Why Gas Is So Expensive, and Software Is So Free

Most people have just gotten used to it. If you want to drive your car, you have to pay $1.98 per gallon of gas.

Oh wait, that was 2006…

But, you get the idea.

Reminds me of a British friend of mine who was a huge fan of European sedans, and picked up some rare Audi that had been imported from Germany. He walked me all around it pointing out the little details that made it a European model and how it was never made here in the US.

I was impressed, it was a cool ride, and when I noticed it had the engine upgrade and clearly tons of power, I asked him “So what kind of gas mileage do you get?” His answer was not too surprising for the time:

“I dunno, man, I just put the petrol in until the pump clicks off and go drive some more til it runs out.”

I wonder if that’s his attitude today with gas at $4 per gallon. My guess is, the luxury of $1.98 gas back then is no longer with today’s Gas Crisis.

Did You Ever Wonder Exactly WHY Gas is So Expensive?

Seriously, I know you have been told all this stuff about refineries, the hurricanes, the middle ease, the formulations of the gas, there are no more dead dinosaurs under the ground, Peak Oil, Peak SUV…

Peak Headache if you ask me…

Let’s look at another industry for a second. And just how FREE stuff can be, due to modern technology (and then let’s look at the gas prices and see if there’s a rat in there somewhere).

Take this blog I’m writing on. Nice software I can change all kinds of cool things on it. FREE.

The email I get all my updates on through Google’s Gmail. FREE.

The FTP software I used to upload all the files to my server (and it’s damn good software): FREE.

The statistics software I watch to see the traffic to my blog (I spent like $700 only a few years ago for other software that was horrible!) it’s called Google Analytics, it’s world class, and it’s: FREE

The web browser Mozilla Firefox: FREE

I’m looking in my program files, and about 80% of it was free software. Not stolen, not pirated, it was offered by someone at no cost. And like I said, this is not some crappy stuff either, it’s top quality, functional, and most even comes with support (that is, by the way FREE).

Software Gets Free, Gas Gets Expensive

Why is all this software free? There are many reasons, some of which are market driven (like giving away a simple software solution and then selling an upgrade), but I think another reason is this:

The general public has gotten much more able to produce their own software solutions. A great example is on this blog (see link about Accurate MPG Gauge with Free Software). I’m not just talking about the hackers who can write complex code. While there are a lot of them, your average person out there can’t… but…

Your average person has become extremely able to put together the bits and pieces on their computer to do various fun or practical tasks. A good example is simply using Windows to organize your digital pics. Sure we can all pretty much do this, but why not get a Free account with Flikr or something like that? They offer it for free because we can do the same thing on our own… Of course they get clever and sell us stuff in the process with advertising, but you still get the function of organizing your pics for Free.

So Why is Gas So NOT Free?

Sure we’ve heard all the reasons gas is expensive… shortage of oil, hurricane, refineries… blah blah. In reality there is little competition in the gas market. A handful of oil companies run the show from drilling to the gas pump. That thing about “free markets” and “competition” really isn’t so real when it comes to gas prices.

Take a look at hard drive technology (to keep that analogy going), today you can buy a 300 Gigabyte drive for about $100. That’s 5,000 hours of music, 72 DVD Quality movies, or 96,000 digital pictures. Why? the market wanted it, and companies found ways to make it cheaper… they compete, and we get gazillions of bytes of memory for $100.

What about gas? If I want to make cheaper gas, can I go start a company and find better ways of refining it? Better ways of drilling? Alternatives to the monopoly that exists with the drilling fields? Of course not. This market is closed to the little (or medium, or large for that matter) company and is only open to a few giants that regulate it down to the pump.

If you want another example of a monopoly just do a little research into the diamond trade. You’ll see that basically one entity controls the whole thing, and that diamonds are actually much less rare than the price they command. There’s also a bunch of political stuff that will probably turn your stomach, but let’s try to solve one thing at a time… and right now it’s how you will pay for the fuel to get you back and forth from work!

The Solution is Forcing the Free Market From Your Kitchen Table

There are people spending all kinds of energy and time working the political angle to get the government to do something about the problem. I salute them completely. The thing is change is not rolling around fast enough, if at all. I don’t want to get into the political side of things, but the facts are that gas is $4 per gallon, and there are no solid strategies to get that cost down for the average American.

In true American tradition, though, guess who has the answer? Yep, it’s you.

While you can’t go start an oil company, refinery, and open your own gas station to compete with the big guys, you can simply make fuel from something that is readily available to everyone… WATER. Water is made up of Hydrogen and Oxygen, and if you can split it up into a gas, it burns quite well.

In fact, the Hydrogen/Oxygen mixture that comes out of breaking up the water actually has over 3 times more energy than the same amount of gasoline. Seriously. Take a look here: Water4Gas

Unfortunately you can’t just pour water in your gas tank and thumb your nose at Exxon… but you can build a very simple conversion for just about any vehicle, to burn part gas and part water. In doing so, you can increase your MPG by 50%-200% (and if you tweak it right, many vehicles will do even better).

So, if you can dramatically increase your MPG (using basically Free water), you are effectively decreasing your gas cost by the same amount (increasing MPG by 50% would mean you cut the price at the pump by the same amount).

How does $2.60 per gallon sound to you? With a little more effort you might even get to $1.60 a gallon, all the while the pump says $4.

Try not to make fun of the hybrids please, they mean well.

Here’s your challenge:

• Go to the link: Water4Gas

• Read it. All of it. I know it’s long, and the site is a little color crazy, but the guys there are really doing something real (over 10,000 people have joined the forces of burning water in their vehicles and saving ridiculous amounts of money on gas).

• If you have any questions, come back here and post them and we’ll answer them (I have a Build Team here and we are putting together all kinds of cool info to get YOUR conversion up and going in just a few days.)

Here’s that link again: Water4Gas

I’ll talk to you soon,

P.S. I can’t blame you for being a skeptic. A couple of things to consider though: this is NOT free energy, we are just making our existing engine run a LOT more efficiently. No breaking the laws of physics here, just breaking the monopoly on fuel prices! You can confirm this with just a little bit of money, some time, and trust me, it’s a lot of fun. AND, we’re here to help you every step of the way. Check it out:Water4Gas