> C'mon Leigh. The reason the refineries are running at 95% is that
> the oil industry bought up the smaller refineries and shut them down
> to raise the price of gas. (Some 1990s memos to this effect were
> obtained in a recent lawsuit in California, from Mobil, Chevron and
> Texaco.) This is because the majors
> will make more money if there's a capacity shortfall. It's not
> "lifestyle" or "consumption" but capitalist production--and in this
> case capitalist destruction of productive capacity--that leads to
> unsafe working conditions.
>
> Jenny Brown
It's a combination of both. Look up the word 'complicit' ( or 'need', another interesting word, as 'want' seems to have insinuated itself in it's definition) in any dictionary.
If we didn't "need", the oil, if it wasn't imperative to "modern life" (making us complicit), the demand would not be as significant and the oil companies would be peddling it like bad drugs (which they, along with the rest of corporate America do.)
If you don't want to take responsiblitity for the business/social framework of modern day America, that's fine, but puuleease don't try to rationalize it away with an "economic model in a vacuum".
Leigh www.leighm.net Have you seen my newsfeeds?: http://leighmdotnet.blogspot.com Got RSS?: http://leighmdotnet.blogspot.com/atom.xml