Let's look at gas prices.
He and I have talked about gas prices before. He understands that the price is mostly based on supply and demand, but that there are other factors, too. His conclusion is that if we increase supply by glutting the market, the prices will drop. What he doesn't know is which company is going to pump enough oil to drop the price of a barrel below its production costs just so he will pay less at the pump. When I asked him if we should pay the oil companies to glut the market with gas so that he would pay less at the pump, he said he hadn't thought about it that way. I told him that we already do that in several different ways. That is partly why we pay less per gallon than most of the world. However, the main reason that gas prices are high is due to price gouging by the companies.
He says he "gets it," but he doesn't really get it.
Perhaps he can hitchhike on the idea another friend offered to me as the solution. We should reinstate the policies that Trump had when gas prices were half of what they are today. When I pointed out to him that they weren't half of what they are today, and supported it with evidence from three sources, he told me that I was falling for mainstream media propaganda. He prefers to rely on his memory over documentation from government sources that might contradict his bias. His solution is to reverse the policies Trump had and Biden changed before the price of gas went up. He doesn't know which policies those are, but he remembers gas was half the price it is today back then.
I heard the most logical argument on how to reduce gas prices years ago from another friend who is conservative. It was back when my other friends remember gas prices being half of what they are today because of Trump's policies. He was complaining about the price of gas, of course, because that is what consumers of gas normally do regardless of who is president. He discounted my ideas that we should move away from fossil fuels and toward green energy as liberal, communist crap. His idea was to have many people storm the headquarters of the big oil companies and tell them at gunpoint that the executives are going to start dying until the price of gas gets down to one dollar per gallon.
These are not evil people. Each is different, but they all are good-hearted people who will help other people out if they can.
What they have in common is that each of them claims to hate socialism and communism, and that capitalism is the only economic system that is worthwhile. Another thing they have in common is that each of them were complaining about one of the results of capitalism, which, in this case, is the price of gas.
While my third friend may have offered the most logical route to reduce gas prices, what he describes is not capitalism. What he describes is a Marxist takeover of the sources of production of oil. Though he may imagine himself proudly pumping gas for one dollar-per-gallon, he had no plan on how to assimilate enough people and weaponry to pull it off. He had it in his mind, somehow, that the military would fight with them, or at least wouldn't fight against them. I suggested that if the idea were popular enough to get that many people behind it, they could do it at the ballot box. However, he was still a capitalist, and I was still a commie.
As for my second friend, just because he has no evidence that Biden signed an executive order to reverse all of Trump's gas policies that doubled the price, doesn't mean it didn't happen. All the news outlets could be conspiring with him. Of course, all the news outlets are owned by capitalists, but how would I know if Rupert Murdoch, Michael Bloomberg, and Jeff Bezos are truly capitalists like my friend? Anyway, we agreed to disagree because no amount of evidence was going to convince him to change his mind, and no amount of denying evidence was going to convince me to change my mind.
Meanwhile, the discussion with my first friend will continue, as will discussions with several friends who are conservative. They will "get it" that oil is a global industry and that gas prices are lower here than they are in most of the world. They will "get it" that no company is going to lose money to glut the market with oil just so they can pay less at the pump. They will "get it" that tax money spent subsidizing the industry has to be added to the price of gas to determine what a gallon of gas really costs. They will "get it" that oil companies are making record profits that is the result of price gouging and not inflation.
However, they will not put it all together to change their biases toward creating the economy of the future.
They will want to return to pasts that they remember fondly but that never existed. They only look at the changes they would be forced to make in order that young people will have a world that they can live in. I don't know what all of the answers are, but I trust the future to people who must live in it more than I trust older people who are conservative and want to preserve their lifestyles for the few years they have left.
My friend will likely equate higher gas prices elsewhere to free medical care because that error in reasoning works with the short circuitry he has created in his mind. He will likely not equate it to the lack of government subsidies, which means the price there is more reflective of capitalism than it is here where socialism is used for subsidies. Hopefully, he will someday give up his prejudice that capitalism is good and socialism is bad. If he cannot explain it, then it is a prejudice and not an opinion. The explanation is the opinion.
He doesn't call me a commie. He knows that I would ask him to explain what he means, and bless his heart, he doesn't know what he means.
His contribution to capitalism is working hard as a skilled tradesman so that he can live paycheck-to-paycheck while those he works for get richer from his labor than he does. Well, at least there might not be social security in five years if capitalists like him get their way. Wait . . . what?
I don't get it, and neither do they.
