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Dez Donating Member (826 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 08:40 AM
Original message
Resist gas prices!
Join the resistance!!!! I hear we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon
by the summer and it might go higher!! Want gasoline prices to come down?

We need to take some intelligent, united action.
Phillip Hollsworth, offered this good idea:
This makes MUCH MORE SENSE
than the "don't buy gas on a certain day" campaign
that was going around last April or May!

The oil companies just laughed at that because they knew
we wouldn't continue to "hurt" ourselves by refusing to buy gas.
It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was a problem for them.
BUT, whoever thought of this idea, has come up with a
plan that can really work.

Please read it and join with us! By now you're probably thinking gasoline
priced at about $1.50 is super cheap. Me too! It is currently $2.09 for
regular unleaded in my town. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC
nations have conditioned us to think that the cost! of a gallon of gas is
CHEAP at $1.50- $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that
BUYERS control the marketplace....not sellers.

With the price of gasoline going up more each day, we consumers need to take action.
The only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in
the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas! And we can do that WITHOUT hurting
ourselves.

How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can't just stop buying gas.
But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together
to force a price war.

Here's the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline
from the two biggest companies (which now are one),
EXXON and MOBIL.
- If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their
prices.
- If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon
and Mobil gas buyers.

It's really simple to do!! Now, don't whimp out on me at this point...
keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!

I am sending this note to about thirty people.

If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) ...
- and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)...and so on,
by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people,
we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers.

If those three million get excited and ! pass this on to ten friends each,
then 30 million people will have been contacted !!

If it goes one level further, you guessed it.....

THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all You have to do is send this to 10 people. That's all.
(If you don't understand how we can reach 300 million and all you have to
do is send this to 10 people.... Well, let's face it, you just aren't a
mathematician. But I am ... so trust me on this one.)

How long would all that take?

If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day of receipt,
all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!!

I'll bet you didn't think you and I had that much potential, did you!

Acting together we can make a difference.

If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.

PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES
TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN.

THIS CAN REALLY WORK.

Kerry Lyle, Director, Research Coordinator
Interventional Cardiology Research Laboratories
Division of Cardiovascular Diseases
932 Ziegler Research Bldg
703 South 19th Street University of Alabama @ B'ham
Birmingham, Al 35294-0007 Phone: (205) 934-6163 Fax: (205) 934-7360
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leveymg Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 08:55 AM
Response to Original message
1. Gee, you're only paying $2.09/gal. in AL? In Northern VA its $2.39
I wonder what accounts for the 15% price differential. You must closer to the epicenter of the Red States powerbase.

:evilfrown: :bounce: :evilgrin:
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Dez Donating Member (826 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 09:04 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. I'm in Az.
and I pay $2.30 a gallon. I got this email from a newsgroup I subscribe to.. and I am passing it on to everyone. I think I can reach a lot of people here on DU, and they can forward it to their friends, and hopefully we can make a difference.
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Dhalgren Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 09:05 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. The cheapest gas I've found in Huntsville, AL
is $2.19/gal. for reg., unleaded. That was yesterday; the price has been going up daily, so it may be a bit more by the end of today. What would the effect be on a major oil company if millions of people stop buying their gas? Could this sort of thing actually work?
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GiovanniC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 09:06 AM
Response to Original message
4. The "Mathematician" Could Use a Little Help With Some Concepts
If I send an email to 30 people... and they each send it to 10 people... that's 300 people!

And then if THEY send it to 10 people each, that's 3000 PEOPLE!

And soon you get to 3 million people! And then 30 million people!

And then -- YOU GUESSED IT! -- 300 MILLION PEOPLE!

If each of those 300 million send it to 10 people, 3 billion people will have read this email message. And then, if each of those people sends it to 10 people, then 30 BILLION PEOPLE! will have read this email. That's every man, woman, and child living on this planet now and every man, woman, and child who EVER lived on this planet, with some room to spare.

And imagine what would happen if THEY all forwarded that email to ten friends.

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GiovanniC Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 09:11 AM
Response to Original message
5. Not a Great Plan
A boycott of a couple of brands wouldn't result in lower overall prices: Prices at all the non-boycotted outlets would rise due to the temporarily limited supply and increased demand, making the original prices look cheap by comparison. The shunned outlets could then make a killing by offering gasoline at its "normal" (i.e., pre-boycott) price or by selling off their output to the non-boycotted companies, who will need the extra supply to meet demand. The only person who really gets hurt in this proposed scheme is the service station operator, who has almost no control over the price of gasoline.

The only practical way of reducing gasoline prices is through the straightforward means of buying less gasoline, not through a simple and painless scheme of just shifting where we buy it. The inconvenience of driving less is a hardship too many people apparently aren't willing to endure, however.




http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/petition/gasout.htm
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callous taoboy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 09:22 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. Bingo-
Combine trips when using car.

Use public transportation, walk, ride bike or carpool at least once a week or more.

Use an electric scooter (like me).
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lostinacause Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 10:07 AM
Response to Reply #5
8. Boycotting a few brands, if successful, might even make it so there is
less competition on a permanent basis.
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PDX Bara Donating Member (243 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Apr-11-05 09:47 AM
Response to Original message
7. If you CAN'T avoid driving...
I posted this before not too long ago but maybe some of my fellow DU'ers who might have missed that post would find this site helpful:

http://gasbuddy.com/

The best prices in my metropolitan area (Portland OR) is two blocks from where I live! It's an ARCO station so perhaps one in your neighborhood would have good prices.

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