The Price Is Right? Wrong!

Silver linings do exist, people. Even in this economic recession.

For example, a fear of decreased demand has snatched gas prices from their recent stratospheric levels all the way down to $2 … and even less in some towns.

But is that really a silver lining, or a case of “be-careful-what-you-wish-you-just-might-get-it switcheroo?”

Gas, for all its bad press, is a fantastic free-market participant – and not just because it defies free-market theory.

Like when demand somehow managed to keep pace with the rising prices of the past year.

Gas is the ultimate equalizer, reining in the bad by encouraging something else … when prices are high enough, that is.

Don’t believe it? Too bad. You have to – because I’m using your own logic to reach my premise. Fuel prices should be controlled, right, because it’s such an integral life ingredient?

An integral ingredient indeed – but one which is at its best when it’s unaffordable.

If that seems counterintuitive, it’s because prices have never remained high enough long enough to rid us of the ingrained how-low-can-you-go notion.

Had fuel costs held out another year or so, their resiliency would have eventually fizzled – curing all on its own that oft-maligned “American oil addiction” and so much more.

And make no mistake, oil dependency is just one of many cures of sky-high gas prices. That list of cures, all PC-like, matches point for point just about every conservative mission and liberal cause.

Seriously, reading that list is like learning that the Democrats and Republicans quit the dawdling and finally merged into one concerned, zen entity.

Behold:

1) Environment – Besides the totally obvious environmental benefits of less gas emissions, high fuel prices would solve the other pressing ecological problem. Overpopulation – and all of its attendant issues – would be immediately halted and eventually reversed.

I mean it.

Without the means to hop from club to bar to bed, people would cut it out with rabbit-like casual encounters … and voila! No rabbits means no bunnies.

Now naturally, people will argue that staying home can only lead to a population explosion. But that argument completely discounts everything our founding editor has said about married sex.

Even in the event that “dry spells” are not the norm and the population would end up in a boon, the environment still comes out on top. See: Totally obvious environmental benefits of less gas emissions.

2) Healthcare – This one’s legion. Beyond the clear advantages of inhaling less noxious fumes, high gas prices would solve just about every other aspect of the healthcare crisis.

See: Without the means to hop from club to bar to bed, people would cut it out with casual encounters.

This would all but eradicate AIDS and other STDs, the transmission of which is fueled (ha!) by the nomadic grazing facilitated by cheap gas.

Last time I checked, McDonald’s doesn’t deliver. Though the drive-thru minimizes calorie expenditure (thereby maximizing adipose surfeit) that Big Mac still requires some energy output – in the form of gas, of course. The drive-thru is not the same without the “drive,” people. “Dine in” will finally mean what it’s supposed to mean.

Like everything else about the economy, the trickle-down effect is at work here too – though in not quite the theoretical sense. All of these benefits – and others too legion to mention – will accumulate to halt the boundless costs of healthcare. Free from atmospheric toxicity, STDs, and fatty fast foods, we’ll need a lot less healthcare.

3) Global Diplomacy – One look at import/export charts and one thing’s crystal clear: Americans make purchases, and not much else. Our materialistic resiliency is such that we’re seeing our way through the fog of a credit freeze by resurrecting layaway. Without a way to drive to the mall we could work toward restoring our enterprising, Calvinist reputation, showing the world that we care about more than just shopping.

Of course, we don’t. But thanks to that credit freeze, the world won’t know that – as long as a certain gas-averse “superhighway” doesn’t adopt layaway.

4) National Debt – Because all of these benefits will sprout from free-market responses to gas costs, the government can finally butt out – a process that will begin with massive job cuts at the EPA and CDC, and snowball from there. High gas prices will eliminate the middle man – we’ll pay for the solutions directly at the pump – and that will mean an end to expensive and effete government intervention.

At long last, capitalism will get a fair shot.

Of course, that will create a quadrillion unemployed government workers…but fortunately high gas prices will solve that dilemma too. There will finally be tons of “green collar jobs” for which to apply – jobs that, incidentally, those unemployed workers talked up for years but never actually got around to creating.