The Price of Oil

As the price of oil surged over the summer, many analysts said bad things might be coming. The price of oil recently fell below $39/barrel, but many analysts are saying this is a bad thing. At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not informative, and so we would like to explain what is going on here.

An altruistic news outlet would strive for a single goal: give the public unbiased and useful information that would allow them to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, the world's news outlets are not altruistic. They are answerable to corporations that pay the salaries of the reporters and anchors, and therefore answer primarily to those who have the money. If those who have the money are altruistic this does not significantly alter the goal of the news outlet, but, unfortunately, those with the money are rarely altruistic. More often than not, those with the money simply want more money. This changes the basic motivation of the news outlet from one of providing unbiased information to one of providing information that the public is willing to pay for (through newspaper costs or advertising revenue or what-not). This fundamental switch in motivation accounts for most of the doomsday-style headlines we see, including those about "high oil prices are bad" and "low oil prices are bad."

Now that this blog is firmly established, here at the GPD we are currently working on establishing a number of altruistic news outlets that will tell you the way things are, not the way people with money think you want to be told that things are. Keep your eyes open!