Supply and demand

I received an email today that makes me wonder about the quality of education in the U.S. Like most such SPAM messages, it depends on the exponential growth of contacts if everyone contacted contacts X more where X is greater than 1. And the message makes absolutely no sense otherwise.

Subject: Dropping Gas Prices THIS IS NOT THE 'DON'T BUY' GAS FOR ONE DAY, BUT IT WILL SHOW YOU HOW WE CAN GET GAS BACK DOWN TO $1.30 PER GALLON. ...

I've deleted several lines of "we can do it, you can do it, we can make a difference" (what I call cheerleading propaganda) the note finally gets down to business.

...

Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50 - $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace..not sellers. Apparently this person did not learn anything in Economics. There are Buyers' markets where the buyers do indeed control the price. But there are also Sellers' markets where the sellers set the price and terms. Sellers' markets are usually the result of more demand than supply. With our current addiction to oil products including gasoline, for the forseeable future, we will be dealing with a Sellers' market.

The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And, we can do that WITHOUT hurting ourselves.
How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas.

But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL.

If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices.
If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

Since the author of the plea has already admitted we're not going to buy less gas, just switch pushers, why should the companies who are now seeing MORE customers lower their prices? That makes no sense at all. In fact, they could raise their prices until someone writes another goofy note naming their company as the villain du jour.

The rest of the note simply deals with the wonders of exponential growth, again in a cheerleading manner.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It's really simple to do! Now, don't wimp out on me at this point...keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!
I am sending this note to 30 people. If each of us send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) .. and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x10 = 3,000)...and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth group of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers.
If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all!

(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a mathematician. But I am . so trust me on this one.

How long would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days !!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you!
Acting together we can make a difference.

If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on. I suggest that we not buy from EXXON/MOBIL UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $2.00 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK

Keep it going!!!

If you get a message like this, I hope you do what I did, namely bounce it back to the sender with a suggestion that they read what they're forwarding and think it through.