Stockpiles and Speculators

Although most commentators concede that the free market does a decent job providing regular goods and services day in and day out, for some reason they believe that when it comes to unlikely but catastrophic events, government intervention is necessary. An excellent example of this misguided mindset is the recent argument over what to do with the federally administered Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We’ll see that government involvement only makes things worse, and that the free market — if only allowed to do its job — would solve the alleged problem.