I happened to think about this on the way to work this morning. During the recent gas shortage in Charlotte and the rise of gas prices in general over the spring and summer, everyone was bemoaning the almost daily price increases. I heard lots of folks saying "How can the value of gas that 'they' bought and keep in the ground go up overnight? It is the same gas that 'they' (the station owners) have already paid for!" Funny, now that gas prices are falling on a daily basis, I don't hear anyone asking the question in reverse.
It amazes me that there are so many people that do not understand the simple concept of something gaining value while you hold on to it. There seems to be no issue regarding the value of land or gold or stamp collections, though. It seems to only apply to gasoline. Hmmm ...
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I used to think we ought to require everyone take a basic course in economics in high school. But I gave up on that because of all of the articles in the LA Times and Washington Post I've read from journalists proclaiming that algebra shouldn't be required to graduate from high school (because it was hard for them and they've never used it every!). If professional writers cannot be bothered to learn algebra, what hope do we have of asking people to look at graphs and think about the behavior that the graphs represent, not some sort of mathematical relationship, which will make them blow it off? I suspect we have no hope of it.
This is what Engels called "commodity fetishism"--our oil obsessed foreign policy seems to me much the same thing.
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