. I'm sure some people would just spend it.
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Sadly, our Government has never proved to be particularly bright when it comes to dealing with financial injustice towards its citizens, the Northern Rock issue highlights this, where the bank was nationalized with public money, then later the profitable bits were sold to Virgin Money. We are now the proud owners of an awful lot of debt.
There does seem to be a Parliamentary attitude that the reason people pay taxes in the UK is to serve the Governmental interests, rather than to allow the Government to serve to public interests.
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Sadly, our Government has never proved to be particularly bright when it comes to dealing with financial injustice towards its citizens, [...]
Has any government ever been bright in that regard?
We are now the proud owners of an awful lot of debt.
Welcome to the club! You can get your ''merica!' t-shirt in the corner over there. :p
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Sadly, our Government has never proved to be particularly bright when it comes to dealing with financial injustice towards its citizens, the Northern Rock issue highlights this, where the bank was nationalized with public money, then later the profitable bits were sold to Virgin Money. We are now the proud owners of an awful lot of debt.
There does seem to be a Parliamentary attitude that the reason people pay taxes in the UK is to serve the Governmental interests, rather than to allow the Government to serve to public interests.
Well, I guess time will tell. Let's see if there's any money to divide up. Even in a cynical light though, the government's interests could be keeping us sweet...
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Well the industry is already dominated by a cartel at the top and features pervasive tacit collusion when it comes to prices at the pump, so I can't say I blame them for going for the hat trick. I mean, they probably aren't going to succeed at destroying the planet for at least another 50 years, and that might not even work! Cut them some slack, judge! :hammer:
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At least in Germany the main part of the Petrol/Oil Price is taxes, and I doubt that it is different in other Nations.
It's a little bit of hypocrisy when the politicians blame the Oil Company's for high prices...
The gas stations should print their bills on paper in the nations colour and the national anthem should be played then the bill is printed, so that the taxpayer has at least some patriotic feelings after refuelling. ;)
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In the U.S. federal taxes are about 18 cents a gallon, plus any additional state excise taxes. Yes, that means we have much cheaper gas than you guys in Europe.
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otoh in europe you can actually live without a car; swings and roundabouts, etc.
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It doesn't bother me, but it's always good for a laugh if there are people around and a TV, and an American shows up on said TV whining about the price of gas. It really grinds gears here! :D
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I'd love European-style gas prices over here in the US for a decade or two. At the current gas prices, we're never getting a functional, nationwide train system. :p
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The people (or rather, paid thugs of some shady people who sell subsidiary fuel overseas) are making a lot of noise here. Our president is unfortunately either idiotic or a total coward not to adjust the prices accordingly even though there should have been a price raise a long time ago. We actually could get away with this price (ie about in today's currency US$ .50 per l) if we own a refinery just like Iran do.
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I'd love European-style gas prices over here in the US for a decade or two. At the current gas prices, we're never getting a functional, nationwide train system. :p
:confused: I don't see the connection.
A national wide train system would IMHO more compete with air traffic.
A train may be faster than a car, but the plane is much faster, and sometimes even cheaper. Yet alone the time from the airport/train station to the final destination may be in favour for the car.
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yes, usable bus/metropolitan train systems are probably what they mean
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Sorry, that only works in the cities and suburbs. The rural population would get the shaft on this, as they are already paying a lot in gas to travel to work (unless they are lucky enough to have a job in their small town, but if they do, it's likely to pay substantially less wages) and now they will be paying double or triple, and they don't get paid nearly as much as jobs in the city / surrounding areas pay (which isn't to say the urbanites have it made, as the housing and food costs near the city are astronomical too).
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It doesn't bother me, but it's always good for a laugh if there are people around and a TV, and an American shows up on said TV whining about the price of gas. It really grinds gears here! :D
Hold up. Part of the reason many Americans - and Canadians - get wound up about the price of gas is because they live literally a stone's throw from where the oil is extracted from the ground, refined, processed, and sold as gasoline.
It is patently ridiculous that I, in Edmonton, Alberta, next to the motherfing refineries and immediately adjacent to the oil production wells, can end up paying more for gasoline than people in Ontario, Washington DC, etc. I'm sure an awful lot of Texans have similar sentiments.
The other issue is that - unlike the UK - for most people in Canada and the US, NOT driving is not an option. We don't have near the transportation systems Europe has, mostly because everything is spaced so far apart. Canada has 35ish million people and the second-largest landmass of any country on the planet. Compare to the UK's 62 million people crammed into a country that could fit into a single moderately-sized Canadian province 3-4 times over.
