OIL RING
When is a price loo high? When is a profit excessive? A suitable measuring rod has yet to be invented; in the mean- while a sensible answer is given in the report of the Economic Commission for Europe on Middle East oil. The point it stresses is not just that oil prices are too high (which is a matter of opinion), but that there are no safeguards to prevent them from being too high (which is a matter of fact). 'An essential feature,' the report says, 'of the present price is that it reflects a situation in which, effectively, only the interests of the producers are represented.' This could not arise if the producers competed against each other; but in fact they form a closely integrated, dovetailed, international monopoly. Such monopolies, it is as well to remember, were punishable with great severity until the appearance of laissez-faire, when it was assumed that the hidden hand of competition would make the old laws against 'forestalling' and 'regrating' no longer necessary. But if the hidden hand is cut off, what alternative is there to a revival of these traditional sanctions? It may be unlikely that monopolists will again swing from the gallows tree (though that would certainly have been their fate in the old days). But it is only too likely that their business will be taken away from them and put in charge of some new bureau- cratic monster. If it is, they will have only their own tactless- ness to blame.
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