Thomas Sowell first lays the smack-down on all those foil hat conspiracy theories about rising gas prices, and the people who make them:

Ironically, the people who are making the most noise about the high price of gasoline are the very people who have for years blocked every attempt to increase our own oil supply. They have opposed drilling for oil off the Atlantic coast, off the Pacific coast, or in Alaska. They have prevented the building of any new oil refineries anywhere for decades.

They have fought against the building of hydroelectric dams or nuclear power plants to generate electricity without the use of oil. They love to talk about their own pet "alternative energy sources," without the slightest attention to what these would cost in terms of money, jobs, or our national standard of living.

Even when one of their pet "alternative energy sources" -- windmills -- is proposed to be built near them, suddenly it is not right to spoil their view.

Then he sounds a warning about what might happen if those evil oil companies are "brought to heel:"

"Windfall" profits and windfall losses are all part of the same adjustment process. If politicians seize the windfall profits and leave windfall losses alone, what that means over a cycle of years is that the average rate of return on oil production falls below what is needed to attract the investments that greater oil exploration and production require.

One thing he doesn't point out, which has only been mentioned in passing in the MSM, is that the economies that are largely driving these price increases are doing so because of subsidies of their own. India, China, and Malaysia in particular heavily subsidise their fuel prices. These artificially low prices therefore provide no incentive for people to cut back or become more efficient. So, while fuel use gradually goes down and efficiency goes up here in the West, exactly the opposite is happening in the East, and so the prices stay high.

But, as Mr. Sowell points out, trying to make reality go away through politics is like keeping a tiger in your house because you have a fridge full of meat. Eventually the fridge goes empty, the tiger gets hungry, and suddenly all the good intentions in the world aren't enough to save you.