Well, having made a dollar or two myself on the principle, I can tell you this about supply and demand.
If supply exceeds demand, the price goes down.
If demand is greater than supply, the price goes up.
DeBeers is pulling TONS of diamonds out of a mine in South Africa and only releases a small fraction of that a year. If they released it as they pulled it out, diamonds would be worth less than apples.
Gasoline demand rises sharply in the summer, as U.S. families take to the roads on vacations, or just driving around town in the nice weather, yet in alot of cases oil production actually goes down. Thats because they can work less, and make the same money when demand is at its peak.
So in a world of technology, where we can put billions of books on a microchip the size of a pin head, and send full color digital video across the globe, we're expected to believe that its just too hard to make an engine thats 80% efficient?
Sure they can.. there just isn't any incentive to the powers that be to do so.. and it certianly isnt in the oil companies best interest to have a car that would get 80mpg.
But they can justify it to the masses with fuzzy math, retheroic, and passing the blame.
Preston Tucker learned years ago that the only way a large company is interested in anything remotely benificial to the public is if it fattens their profit margin.. with all his "fuel injection, saftey glass and seatbelt" crazy talk.
