buy gasoline like eggs....long but interesting

Buy Gasoline like eggs

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays 60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two doze at a time.

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are .76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly."

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.

The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs. Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday." The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc happen.


This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man says "there must be something we can do about the price of eggs." He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs and would not need any for at least two weeks. At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free."

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time." "Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again."

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on laying.

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "When the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for.

Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while. And them chickens kept on laying.


Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price. And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry. What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down. Think about it.

As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas, that leaves my tank a little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, no cigarettes, no bread, milk or chewing gum, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down.. Oh, some folks may not see this message. Can you afford to print 10 at a time and pass them out where you buy gas? If you can afford more, you may think of putting them on windshields at the mall.

Makes sense to me, how about you? Everyone should read this and send it on! Then when it works, you can say "hey, I helped bring the price back down!"

I want one.

People will have to work at this. I think anything to stop these bastards is viable...

I drive very little anyway... maybe we should have gas gouging bumper stickers as well...

This protest is not 'anti-bush' so it may be more accepted as EVERYBODY has to buy gas.

Or some type of farmer, who got government subsidies to throw their crops away to keep the market tight?

I would think the government would intervene at the level of the chicken farm, and would pay the farmers to toss the eggs rather than put them back on the market at reduced prices.

Isn't that what would happen? (or, in the case of oil, they wouldn't dump the oil, just slow down the refining process)?

The man is just buying 2 or 3 eggs EVERY day, rather than two dozen for two weeks. If everyone did that, the grocery would just have to alter when it received the eggs.

To bring the price down, demand has to diminish in these scenarios. At least to me. I might be missing something huge though, with a quick read-through.

Grocery delivery would still deliver the same amount since same amount sold (2 eggs/day X 7 days=14 eggs, whether sold 2+2+2+2+2+2+2 or 14). Use less, demand more, take the protests to the street.

while they waited for the business instead of people holding the eggs at home. it would be like an egg bank,
where I intended to buy 2 dozen in 2 but let the store keep my eggs in their refridgerator instead of me
keeping them in mine.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

All you'll be doing is delaying when the oil companies get the money by a few days. If this behaviour lasts, eventually it will percolate back to the oil rigs (as companies delay their orders by a few days, because they have stocks), which will slow down production for a day or two.

The main effect of everyone buying small amounts would be larger queues at gas stations. It might force a few to take on extra staff to deal with this - good for employment, but it would mean they'd have to put their prices up. The boycott of other products would solve that, I suppose. But the solution to high gas prices is to use less, directly or indirectly. Don't drive to takeouts or restaurants. Don't have pizza delivered. Don't drive for leisure activities.

presumable throwing away the extra ones after they got old.

I've never bought a gallon of gas that I didnt use.

If doesnt matter if I go to the pump 7 times a week, or once a week, I still burn the same amount of gas. (actually id use slightly more if I went 7 times a week to account for the trips to the gas station)

the point about keeping the gas stations tanks fuller is interesting.

I have mentioned not buying crap at the gas station here before and got a lot of baloney about hurting
the poor gas station owners so good luck with that idea. personally I think if people stopped buying crap
at the gas station, they would save a ton of money every year for savings or other things.

heard a chevron dealer on knx news radio LA today claim he made more profit from ONE snickers bar than he
would make selling a $40 dollar tank of gas. If that is true, then he ought to sell more snickers and give up
selling gas. that's what a smart business man would do.

other dealers interviewed stated they are not selling gas for a few days because they are "independents' and
cannot get gas at a profit making wholesale price. These guys are smart business men/women.

Msongs
www.msongs.com/political-shirts.htm

and I drive a sedan and really don't go anywhere--20 bucks a week?

I WISH!

number of eggs they always were. The grocer got his shipment on Monday. He'd be overstocked until the middle of the week, at which time he'd have the stock he normally does. By the end of the week, he'd need to reorder and accept another delivery.

Now if those folks were serious, they needed to explore alternatives. There are quite a few out there, from flax gel to silken tofu to even powdered egg whites. All can be used in baking. The tofu can be made into quite a nice substitute for breakfast. The only thing that would work the way you cited in your scenario would be to cut the overall demand for eggs, not drop the two dozen eggs every 12 days to two eggs a day.

To apply that to the gas crunch, there are few substitutes. However, walking and biking and using public transit when possible can cut demand. So can downsizing one's vehicle as far as possible, to a moped or scooter where one is practical.

Only by cutting overall demand can we increase the supply enough to force a price decrease. However, since demand continues to rise in other parts of the world, this will have a limited effect, at best.

nice story but oil doesnt just magically keep pouring out of the ground forever at the rate we are using it up.

for over a year now. usual purchase amounts to 6-7 gallons (about 1/2 tank) and that gets me back and forth to work for the week.

a full tank will last me almost 2 weeks of commuting. however with the way the prices jump - it acutally costs me less to get 1/2 a tank a week rather than filling up every two weeks.

other areas we have cut back on is eating out - we use to stop at a local restaurant on Saturday's after grocery shopping. haven't done that in months. We did bump into the restaurant owner's a few weeks ago, they mentioned they haven't seen us in awhile and hoped it wasn't because we were disappointed with their food/service. We reassured them it wasn't, but rather we stopped eating out because we can't afford it.

our errand routine has also changed - instead of going out on Saturday to do grocery shopping/errands - my partner does it on Friday night after work as the grocery store is near her workplace and other places are on the way home.

our grocery list has also been greatly cut. No more "treats" for us - just the necessities, and where it's practical we buy in bulk. We also make our own dog cookies every weekend.

any extra money we have goes into our "Winter account" to pay for heating fuel and cord wood for the next winter.

we are also trying to get co-workers to car pool with us -- no luck on that end yet....