Killing the messenger

“Those pushing for price controls on gasoline are not likely to go into facts about the consequences of price controls, much less go into the economics that explains why such bad consequences have repeatedly followed price controls... When the conditions that determined the old prices change, the new prices are likely to be very different. That is not rocket science... In the United States, liberals have made it virtually impossible [to increase supply], by banning drilling in all sorts of places and preventing any new refinery from being built anywhere in the country in the last 30 years. Prices are like messengers carrying the news of supply and demand. Like other messengers carrying bad news, they face the danger that some people think the answer is to kill the messenger, rather than taking steps to change the news. The strongest proponents of price controls are the strongest opponents of producing more oil. They say the magic words ‘alternative energy sources’ and we are supposed to swoon—and certainly not ask any rude questions like ‘At what cost?”’ — Thomas Sowell