How to show you're an idiot

We just had a commenter leave a dropping in the comments where he stated that politicians control the price of oil. You know, to effect the election coming up.

Look, I've heard that particular theory espoused many times, mostly from the Left, but a few people on the right succumb to mental deterioration as well. I'm not going to be nice here. If you actually think that politicians can directly control the price of oil, then you are a fucking idiot.

Hold on.... maybe I can be nicer about what I want to say.

Nope. I can't. Fucking idiot sums it up nicely. Only someone with no comprehension of macroeconomics coupled with kool-aid guzzling gullability argues in ernest that politicians can directly influence oil prices. Someone so sand-poundingly ignorant of basic market facts, so jaw-dropping stupid, so mouth-breathing dumb, so, so..... DEMOCRAT, that the sheer idiotic force radiating from their lack of intelligence can drop the IQ points of everyone around them by half.

(Which explains why so many big cities end up voting for Dimocrats. They can't get away from the stupidity that radiates from the other Dimocrats, so they all wander into a voting booth and pull the lever for (D), most likely drooling on themselves and muttering "ChimyMcHitlerburton" every so often.)

Look, oil is a commodity. It's traded on the open market. There are quite a few things that politicians can do to attempt to influence the price, but they cannot call up Exxon and say "Listen Bill, I need to get re-elected. Would you mind raising the price of sweet crude for me?" It doesn't happen, despite the tin-foil wrapped rantings of the insane Left (redundancy alert) and a few loony members of the right. Oil is bought and sold on the open market, and the market sets the price. Not only that, but the people buying oil right now are not buying today's oil, they are buying the oil that will be pumped and shipped six months from now. When gas prices went up, it's because six months beforehand, people were paying a lot more money for oil, thinking that supply would be cut either at the well or at the refinery. When a major hurricane refused to appear, leaving our refineries in good shape, the people paid less for the same oil because there was a good supply. Ergo, prices went down.

Politicians can only meddle at the fringes with oil prices. If the gutless politicians would open up ANWAR, oil prices would go down because there would be a greater supply on domestic soil. But it wouldn't be a sudden drop, nor would it be a great drastic change. If politicians suddenly refused to buy oil from Venezuela, oil prices would go up. But they wouldn't just jump up tomorrow, they would jump in the future, since that's when people are purchasing the oil. Gas prices would go up at the news, but gas isn't controlled or purchased exactly like oil is.

I don't have the time to sit down and give a class on how commodity trading works, or why it effects things the way it does. And I'm certainly not the best person to teach macroeconomics. There will probably be someone coming in here to say "You got this or this wrong", which is fine because I'd rather someone give me the right information rather than stupidly insist that I'm correct when I'm not. (I'm a conservative, not a liberal.) Oil isn't the only commodity bought and sold. Wheat is a commodity. Hell, just open up your local newspaper and look at the commodities section. Anyone can find out about it if they actually give a shit enough to learn.

Which is why the next person who comes onto this blog and states that politicians can change the price of oil at their whim will be labeled "FUCKING IDIOT".