There is a reason we ***** about gasoline prices. We HAVE to drive. The majority of the residents of the UK do not.
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There is a reason we ***** about gasoline prices. We HAVE to drive. The majority of the residents of the UK do not.
Yeah, pretty much what I was trying to say.
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my commute to work right now is 33 miles. in just a few days, it will return to "only" 16 when i move back to my normal yard.
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There is a reason we ***** about gasoline prices. We HAVE to drive. The majority of the residents of the UK do not.
Incidentally, this is also why we ***** about the state of our roads and the inability of local government to fix them.
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my commute to work right now is 33 miles. in just a few days, it will return to "only" 16 when i move back to my normal yard.
:wtf: And I thought 27 was bad. I hope you at least happen to have an auto that gets decent gas mileage.
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my commute to work right now is 33 miles. in just a few days, it will return to "only" 16 when i move back to my normal yard.
:wtf: And I thought 27 was bad. I hope you at least happen to have an auto that gets decent gas mileage.
nope. 1999 ford expedition. haven't done the math in a while, but the very MOST it's ever gotten is 20. on top of that, part of that 33 miles is through hampton roads' FABULOUS bridge/tunnel system that backs up 5-7 miles every day. and then there's the extra fun days where they close one of them, or dip****s wreck at BOTH of them at the same time and trap you on the wrong side of the river.
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My dad had a job for almost a decade where he had to commute a good 50-60 miles one-way every day of the week. Even a few-cent increase at the pump starts adding up pretty quickly.
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my commute to work right now is 33 miles. in just a few days, it will return to "only" 16 when i move back to my normal yard.
:wtf: And I thought 27 was bad. I hope you at least happen to have an auto that gets decent gas mileage.
nope. 1999 ford expedition. haven't done the math in a while, but the very MOST it's ever gotten is 20. on top of that, part of that 33 miles is through hampton roads' FABULOUS bridge/tunnel system that backs up 5-7 miles every day. and then there's the extra fun days where they close one of them, or dip****s wreck at BOTH of them at the same time and trap you on the wrong side of the river.
you might want pick up a cheap 2nd auto, a 4-cylinder Hyundai / Honda / Kia / Saturn / Subaru / Suzuki or similar (anything with a 2 Liter engine or less) just for that commute. It'll save you the money you spend pretty quick I bet. Esp. if it's a stick but that's a pain in traffic. My wife picked up an automatic 4-door Saturn with 186K on it for $895. It's a little dinged up but gets ~30-35MPG highway depending. It's got 200K on it now, going strong.
A lot of those brand cars (if they are taken care of at least halfheartedly through their different owners) will last to 300-500K with some maintenance and regular engine oil level monitoring <-- Important, cause at high miles they usually start to use oil, so check it at every fill-up, it won't hurt and keeping the oil topped off saves engine wear and helps maintain that great fuel economy that you got the car for (and engine power).
/end de-rail
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it's almost never cheaper to buy a new (i don't mean factory new here) than to just eat the difference in gas mileage. and i certainly have no interest in maintaining 2 cars. when it comes time to get a new car anyway, i'll take gas mileage into consideration, but until then, i'm keeping the tank. runs perfectly, other than the brakes i had replaced about a year and a half ago are annoyingly squeally.
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Heh, you work 5 days a week? 33 miles * 2 (there and back) * 5 days a week * 4.33 weeks in a month (52 / 12) = 1430 miles per month. Let's say you get 18 MPG. You'll then use 80 gallons of fuel. At $3.50 per gallon that's $280 per month, or $3,360 per year.
Now, if you were getting 35 MPG, you would be using 40 gallons of fuel, so you would be paying $140 per month, or $1,680 per year, for a savings of the same amount. I'm betting you end up with a lot worse with a large vehicle in stop and go traffic though, say, 14 MPG?
Your point about maintaining two vehicles is only partially valid - you will only drive one at a time, thus accumulating wear and tear on one at a time (e.g., you'll mostly be using the brakes on one, so you won't have to replace the brakes on the other nearly as often). However, there's also the breakdown associated with time, so that's partially true.
Anyways, it all depends on getting a good vehicle. If you get a lemon it'll more than burn through the savings from better gas mileage. Eh, so, YMMV. ;) I wonder, though, if your situation would actually benefit from a hybrid vehicle. If you were only on battery in the stop and go it'd probably save you quite a bit.
