Blog #7

For me, reading Economix was a good crash course to something I did not think I was really interested in. As someone studying something completely unrelated, I hadn't taken an Economics course since high school. One thing I always enjoyed from that class was talking about markets and competition. Particularly in the section where they talk about price wars, I am reminded of two gas stations back home that are constantly at odds with each other. I live at the edge of a rural area, between a Reservation and a small city. The two have historically not gotten along very well. On the outskirts of the Reservation there is a tribal-owned gas station. Across the street, where the boundary lies, the other gas station sits. Typically the one in the bounds of the city sets the gas prices for the area. However, the other gas station has taken a liking to lowering their prices by 2-3 cents in order to attract more business to their side. This causes the other gas station to lower their price, too, and a price war ensues. This has been going on for as long as I can remember, and I remember asking my dad about it every time we would drive past. He had his own opinions on the matter, but last summer things got crazy for the Fourth of July. What started out as one of their price wars ended in all of the gas stations in the general vicinity lowering their prices way beyond the lowest anywhere else in the county. Gas prices lowered to around $2.00 for all of the gas stations in the area and people began to flock from all over the county just to fill up with gas. My dad, not wanting to miss the fun, took all the gas cans he had and a trailer, setting out to fill up. While economics in general has never really interested me (though it definitely should!), this particular facet of it has always fascinated me. While my dad made pretty decent sense of it all growing up, Economix was a good refresher to this information, but gives me a much deeper, more satisfactory answer to some of the questions I remember asking.