here is simply no mystery that gas prices have soared.  However, our indignation to mounting gas prices is most inappropriate.  Here is why.  We have been willing to pay $1.50 for 16 ounces of water (which equals $12 for a gallon of water) and as much as $4 for a cup of Starbucks coffee (which equals $32 for coffee, assuming for the sake of argument 16 ounces a cup of coffee).  Now, think about it.  In view of these prices for water and coffee, why shouldn’t the purveyors of oil raise their prices?  After all, a gallon of gas at $5 per gallon is still cheaper than water purchased $1.50 for 16 ounces; and it is still cheaper than coffee purchased at $4 a cup. 

Indeed, from the standpoint of simple rational reflection, the purveyors of oil would be fools not to raise their prices.  For we the consumer have shown ourselves to be utterly silly and thoughtless in our willingness to pay extraordinary prices 16 ounces of water of all things. 

I know: the argument is supposed to have to do with health and all those inappropriate substances claimed to be found in tap water.  This line of argument would have a chance at being convincing if there was a shred of evidence that people who have essentially consumed none other tap water all their lives were more sickly or prone to premature death as a result of doing so.  To date, however, there has not been a shred of evidence that would support any such conclusion.  What is more, food in most restaurants is surely not prepared using bottled water.  This fact points to just how brilliantly deceptive the marketing campaign for bottled water was. 

How absurd can the following scenario be? We frequent restaurants which prepare their food using tap water all the while paying some exorbitant price for bottled water to drink with the meal.  How much more of a duh moment could there be?  The scenario is so incongruous that it is inconceivable to me how people have managed so to behave without experiencing some sort of brain contortion. 

The same line of reasoning holds for coffee at Starbucks.  The proof that I am intellectually bereft—if indeed I am—is that I have never ever been able to comprehend why so many have been willing to spend so much for a cup of coffee—and on nearly a daily basis no less.  And please don’t tell me that it is the environment.  That simply cannot be right. 

For instance, I have noticed that people are flocking to the Starbucks coffee shops in Paris.  And I am unable to see how the environment of a Starbucks shop is superior to the French cafés.  Indeed, precisely what French cafés are known for is the fact that a person can spend hours at well-placed table consuming the drink that she or he purchased.  There is nothing that Starbucks offers in Paris that tops that. 

But even in the United States, where cafés of the French variety are common primarily in cities like New York, it remains incomprehensible to me that people have been willing to pay so much for what in effect is so very little.  Besides, many regular customers of Starbucks purchase their coffee and take it with them.  So, to begin with, these customers are not there to enjoy the lugubrious environment offered by a Starbucks shop. 

So if you are selling oil and you see this sort of nonsense with respect to water and coffee, then sheer commonsense tells you that that oil prices need to go up.  And that is what the purveyors of oil are doing.  The explanation for this is so-called speculation.  I don’t think for a moment that is the explanation.  After all, if speculation were the explanation, then oil prices should have shot up years ago. 

What I think, rather, is that the claim of speculation was found to be a convenient way to make sense to make sense of the sudden rise in oil prices to folks lacking in commonsense; and the mere fact that we have believed that explanation shows that the purveyors of oil got it just right.   

The deeper point here, of course, is that commonsense has essentially gone out the window these days—as we see with so many things that people do.  One of these is adults fighting with one another on what is known as Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving) in order to procure a toy for a child.  Another is the senseless spending that people do when clearly they do not have the means to purchase the things that, in the first place, they do not need.  Or, what about folks camping out for days just to be the first to be a new gadget?    

Some of the ways in which we who claim to be rational creatures have allowed ourselves to be manipulated are so transparent that they all but call into question our claim to being rational creatures.

It is in a society shorn of commonsense that oil prices have skyrockets in a way that makes no sense.  And that, alas, is just the point.  The soaring oil prices make no less sense than our paying $1.50 for 16 ounces of bottled water or $4 for a cup of Starbucks coffee.  Alas, when we have proven ourselves to be so utterly gullible, then there is a very straightforward sense in which what we get is none other than what we deserve. 

The prognosis can be put more poignantly, a people who can be so easily manipulated by rather transparent falsehoods cannot have much respect for themselves.  We have become too blind to see that soaring oil prices have a lot to do with the moral reality that we have far too little respect for ourselves as is revealed by the massively stupid things that we routinely do.