Alright, I'm done rambling, I promise this time! :)
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by "maintaining" i meant EVERYTHING involved in owning two vehicles, not just the literal maintenance. registration. taxes. insurance. hell, even parking the damn thing. and primarily, the fact that there would be literally zero benefit to having two cars. (ok, i suppose i can throw a surfboard in the back of an SUV easier)
and you forgot the biggest expense in your math. the price of the new car. let's say, for ease of estimation, $16,000. that's 10 years to break even. so no, gas economy is not a good reason for me to buy a new car.
btw, i'm back to 16 mile commute now. so double that to 20 years.
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so, im not quite sure why we can be so sure that this price fixing must be limited to Europe.
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so, im not quite sure why we can be so sure that this price fixing must be limited to Europe.
It's not. There is no way a $0.12/L jump in price THE DAY BEFORE A LONG WEEKEND is market forces at work, particularly because there is no way every gas station in the city got filled up on the same day with the same batch from the refineries.
Free market competition brings prices down, my ass.
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that kindof IS market forces at work. gas stations know people want to drive over the holiday and will pay the extra. they also know every other station will also be raising prices, so they can get away with it too.
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that kindof IS market forces at work. gas stations know people want to drive over the holiday and will pay the extra. they also know every other station will also be raising prices, so they can get away with it too.
The point is that "invisible hand" advocates for free-market principles universally tout the benefits of the free market because competition purportedly brings prices down, when we know full well that human greed results in those with monopolies colluding on the pricing structures to gouge wherever they can.
It's market forces at work all right, and an excellent demonstrator of why capitalist free-market economic theory is complete and utter bull****.
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monopolies are bad. therefore, the economic theory that acknowledges this is bull****? :wtf:
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monopolies are bad. therefore, the economic theory that acknowledges this is bull****? :wtf:
Perhaps you should read the post again.
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monopolies are bad. therefore, the economic theory that acknowledges this is bull****? :wtf:
Perhaps you should read the post again.
Indeed he should.
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monopolies are bad. therefore, the economic theory that acknowledges this is bull****? :wtf:
no, the economic theory that denies that monopolies arise at all is bull****
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that kindof IS market forces at work. gas stations know people want to drive over the holiday and will pay the extra. they also know every other station will also be raising prices, so they can get away with it too.
The point is that "invisible hand" advocates for free-market principles universally tout the benefits of the free market because competition purportedly brings prices down, when we know full well that human greed results in those with monopolies colluding on the pricing structures to gouge wherever they can.
It's market forces at work all right, and an excellent demonstrator of why capitalist free-market economic theory is complete and utter bull****.
Haven't various game theory models reliably predicted this kind of behavior? What sort of effort been made to predict outcomes in the context of a laissez-faire economy?
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The point is that "invisible hand" advocates for free-market principles universally tout the benefits of the free market because competition purportedly brings prices down, .
Did they tell what ?
The benefit of a free market is a free, decentralized and efficient price fixing. It's about efficiency, not about low prices.
The advocates of socialism don't care about efficiency, the care about moral, so the price would be fixed by persons with a higher moral standard than the average human. No greed, only the best for the people (low prices for fuel) or the planet (high prices for fuel). That's much better than greed, isn't it ? ;)
How would price fixing would work without free market ?
The central price fixing agency determinates the during the holiday season the price will be lowered, and also determinates that more fuel is delivered to the gas station because of the higher demands ?
Delivering more fuel to the gas station is more expensive, but because the people have a right for cheap fuel the good guys from the fixing agency don't charge more ?
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The point is that "invisible hand" advocates for free-market principles universally tout the benefits of the free market because competition purportedly brings prices down, .
Did they tell what ?
The benefit of a free market is a free, decentralized and efficient price fixing. It's about efficiency, not about low prices.
The advocates of socialism don't care about efficiency, the care about moral, so the price would be fixed by persons with a higher moral standard than the average human. No greed, only the best for the people (low prices for fuel) or the planet (high prices for fuel). That's much better than greed, isn't it ? ;)
How would price fixing would work without free market ?
The central price fixing agency determinates the during the holiday season the price will be lowered, and also determinates that more fuel is delivered to the gas station because of the higher demands ?
Delivering more fuel to the gas station is more expensive, but because the people have a right for cheap fuel the good guys from the fixing agency don't charge more ?
No economist, but wut? Aren't you pretty much describing what the Soviet Union tried? And it did not work. Ideally, that sounds nice, but why would people want to do business that way? The gas station owners would get screwed in that deal, and people would leave the trade.
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yes, he's describing a strawman of left-wing economic policies where the economy must bend to the arbitrary dictate of some bleeding-heart tyrant
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so, im not quite sure why we can be so sure that this price fixing must be limited to Europe.
