Saudi’s Say No, Maybe Its A Good Thing

I just read that the Saudi’s have decided not to increase oil production to meet rising oil demands.  The reason is clear.  Why should they?  They don’t need anything from us.  They have all the leverage and in life leverage is 99% of the battle.  It is time for us as a country to start taking real steps towards ending reliance on foreign oil.  While I know this isn’t a new idea, this story just re-emphasizes the need for this to come to fruition sooner than later.  We need to start looking for supplies here while continuing to look for ways to conserve and also create real incentives for alternative fuels.  We have made many middle easterners very wealthy over the years.  Has anyone ever seen Dubai?  How about Kuwait?  Now I am not mad at them.  They are doing what business men do.  I am mad at us for not doing what business men do.  When you lack leverage and you are being squeezed by a vendor,  you look for alternative vendors.  That could be in the form of new a new supplier or a substitution product.  We are a resourceful society and the free market we sorta live in is made for situations like this.  The current environment is screaming for innovation.  I believe this innovation will come.  But we have to do it.  We can’t look for the government to do it for us.  All we can ask is that they stay out of the way which will make it easier for us as Americans to meet this challenge.  Let me repeat my mantra, the government is not the cure all.  They can barely stay out of their own way on most things.  Innovation comes when Americans like you and me are pinched and I don’t know about you, but my bottom is bruised.  The great thing about the market economy is that as needs arise the market finds ways to fill them.  There is a positive to the high gas prices.  The higher the price of gas goes, the sooner we will be less reliant on it.  The sooner we are less reliant, the less important the middle east becomes.  The sooner it becomes unimportant, the sooner we have less to do with them.  That can’t come soon enough for me.  The only real motivator for change is adversity.  The more adversity the more motivation for change.  So while the Saudis have us now, they are driving us to become less reliant and thus changing the leverage equation.  One day trust me, they will be asking us to increase our demand, and we will say we have no reason to.  How sweet will that be.