Why are oil companies allowed to extract a natural resource like oil for free or nearly free? Yeah, when drilling on public land, they may have to pay a lease, but what about the oil under private land?
If someone currently owns a piece of land, do they own everything under and above the surface of that land? In general should they automatically own something they had no hand in creating? That oil was created through natural processes, over millions of years, by the planet, Should it not benefit the planet? Is burning it and polluting the atmosphere the absolute best use for that resorce? Even if we believe in Mankind's dominion over everything, why would that dominion be limited to a single class of landowners? What about the rest of us? What about future generations of Humanity? Do they automatically forfeit their right to such resources simply based on the timeframe in which they were born?
None of these questions could be answered in this post, but they should be asked and their implications considered and debated. And, at the forefront of such debates should be whether an individual, several individuals or a small group or organization should have free reign over the limited supply of resources like oil, natural gas, coal, or even things like the fish in the sea.
Now, I'm not saying oil companies shouldn't be compensated for extracting and refining the oil they extract, but I am saying they should at the very least pay the rest of us all for the oil they didn't create. Maybe they should have to pay every other person the the planet a dividend for the use of OUR oil. It could even be argued that this dividend could be limited by the borders in which the deposit was discovered. That, however is another debate thatvsgoukd be had at another time.
As for the profits made by big oil, should we be subsidizing companies that earn billions through tax rebates that come from our taxed dollars. Put another way, why do oil companies get to extract Earth's oil for free, make billions from that oil and get money from our taxes after making billions in profit? Who made these bad deals and who's adhering to such bad deals?
In such trying economic times as America is facing, a just and moral leadership class would see the need to reconsider the distribution of the profits gleaned from oil, coal and any resource created through natural processes. Profiting from the extraction is understandable, as is profiting from it's refinement, but obtaining it at little to no cost feels like theft. Perhaps, as is the law in Alaska, the oil companies should provide a basic universal income for the privilege of extracting our resources.
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Today's Regaining American Democracy (RAD) dictionary word or phrase is:
Insider Traitor noun
1. Any member of Congress that uses their station within the Government to make illicit millions.
See "Conflicts of interest"
