A Monopoly Endangers Consumers

The following was an email message from Fuel Freedom Foundation:

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman said that “the great danger to the consumer is the monopoly.” True to his famous words, consumers are once again threatened by the oil monopoly and actions forced by its chokehold on our transportation.

One underreported factor contributing to unseasonably early, skyrocketing gas prices is oil companies abandoning their refinery operations to feed their drilling and exploration divisions. This development has alarming consequences for our economy and we have little power to respond to this issue as long as viable replacement fuels are barred from competing on an equal footing with oil.

Refinery closings lead to the immediate loss of direct and indirect jobs in the local economy.

Refinery closings in Hawaii and New Jersey are causing residents of those states to increasingly rely on imported gasoline and other refined petroleum products to meet demand.

Higher gasoline prices, as a result of tighter supplies, tax the already overburdened budgets of working Americans.

Since most food and consumer retail goods are transported throughout the country, higher gasoline prices increase inflationary pressure on the price of these items.

Friedman also said, "The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit." Surely, companies should be permitted to do what they can to succeed, but in a monopoly, the absence of free-market forces means that one side benefits all the time while the rest of the economy always loses. As long as the oil monopoly stays intact, the consumer and the economy at large will be put in danger by every action the oil industry takes.

Let’s bust this trust, once and for all, with replacement fuels. Ethanol, methanol, natural gas and electric vehicles will create a free market for transportation fuels and save us from the predatory pricings of big oil.

Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry

"A prominent academic and climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show.

"Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers..."

Read the rest: Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry.

This is not fuel competition. This is deception.

US taxpayers subsidising world's biggest fossil fuel companies

"The world’s biggest and most profitable fossil fuel companies are receiving huge and rising subsidies from US taxpayers...

"A Guardian investigation of three specific projects, run by Shell, ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum, has revealed that the subsidises were all granted by politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry."

Read the rest: US taxpayers subsidising world's biggest fossil fuel companies.

Oil company funds dozens of front groups and researchers trying to discredit links between fossil fuels and climate change – or denying climate change was occurring at all

"Members of the Rockefeller family tried to get ExxonMobil to acknowledge the dangers of climate change a decade ago – but failed in their efforts to reform the oil giant.

"In letters, lunch meetings, and shareholder resolutions, the descendants of John D Rockefeller, founder of the oil empire that eventually became Exxon, sought repeatedly to persuade the company to abandon climate denial and begin shifting their business towards clean energy.

"'The head of investor relations was really surprised to find we didn’t love Exxon as it was but thought changes might be a good idea,' said Neva Rockefeller Goodwin.

"Over the next few years, Goodwin and about a dozen other Rockefellers launched three separate shareholder resolutions pressing Exxon to recognise climate change and invest in renewable energy. The cousins also sought an independent chairman, believing it would make the company more responsive.

"At the time the oil company was the main funder of dozens of front groups and researchers rubbishing any link between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change – or denying climate change was occurring at all."

Read the whole article: Rockefeller family tried and failed to get ExxonMobil to accept climate change.

Needless to say, this is not fuel competition. This is not fuels competing with each other in a competitive marketplace. This is deceptive, monopolistic non-competition.

Argue On Paper

When you feel anxious or demoralized, get two pens of different color, say red and black. In red write a thought you have about the situation. For example, "I'll never feel safe again." Now in black, argue with that statement. Consider yourself personally affronted by the statement, as if your worst enemy had said it to you with a sneer. Once the statement is outside your head, it becomes more objective and less subjective, so it becomes easier to argue with than when it is inside your head, part of you, something you think.

Stare at your written statement (in this case, "I'll never feel safe again"). Try to find something wrong with it. What can you say to that statement? How could you argue with it? Why is it a stupid thing to think? What is mistaken about it?

You might write, "I don't really know that. I'm just guessing."

That's pretty good. And that's true, isn't it? Nobody knows if you'll ever feel safe again. Do you see how that is different than trying to look on the bright side or repeating to yourself (without conviction) "I am safe I am safe I am safe?" So that's your first doubt: Your thought might not be true. Good job.

