The Law of Supply and Demand

Any of you living in larger cities in the southern United States may be feeling this as well: Extremely high gas prices and a major shortage of gas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seems that every time a hurricane hits the south-central US, people panic, gas prices skyrocket, and thus there is a self-induced gas shortage in large metro areas. A few weeks back, gas prices were in the $5.00/gal. range in some places; followed promptly by a complete outage of gas supply. Granted the prices have come back down (still not quite near normal), there is still a fundamental problem: gas shortage.

My girlfriend and I drove around for an HOUR last night looking for gas stations that still had ANY gas left. We drove around in a 10 mile radius near our house only to discover one single gas station had gas, and it was about to run out. I lost count of how many gas stations we passed which had their signs taken down, bags on the pumps, and nobody in the parking lots–lights on, nobody home. This particular gas station we stopped at had gone through 3,000 gallons of gas in 2 hours. Bare in mind this is at around 2:00am, thats practically a mid-day rush twice over at 2:00 in the morning. It is 10 times worse during the day time.

Ok, enough about the problem description, how about the cause? If you recall in my above paragraph I stated “self-induced gas shortage”. The reason I say self-induced is because I’ve lived here long enough to notice a pattern, and certain officials agree, that the gas shortage is caused in part, and probably mostly, by a run on the pumps. It is the simple law of supply and demand. If the demand goes up but supply stays the same, prices go up to protect the remaining supply. Stop topping off tanks and filling up gas jugs when you don’t need it. Stop doing it and the problem will go away!