Originally Posted by
Philldpapill
HHO_BLASTER, my dad worked for Shell Oil for over 25 years. He's an engineer. He's a good man. You need to remember that oil companies are made up of many, many, many, good, hard working people that have a moral compass, just like most companies. When you say "Big Oil probably bought out the patents", it sure sounds like you are implying there is a massive conspiracy at work with the goal of supressing the little guy, and keeping the little guy down, just for the sake of keeping the little guy down. That's victim mentality. It's stupid.
The idea that they are doing this for profit, on the other hand, isn't AS stupid, but it's still pretty dumb. Assuming they have the patent on this ground breaking technology, it would be MORE profitable to capitalize on it, move towards being the sole provider of the technology, and gain "green PR points" in the process. It's a totally win-win situation for "Big Oil" to create a monopoly on the technology. However, in your world, they drop billions in capital to "buy out" this technology, just to throw it in the trash can so that they can stay in the less profitable oil business... Right.
Remember, it takes ---HUGE--- amounts of money to get that oil out of the ground. It's not a cheap business. You have HUGE amounts of skilled labor to pay, and project planning to do. I know this forum is devoted to the advancement of HHO useage, but I'm sick and tired of people bad mouthing the oil companies for providing a CHEAP(yes, I said cheap when you look at profit vs. costs ratio in the business) product to you. If you want to blame someone for your high fuel prices, blame OPEC and the jacka$$ speculators trying to make a buck off of oil futures.
As for your whole insurance industry garbage... It's lunacy. Insurance industry profit margins are < 10%. Think about what that means(verify it, too!)... That means that even if you took insurance companies profits COMPLETELY out of your medical costs, that's still 90% of $5,000 cost for a broken leg... But I guess you'd be ok with paying the $4,500 for a broken leg... That's not where the huge costs are, BUT like most people that soak up the politicians scapegoat non-sense, you don't realize that the HUGE majority of costs are in the other form of insurance.... i.e. medical malpractice insurance. I was talking to my doctor a few months back and in the chitchat, he mentioned that over 50% of his operating costs go to his liability insurance. Everytime you go the to doctor, you're giving half your money to some jacka$$ trial lawyer by proxy of the insurance claims when someone sues for an owwwey on their toe following "medical negligance". You're right - we need reform, but NOT the kind of useless, political point scoring, crap that Obama and his media keep pushing. We need tort reform ASAP.
Anyway, sorry to hijack that thread for a bit, RustyLugNut.