The Way It Has "Always" Been is Outrageous

When something outrageous has been around for generations, it is difficult to feel an appropriate outrage. We've gotten so accustomed to having no choice with the fuel we put in our cars, almost none of us recognize how ridiculous that is in a free society.

One of the things people from developing countries most remark about when they move to America is how much choice we have in everything. Did you know there are 487 different kinds of breakfast cereal? If you've grown up here, you're used to it. But people who move here from poor countries often wander around supermarkets completely astonished, sometimes walking down the isles with tears running down their faces, overwhelmed at the abundance and choice available to them in a free society.

We're used to it. But we're also used to having no choice in fuel. If all of a sudden there was only one kind of breakfast cereal, you would be outraged. And if every store you went to had the same, single kind of breakfast cereal, you would feel that something must be done about this! You'd be writing to your Members of Congress. You'd be talking to all your friends about it. You'd be writing letters to the editor.

And that's not even a good enough analogy, because of course you can eat other things besides breakfast cereal. What if you walked into a supermarket and the only food available in the supermarket was shredded wheat? What if that was the only food in the whole store? There might be ten different brands of shredded wheat available, but that's all. And all of it outrageously expensive.

That's more like our situation.

People would completely freak out. That's an appropriate response to an artificially-induced limit (and artificially-raised price) on a vital commodity.

As soon as enough people see that the emperor has no clothes — as soon as they recognize the outrageousness of the condition of our fuel market — they are highly motivated to do something about it.

You and I need to do everything we can to get the word out. We need to help people see how ridiculous, but more importantly, how dangerous it is for us to remain in a one-fuel economy. People need to awaken. But when someone is asleep, they can't wake themselves up. They must be awakened by someone who is already awake. That's you. It is your responsibility (and your privilege) to awaken others and — let's be honest — to save the world.

Adam Khan is the co-author with Klassy Evans of Fill Your Tank With Freedom and he podcasts at The Adam Bomb.