But don't stop there. Come up with as many arguments as you can against each statement. You might write, "Maybe there are actions I could take that might help me feel safer. A feeling of safety isn't all-or-nothing anyway." And so on. Here is a complete list of 22 thought-mistakes to look for in your negative thoughts.

The method is simple: Write something you think about the situation (something negative you truly believe) and then argue it into the ground. This is a very effective way to change the way you think about something. It's kind of fun too, once you get going. And you can feel the negative emotion dissipate as you destroy the validity of the pessimistic assumptions that have been lurking in the back of your mind. You will feel better rather quickly.

Let me remind you that your arguments must be real. You're not just playing the "devil's advocate" here. Really look at the statement and find what is really wrong with it. This is not glossing things over with nice thoughts. Negative, pessimistic, self-defeating thoughts are almost always wrong. They are incorrect. They are exaggerations, overstatements, conclusions you have jumped to, rumors you have heard, or merely bad habits of thinking you picked up while growing up.

Your goal with this exercise is to look at your own written statements long enough to discover what's really wrong with them. As Carl Sagan said, "Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense."

The moment you recognize one of your negative thoughts is nonsense, it has an immediate impact on your feelings. If you think, "I'm helpless to do anything about it," and you really look at that assumption and find you have very little evidence to justify such a sweeping allegation and plenty of evidence against it, your anxiety lifts. As soon as you recognize you have been mistaken, your demoralization vanishes, literally within minutes. Your feelings are influenced by your thoughts, but only the thoughts you truly believe. That's why positive thinking sometimes doesn't work. But it's also why as soon as you find something wrong with a pessimistic thought, the moment you stop believing it, your feelings change.

Another way to apply this method is to write out everything you think about what's bothering you. And then go back and argue with each sentence one at a time. This is a good variation to use on a computer. Type out every negative thought you have about the situation. And then go back and separate out a sentence and rip it to shreds in a different font. Then take the next sentence and tear it to pieces. And so on. Print it out and carry it around in your pocket for a few weeks. Re-read it a couple of times a day.

In his book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Martin Seligman has a very good list of what to look for in your arguments when you're arguing against a negative thought. Read his list here.

A good list to memorize ahead of time is the 22 Virus Definitions. This is a complete list of thought-mistakes humans are prone to make.

Make the process of changing your thoughts easier by calming your body first. This is similar to the increased effectiveness of cognitive therapy when it is combined with antidepressants. With the body in a better state, thought habits are easier to change.

Your brain has a naturally-occuring negative bias and when combined with an imperfect brain that makes mistakes, it is a combination terrorists can exploit. Take actions to shore up this weakness, first in yourself and then in those around you.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.

Black Or White

David Burns is one of my favorite cognitive-therapy authors. He wrote, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy. I love his list of ten cognitive distortions. Very helpful. One of the cognitive distortions is All-or-Nothing Thinking. Burns argues that in the real world, there are very few absolutes. The world is not made up of black and white. It consists of innumerable shades of gray. "If you try to force your experiences into absolute categories," says Burns, "you will be constantly depressed because your perceptions will not conform to reality. You will set yourself up for discrediting yourself endlessly because whatever you do will never measure up to your exaggerated expectations."

All or nothing. Black or white. Really, it is a form of overgeneralization.

There are consequences to the accuracy of your thinking. Alistair Ostell, a researcher in England, tested school principles for how black or white their thinking was. Here's what he found: People who frequently thought in black and white terms had more emotional problems and more health problems.

People who thought in more shades of gray were less stressed by their jobs, enjoyed better health, and got more enjoyment from their work.

You can learn to catch yourself making this thought mistake (All or Nothing Thinking), and when you do, you will avoid some negative emotion you don't need.

