Shell to Demolish Refinery to Drive Up Prices

[Preechr]

I wasn't thinking you were being 100% serious... I was just waiting for somebody to say something about it, though... I have a soapbox to stand on here, y'know!

I'm very pro-capitalism, but I also don't believe most major industries are run as purely capitalistic enterprises anymore. We'll likely disagree when I say governmental regulation is the cause of the shift away from capitalism and that that's a bad thing. It's my view that the only thing government should ever be allowed to protect us from is itself. I don't need government protection from evil corporations, because those evil entities are how I earn my income. The government is an expense to me, and an involuntary one at that... and it's never proven that it can do the job of regulation effectively, either.

Government regulation never accomplishes what it intends to do, and only ever raises consumer costs. In some instances, these costs have produced desireable results, which indicates A value to the approach, but not necessarily the best value. Government regulation is never the only option, and never the best one, either.

That being said, I agree that a monumental effort needs to be made toward alternate energy, and a national project would be a great approach. This will only happen when we extract business interests from governmental decision making. A wall needs to be erected dividing commerce and state, similar to the one we have fooled ourselves into believing we've constructed between church and state. That "wall" needs to be strengthened and built higher to make any interaction impossible.

Commercial transactions are those of money. Those of government are exchanges of power. The province of religion is truth. There is no satisfactory exchange rate between these forms of currency because these exchanges always produce corruption. When truth is sold in exchange for power, such as the Kevin's Catholic Church taking a political stance to satisfy partisan needs, both the church and the politicos gain unfair advantage... but both institutions lose integrity and value. Similarly, we would never accept the idea of Jesus endorsing Nikes or "Sabbath© brought to you by Walmart," just as it's obviously wrong for Microsoft to use it's money to buy power in government regulation.

Yet the US Senate runs on deeply discounted versions of MS Exchange Server, set up and maintained by Redmond. The dividends of these sorts of arrangement obviously involve mountains of dirty money and ill-gotten influence, but we're not supposed to question matters of "National Security." There just was no anti-trust case to be made against Bill Gates, right?

I'm rambling... and probably waaay off topic. I suppose I'm trying to say that crap like that found in this article is exactly we should expect to see when money mixes with power and truth. Let each of the three pillars of our society (govt, commerce and religion) do their jobs for us alone, not polluting each other with their inexchangeable currencies. By not building the walls necessary to keep them separated, we are only inviting corruption and weakening our society. Those that would trade the currencies of their domain for that of another are intentionally and knowingly damaging society for personal gain.

By building this extra wall, we'll necessarily end the ability of government to manipulate, compete with and regulate private enterprise. I know that's scary to a lot of you guys, but it's something that can be discussed and eventually successfully implemented to our great benefit. Talking about it won't cause the moon to crash into New York City, as I'm sure many folks superstitiously believe the end of government regulation would accomplish if implemented.

*attempts to launch lead balloon filled with church farts*