Lower Gas Prices as Easy as ABC

Lowering gas prices should be as easy as ABC (A Buyers Cooperative). We simply band together and throw our collective business to the station offering the lowest bid.

Buyers' power.

If a large enough chunk of us toss in, our buying power will garner lower prices. There's only one problem: Here in Utah, there's a law that station prices can't be separated by much. I suppose the idea behind such legislation was that keeping prices together keeps the large distributors from running the small ones out of town.

Of course, protecting maw-and-paw businesses is a good thing . . . 'cept I can't think of many maw-and-paw gas stations out there, anyway. So, I don't think this law is worth keeping around. All it seems to be doing is giving stations reason to keep their prices in line with each other.

We need competion, not collusion. If collusion is bad, why a law practically mandating it? If there were collusion, how would we ever find it? If accused, they would simply say they were following the law. Laws against collusion are good, but, laws that encourage collusion? I think we're better off without them.

Now, back to the idea of a buyers' cooperative. It borrows from a trick of Walmart's. Walmart is large enough -- has enough buying power -- it can demand lower prices from food distributors. I've heard the chain doesn't always simply take whatever price a food distributor sets, but, rather, sometimes suggests a lower price. And, if it doesn't get it, it refuses to sell the product.

Let's learn from Walmart. Let's use the power of Walmart at the gas pump. Admittedly, until the government-mandated collusion is changed, we might not be able to drive prices down as much as we'd like, but we can drive them down some.