It's not. There is no way a $0.12/L jump in price THE DAY BEFORE A LONG WEEKEND is market forces at work, particularly because there is no way every gas station in the city got filled up on the same day with the same batch from the refineries.
Free market competition brings prices down, my ass.
In theory... at least one gas station would have to go: "Oh everyone is raising prices on that day!!! If I do not raise price / keep them lower, then everyone will buy at my gas station! I just have to change my gas delivery schedule a little and I can screw them all over on that day."
If that is not happening, that may indeed be an indicator for something fishy going on.
Well... *fishy* as far as the theory of the holy free market economy that fixes everything goes ( :P ) - *expected* as far as human behavior goes.
The thing with both central planning and the free market economy is that both of them are full of simplistic bull**** that doesn't really explain at all how our rather complex society works.
The problem is that only one of those theories has so far been thoroughly discredited while the other still has firm believers gobbling up its half truths and doing untold damage in the process.
(Granted, central planning is even worse because comes with so much extra hubris pretending a complex economic system could even be controlled centrally.)
- and that *analysis* goes back as far as Luhmann
- that it's not highly popular reading in lectures about economic theory only shows us that too many people at universities are reading the wrong books about human behavior. (I.e. the idiotic ones that pretend that humans always act rationally and use simplistic models that pretty much boil down to: it's rational to be greedy. i.e. all books about economic theory in existence.) Why? Because simplistic economic theory is easier to learn and gobble up than facing up to a rather complex reality. Part of the problem.
It's a similar problem to that of Communism and Central Planning really: i.e. Nice theor(ies)... too bad reality (i.e. human behavior) doesn't quite agree with them.
The difference is that as Communism and it's centrally planned economy failed, itwas easy to simply fully embrace the alternative. Now that we don't really have an alternate theory we cling even harder to what we have, while glossing over the flaws - instead of working on them. - Even while the house is pretty much on fire and coming down around us with crisis after crisis and no (good) end in sight.
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In theory... at least one gas station would have to go: "Oh everyone is raising prices on that day!!! If I do not raise price / keep them lower, then everyone will buy at my gas station! I just have to change my gas delivery schedule a little and I can screw them all over on that day."
A friend of mine has took a franchisee from ESSO (Exxon). He sells their gas, and get one cent per litre, no matter that the price is. Pricing is done by ESSO, and he has no chance to modify the price.
He makes most of his profit with selling groceries, coffee, newspapers, soft drinks and beer.
The gas station is 24/7 open, and has a licence to sell beverages and fresh food (pizza, burgers, hot dogs...)
Cheap gas has only the effect that he sells more coffee on that day...
To attract customers he don't lower the price for gas (he can't do that anyway), but he give away for example a six pack of beer cans for the price of five cans.
His benefit is the better support (central buying of the goods for his market, marketing, loans, law and tax advices, courses in business administration) he gets from the franchiser.
Selling gas is a necessary to run such a 24/7 super market nowadays, so there are other market mechanisms more important for him than the gas price.
In Austria they have made a law that limits the time for price rises to once in a day at 12.00 am.
Australia introduced a similiar model in 2001: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FuelWatch
The German Federal Agency against Cartels made an evaluation about the fuel market in Germany an one conclusion was one problem is the market transparency.
The big company's don't hat to fix the prices by agreement, they have just to take a look at the price signs of the other company's.
3 Hours after one company has increased the price the others tend to do the same.
http://www.bundeskartellamt.de/wEnglisch/News/Archiv/ArchivNews2011/2011_10_10.php
Planned is a governmental website for all kind of traffic information, from actual traffic jams and closed roads/bridges up to actual fuel prices - but I doubt that it would help.
The price difference is on average 5 Euro cent per litre, so a full tank (40 litre) from the cheapest gas station would be 2 Euros cheaper. That's the price for 2 hamburgers at Mc Donalds or a cup of coffee at the gas station.
Nerveless I tend to never let fall down my cars fuel under 25% - 50%, and than buy at the cheapest station.
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I work at an ESSO, myself. 24/7 store and everything. Nightly price change happens at midnight, based on notification from head office of the price to set at around 6 PM. During the day, the manager/owner is expected to monitor specific stations identified as direct competition for prices lower than ours (we generally don't adjust up - head office tends to price us high and then we adjust down to status quo), and we call Survey and report those prices, generally receiving an automated call with the new price within 10-20 minutes.
Much as Al-Rik noted, most of the profit is made on, in our case, Cigarettes and Lottery (no alcohol at convenience stores in Ontario). We make significantly less than a cent per litre on fuel.