Demand Comes Before Supply

I was reading a book the other day with the television as background noise. The book wasn’t very good, so I was waiting for something other than a political ad when a statement caught my ear. I can usually ignore statements I disagree with, but this one was a bit much. It told the listening audience that we need to get big oil to pay for the pollution they caused. I guess it caught my attention because it is illogical twice! First, big oil won’t pay for anything. They are not the source of money. The customers who pay for their products are the source of money and will provide funds to the oil companies so that they can pay for whatever environmental cleanup that is eventually dictated. The second and biggest dose of illogic is that the oil companies caused the pollution. No! You and I caused the problem. The oil companies don’t drive my car nor do they heat my home. I do that and expect the fuel to do what I want to do. In economic terms, my expectations and wants are the demand, and supply always fills demand. Thus, if we really want to find the environmental bad guy, we need to look in the mirror. To clean up the planet, the human species needs to accept responsibility and change our ways. We can’t continue to point the finger elsewhere.

Demand drives supply in other areas as well. It is popular to blame foreign drug lords for our national addiction. Drug cartels include some really despicable characters and are easy to dislike, but they are simply supplying a demand. The genesis of the problem is our young people who feel the need to get high on chemicals, the business man who relaxes after a hard day at the office with a couple lines of coke, and the housewife who was stupid enough to get hooked on opioids. We create the demand right here in river city and supply always follows demand. If we want to stop the flow of drugs, we need to eliminate the demand created by the users in our country.

I actually heard a liberal politician blame the Republicans for the national debt. Both parties point fingers at the other until their arms cross and get tied in knots. Our national debt, the biggest threat to our future, is self-inflicted. Neither party is to blame and neither party can fix it. Americans demand more and more government services. We have even come to the point that we call them “entitlements”. Political parties can only succeed if they fill the demand. We cannot blame the debt on government or political parties. We caused it, we are making it worse, and only we can fix it. If we want to control the debt, we need to back off on demand.

It is easy to blame someone else. It is hard to accept collective responsibility for the messes we make. If America is going to lead the world through the next century, we need to realize that we control our destiny. Our progress, or lack thereof, is our own fault.

(Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and a long time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free lance columnist for over 18 years.)