>>>>>Exactly what would you hope to accomplish by taking oil off the market and can you justify attempting that effort, given the historical results when this type of measure has been attempted previously. Price caps do not work, in fact, they make matters much worse.
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>>>>If this were an industry that was slightly out of control, then minor regulation or jail terms for abusers might work. As this industry has moved into the twilight zone of extreme price gouging of a strategic resource (it isn't just the arabs folks), nationalization of the industry makes a lot more sense.
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>>>Specially as a forewarning to the next gaugers - would you like to pay outrageous prices for food, water...?
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>>Yep.
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>>Food is already on its way up due to oil and people using food instead of oil (ethanol - one of the stupidest ideas in many years).
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>I think there was an opinion in speculative circles that food is too cheap, compared to oil. So food merchants wanted a part of the cake, and lobbied to not only get a piece of the cake, but to get it tax funded. When the subsidies for manufacturing ethanol from corn were announced a year ago, wife and I just spontaneously and simultaneously started ranting about how this will drive up the price of food - as almost all food here is based on corn.
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>If we two amateurs knew in minutes that the prices will soar, how come the rest of the world didn't? I figure many did, too, but just had their reasons for being silent - probably just waiting to grab their piece of the cake, seeing the change as inevitable.

Food prices have been held artificially low for many years due to restrictive policies like subsidies and price caps. I must admit that I'm a bit torn between rational and personal when looking at today's food prices. On the one hand I'm against subsidies in general and the farm bill as a whole, but on the other hand it's about time the farmers got their piece after being regulated into oblivion.