Bet you didn’t know that every time you fill your tank you’re supporting the makers of big giant boats. But that’s okay because you’re supporting only American big giant boat makers and the Americans they employ. There’s this 93 year old law that requires any big giant boat that carries goods or commodities in U.S. waters be American made, owned and operated. How’s that for patriotism protectionism!
Cool then, you say; we’re buying the oil (for example) so it’s only right that we have fellow Americans do the transporting. Okay fine, but what about those fellow American entrepreneurs (and the fellow Americans they would’ve employed) who’d love to capture your would’ve been discretionary income—and enrich your life with would’ve been more affordable (they frequent filling stations too) goods and services?
One estimate has you and I paying .30 cents extra per gallon due to a lack of transporting capacity resulting from the invisible, yet all too real, stranglehold Washington—in knowing support of its friends—maintains on our pocketbooks.
As politicians forever strive to convince you that some (perceived) economic injustice is the result of a failure of free-enterprise—or the conspiracy of the other party—know that the number of intrusions into the marketplace by government are too numerous to count, or fathom. The next time you hear a politician, or an economist, blame some pain on “market failure” know that what we’re almost surely experiencing is the market’s effort to correct some politically-induced distortion. As we allow, for example, the existence of a thirty-cent times billions upon billions of gallons distortion, know that we leave the market to compensate accordingly, subtly or otherwise…