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1. Oil companies don't need to manipulate oil and gas prices in the open markets in order to turn a profit. What their lobbies ensure is that there will always be a profit for them no matter where those prices are. The power of those lobbies extends from as close as tax subsidies at home, to as far as influencing US foreign policy to act as a carrot and a stick to the countries auctioning their energy assets to these companies.
2. Apart from the enormous executive pay packages (which are wrong and undeserved but that's a different subject wider than the issue at hand) if one believes these companies have the game rigged in their favor (which they have), free markets allow for their shares to be bought in the open market so anyone could benefit from that edge (fair or unfair).
3. It is only fair for the users of gasoline (same as all other polluters) to pay to society for the damage they are doing to it. Clean environment is a resource (asset) equally owned by every citizen. The ones that are depleting these assets need to pay a tax (reimburse the rest) for the damage done. The reimbursement should equal the cost of reversing the damage done to the resource. There are studies done to estimate this cost but we could start with a 100% tax on gas and invest the proceeds in research on cleaner sources of energy, and take it form there. The Kyoto Treaty tried to apply this simple principle on a global scale but...
4. The US automobile and oil lobbies have influenced policy for so long (decades) that now it may be socially prohibitive (recessions, unrests, etc.) for all polluters to pay for the damage they are causing to the environment (millions of lower class commuters that depend on their car and cheap gas for their livelihood). Without the influence of these lobbies, and starting from the New Deal onwards the optimal way would have been for US to invest much more in public transport infrastructure instead of highways and roads for individual vehicles. Now we are all paying the price for the bias in those historical policy decisions. These lobbies have even influenced marketing and through movies, books, magazine articles have brainwashed people to think of public transport as something "lowly", "unindividualistic", "for poor people", "against the American free spirit", "call of the open highway", etc. They are still as powerful as ever. Campaign finance reform should address their influence but theres' no one to push things in the right direction, yet.
Z.
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