my bet is: as long as we need to completely transition to renewable transport, because everything we eat, build and wear needs to be transported and most of us don’t work from home or study from home:
oil prices are high because that’s what putin can use as leverage against the developed world after his failed annexation of Ukraine and it’s clear he’d rather die than accept Ukraine is an independent country. Global warming makes a transition to renewable energy inescapable and even if putin died today and Russia opened the taps again, it would only slow down the transition.
But holy shit, it’s gonna be hard and expensive, it’s going to take decades and every populist politician of both left and right is going to fight it. My bet is 2 decades.
What do you think?
It’s not a lack of government regulation, but rather a lack of competition that allows them to charge what they like.
Prices are naturally regulated by markets, when competition exists. But the government forcibly shut down a lot of the companies, forcing market consolidation. This means less competition.
Monopolies are a lack of competition. By definition. We need to encourage the starting of new businesses in existing industries if we want to solve monopolistic price fixing. Small businesses failed and got absorbed by larger businesses during the pandemic.
The new businesses that came into those spots are more likely to be big chains, companies with lots of cash reserves.