I once did a speech in Toastmasters (a club that helps you learn to speak in public) on the day before Saint Patrick's Day. It was my tenth speech in their program, called the Inspirational Speech. I wrote and memorized a speech about the story of Saint Patrick, and then rehearsed it thirty-seven times start to finish flawlessly. I actually counted because I wanted to see how many times it would take before I knew the talk by heart.

A key element of my speech was the mystery: I didn't reveal who I was talking about (Saint Patrick) until near the end.

But the Toastmaster that day (the Master of Ceremonies), in her opening remarks, told the brief story of Saint Patrick — essentially summarizing my talk before I gave it. That really threw me off. When I got up to speak, I stumbled and then said, "The Toastmaster gave away my punch line." Then I felt embarrassed that I'd criticized her and then I was really distracted and couldn't think of the next line of my speech. It was a lousy speech and I'm sure it was rather uncomfortable for the audience to endure.

In the Toastmasters Clubs, after your speech, someone comes up to evaluate your speech. My evaluator tore me apart.

For someone who had been anxious about speaking, this hit me pretty hard. When I was feeling embarrassed and ashamed of myself and really down about the whole thing, I decided to check my thoughts for unrealistic thinking, and found I had two thoughts that qualified as irrational, and they were the main source of my bad feelings: "I'm not cut out for speaking," and "I'm not an inspirational speaker." Both of these are the mistake of all-or-nothing thinking.

After I uncovered those, I realized I had simply made a preparation mistake: I memorized my speech. Usually in speaking, memorizing the whole speech is a bad idea. I also realized that if I ever had an element of mystery in a speech again, I would check with the master of ceremonies to make sure nobody else was going to give away my punch line, or I would just do without the mystery element.

In other words, after realizing that my fretting and negative emotions were being generated by unreasonable thoughts (thoughts containing cognitive distortions), I stopped fretting and actually solved the problem. I decided what to do differently in the future that would prevent such an embarrassing incident from happening again.

I became much less bothered by my "failed" speech after uncovering the two all-or-nothing assumptions I had made. My thinking became more rational and more effective because I knew what to look for. And now you do too.

See a list of 22 thought mistakes to look for in your negative thoughts and learn how to use them.

Adam Khan is the author of Principles For Personal Growth, Slotralogy, Antivirus For Your Mind, and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English). Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.

What to Look For

In his book, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, Martin Seligman has a very good list of what to look for when you're arguing against your own negative thoughts. After you've written down your pessimistic thoughts, look at them through the following four filters:

1. Evidence: Look to see whether or not you really have enough evidence to justify your statement. You will often find your "evidence" is rather weak and wouldn't be enough to convince you if you heard someone else say it. Zipping through your mind without examining it, the thought may pass. But write it down and look at it and you may at once have the horrifying realization that your brain is cluttered with bullpucky.

2. Alternatives: Often several factors influence the outcome of any given event. You may have latched onto the most demoralizing factor and decided that's what caused it. Look for alternative and equally likely influencing factors.

3. Implications: Even if you have plenty of evidence for your thought and it's the only explanation you can think of, what you think your explanation implies may be mistaken or unnecessarily self-defeating. For example, "Violence is the human condition." You may have plenty of evidence, but the implication is nothing can change it and that's a leap of fortune-telling and fatalism that has no place in rational thinking. By omission, it also implies that love and kindness are not also the human condition. The person thinking that violence is the human condition has experienced far more acts of kindness than acts of violence in his own life.

4. Usefulness: Sometimes you don't really know if a statement is true or false. For some statements, the question of true or false doesn't apply (for example, an overblown generalization such as, "society is evil" can't be rationally argued one way or the other without being ridiculous). But if a negative thought is impairing your ability, it is counterproductive to keep thinking it, whether its truth or falsity can ever be determined. For example, lying in bed obsessing over the thought, "What if I'm an insomniac and never again get a good night's sleep," can keep you awake, so it is counterproductive to think it, whether it's true or false. Many pessimistic thoughts are like this one: They are self-fulfilling and therefore not useful thoughts. They aren't true or false. They make themselves true by thinking them.