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Thursday, June 22, 2000

      He’s a photogenic and well-educated but conspicuously unaccomplished guy who seems to think he’s entitled to high office simply because of his name. No, I’m not talking about George W. Bush or Al Gore. I’m talking about Prince William, who has gotten a torrent of publicity for reaching his 18th birthday, an achievement within the ability of most people on Earth.

      Well, that’s not the whole reason he’s getting all this attention. There’s also the fact that he’s a member of the British royal family, son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana and, if things go as planned, the future King William V. Thanks to these attributes, plus his money and good looks, he is now suddenly regarded as “the world’s most eligible bachelor,” “a global superstar,” and a suitable subject for intensive press coverage.

      But why? The most you can say about William is that in 30 or 40 or 50 years, if he’s lucky, he will inherit the throne of a pathetically irrelevant monarchy in a small island nation. In the meantime, he will wait for his grandmother and then his father to live out their allotted days and vacate the job, whose prerogatives and duties have nothing to do with actually governing the country.

      The British crown, once the terror of the world, is a fake monarchy that would cause Henry VIII to chop off his own head in despair at how far his office has fallen. William could hardly have less actual power if his family were named Smith instead of Windsor. He has to do nothing to become king, which is perfect preparation for a job in which he will do nothing.

      So what difference does it make that he’s now 18? Why, it means he may be addressed as “Your Royal Highness.” In other respects, Britons may be surprised to find that life will go on just as before. In fact, apart from living lavishly at public cost for his entire life, young William stands to have not the tiniest tangible impact on his subjects. Why should anyone in Britain care about him — much less anyone outside Britain?

      Americans ought to make it a point not to care. In a couple of weeks, we will celebrate the 224th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Independence from what? From the British crown, that’s what. We fought a war for the inestimable privilege of not giving a rat’s bottom what is going on in the House of Windsor or any other British royal family, and I have good news: We won.

      As a direct result, the future king of England has no more to do with us than the future king of Norway or the future grand duke of Luxembourg. Did you ever see the heir apparent to the grand duchy of Luxembourg on the cover of Newsweek?

      But somehow the British royals are famous in spite of their insignificance. About the only work available to them is providing material for the tabloids, which they do through various sorts of scandalous and dysfunctional behavior. We are reliably informed that William has been known to take a drink and smoke the occasional cigarette, though he is believed to avoid drugs.

      Given that limited information, it’s too early to tell if William will match his relatives’ record of promiscuity, mental defects and plain silliness. Luckily for Americans, we don’t have to worry, since we can always count on an endless parade of professional athletes, movie stars and Kennedys to supply news appealing to our baser instincts.

      Two mysteries arise here. The first is why the British people continue to tolerate a monarchy that serves no useful purpose. It’s like carrying a mortgage on a mansion that you are not allowed to live in or rent out, only admire from a distance.

      The other question is why members of the royal family participate in the charade. Being a princess obviously didn’t contribute to the happiness or well-being of William’s mother, and his father has squandered his life waiting for a job that no self-respecting person would want. The first Queen Elizabeth was a figure of great historical consequence. The second is the moral equivalent of a wax dummy.

      William is being hailed as someone who could redeem the royal family in the eyes of the public. But the most valuable thing he could do is to renounce the whole absurd business and set about living something resembling a normal life.

      A recent poll found that three out of four young people in Britain would rather live in a republic than a monarchy. William would be doing himself and everyone else a favor to say, “You know what? So would I.”

In search of a gasoline conspiracy

       Sunday, July 9, 2000

      Cheap gasoline has often been a hardy perennial of life in America, but it’s not actually a constitutional right. This has come as a shock to motorists and elected officials, both of whom were laboring under the impression that fuel prices, like avalanches, can only travel downward.

      The scenes of outrage have been spectacular to behold. Al Gore reviled the petroleum industry for profits that “have gone up 500 percent” because of “Big Oil price-gouging,” and called for a federal antitrust investigation of oil companies. The Federal Trade Commission, meanwhile, has already launched one. Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin demanded oil executives be dragged like common criminals before Congress to explain their behavior.

      Somewhere, I’m sure, a mob is heating tar and gathering feathers.

      Prices of other vital commodities — strawberries, steel, houses, Microsoft shares — are known to fluctuate dramatically without anyone suspecting a vast conspiracy to rob the public. But the specter of Big Oil as a sinister, all-powerful force dies hard. People who are old enough not to worry about monsters under the bed somehow entertain the outlandish superstition that oil companies can enrich themselves at will.

      The evidence critics offer lately is that prices have soared in recent weeks, and at one point went as high as $2.13 a gallon, on average, for unleaded regular in the Chicago area. Not only that, but as soon as the FTC got interested in looking for violations of the law, the prices dropped. The possibility that the interaction of supply and demand might account for these events is too simple for sophisticated politicians to accept. Something bad has happened, and a villain must be found.

      But Big Oil is an implausible candidate. If the oil companies have the ability to boost prices and harvest obscene profits whenever they choose, why have they waited so long to do it? If oil prices had merely kept pace with inflation over the last two decades, they’d be nearly double what they currently are. For most of the last 20 years, oil companies have managed only mediocre profits.

      Since 1977, the American Petroleum Institute sorrowfully notes, their earnings have averaged a 9.7 percent return, compared to 11.5 for U.S. industry as a whole. In recent years, while profits elsewhere have been rising, profits in petroleum have dropped. From 1994 through 1998, they were just half of the national average.

      Gore’s alleged 500 percent increase sounds scandalous until you consider that he’s making a comparison with the first part of 1999 — when crude oil prices were at the lowest level, adjusted for inflation, since the Great Depression. Unfortunately for consumers, you can’t expect an after-Christmas sale to go on all year, every year. Oil-producing countries cut back their production in response to low returns, and prices rose from $10 to $34 a barrel. Only a dunce would be surprised that pump prices have also gone up.

      Conspiracy theorists wonder why prices climbed to such heights in the Midwest, and they have no patience for tricky explanations involving new federal environmental rules, or state and local taxes, or pipeline breaks. But we might just as well ask why prices didn’t go so high elsewhere. If the oil companies are so adept and ruthless at gouging consumers, why is the rest of the country getting off easy?

      And while we’re at it, what is “price-gouging” except charging the rate the market dictates? During periods when demand exceeds supply, the only way to restore the balance is higher prices. If service stations kept prices at last year’s levels, they would quickly exhaust their stocks, leaving motorists with no gasoline at any price. We tried that approach back in the ’70s, and it didn’t make most of us happy or prosperous.

      If the free-market method of allocation means big bucks for producers at the moment, that’s only fair. After all, Congress doesn’t rush federal relief to oil companies

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