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How do you fight a cartel? With a cartel.
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We can fight the OPEC cartel by organizing against it. We'll do even better if we organize with the rest of the oil consuming nations. A buyers' cartel can offset the market power of the OPEC sellers' cartel.
How do we organize ourselves as a buyers' cartel? It sounds harsh, but it works, and it keeps the money in our pockets and out of OPEC's: we tax ourselves to keep the price of oil high. But the choice is simple: either we collect the tax ourselves, or OPEC will continue to collect it. And we can ease the pain a lot: we can return the tax to every citizen, just as Alaska writes every resident a check each June refunding oil-industry dividends. OPEC is unlikely to provide a similar offer.
Let's not even call this a tax, since it's returned dollar-for-dollar to all citizens. Let's call it an "untax." (Does it sound circular? It's not.)
In fact, at this point — with oil prices as high as they are — we don't need much of an untax, but we can institute a sliding scale: if the world-market price of oil goes down, then the untax will increase. Now it will be safe to invest in alternative technologies.
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http://zfacts.com/p/994.html | 09/08/08 15:41 GMT
Modified: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:39:30 GMT
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