Here in California I see so little variation in gas prices that there seems no point in shopping around. It's clear that the idea of a free market in gasoline is a joke anyway, so I have to wonder whether price controls would really have any negative consequences. You can't destroy the incentive to compete when there's no competition.

Am I the only one who's a little baffled by the idea of a uniform global price for a barrel of oil? Common sense tells you that the cost of extracting the oil must vary dramatically around the world, from cheap Saudi crude to low-grade shale and oil from remote or environmentally-sensitive areas like ANWR.

There's no free market in oil, and I dare any freemarket conservative to claim otherwise. We know we're dealing with a cartel, both the visible OPEC cartel plus all the other oil companies that use OPEC prices as an excuse to jack up their own prices. We don't see any of the consequences of a free market, such as varying oil company profits--profits remain high through gluts and shortages.

The oil industry has a gun to our heads, and I don't like it. It's situations like this that illustrate that there are practical limits to free markets, and that allowing a cartel to monopolize a resource that's so vital to our civilization is just plain stupid and probably suicidal in the long run.