Let's begin here: U.S. Antitrust Agency Probing Plan to Shut Refinery
So the government, via antitrust laws, are now to decide when a company can open and close its facilities.
They already extensively control corporations in just about every respect - from deciding for a company what it's products should be, what can or cannot be delivered with those products, what prices can be charged, what agreements it can enter into with vendors or retailers, etc.
They define what constitutes a market for any product in order to decide whether there are antitrust violations. Did you know there was a specific market for "Super-Premium Ice Cream"? There never used to be, until one company started producing such a product, got a little competition from others and suddenly the government swoops in and successfully blocks the first company from buying one of its competitors. They found they could not block it based on the entire ice-cream market, nor on even on the sub-markets of regular or premium ice-cream - there was plenty of competition there. So they looked harder and discovered there was a super-premium product and only three or so companies offered it. Aha! Evil ice-cream monopoly must be stopped!
Even non-profit help organizations are not immune - one such organization to help alcoholics was busted under antitrust because they required their affiliates to sign an agreement not to enter into any other affiliates area. Oh, but there must be competition between the affilates in any given area, says the government! Competition for what? Catering to alcoholics that need help at no charge to them and for no profit?
Back to the case that triggered this post - the planned closing of a refinery in California. The claim being made by government is that closing it is simply an effort to further constrict supply in the state and there by force prices even higher. Never mind that it has been losing money due to costs of transporting crude inland to that location. Never mind that the reason California has the highest prices is because they require the refineries to meet specfications different from anywhere else.
The linked article above focuses (as do most reports) on the large profits oil companies are making in California, always forgotten is the large expenditures ($billions) the oil companies have had to make refitting refineries to meet ever more ridiculous state laws - expenditures that have to be covered out of future profits.
Yet we have the government threatening the possibility of blocking the closure - meaning they would force the oil company to continue operating at a loss. What they miss is that forcing an inefficient facility to stay open actually puts more pressure on prices to rise in order to cover that cost. Closing that facility means gas previously refined there will now be refined at more efficient locations. Its bad enough government thinks it can command the economy, but they show their ignorance at every turn in regard to economic principles, not to mention the whole concept of a free market.
