Q&O passed along an interesting tidbit from a recent Rasmussen survey:
A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 29% of voters favor nationalizing the oil industry. Just 47% are opposed and 24% are not sure.
Death of the free market predicted. Film at 11.
Seriously, 29% of Americans want to nationalize the oil industry? 29% of Americans want the oil industry to be run by the same folks who bring you the Department of Motor Vehicles, Social Security, and Homeland Security?
Are we that dumb or blind?!
Folks, the free market is a good thing. In theory, a true free market should lead to maximum efficiency, minimum wastage, and generally optimal conditions for everyone.
Yes, the government has a place, providing necessary services, maintaining the level playing field, ensuring that participants are playing fair, and perhaps stimulating movement to “more optimal” solutions when the market (through structural inefficiencies or incomplete/inaccurate information) gets stuck on a “false optimal” peak in the market plane.
I can only imagine that Big Oil being moved into the federal bureaucracy would lead to inefficiencies and corruption that would only exacerbate existing problems.
If We The People want to collectively own Big Oil, we already have the right to do so, by buying shares, either as individuals or as pooled entities, on the open market.
Isn’t such nationalization at the core of our official beefs with Cuba and Venezuela?
