ANOTHER ill-concieved gas boycott?

[herufeanor]

So I was listening to the radio on the way to work this morning, and my favorite morning show (Lamont and Tineli on 107.7 The Bone) was getting all pissed off at the gas prices again. They do this on a pretty regular basis, and honestly, in a pretty ignorant way. They've got the usual "it sucks for us, so obviously somebody is actively screwing us

Comments

[maniakes]

I see three logical fallacies at work in the boycott. As you point out, there's the Politician's Fallacy (Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.)

There's also the Who Moved My Cheese Fallacy (if I've become accustomed to something being easily available, and it ceases to be available (or becomes much more expensive), it must have been stolen by some malicious actor), which is a special case of the Devil Fallacy (all undesirable outcomes are the result of malice).

And lastly, there's the Titanic Deck Furniture Fallacy, which is the belief that you can fix a system by rearranging the pieces in ways that cancel out when you're looking at the whole system as a black box (rearranging demand between gas companies to lower prices is just as likely to succeed as rearranging the deck chairs is to lower the water level in a sinking ship).

I think you touched on all of these, but I like labelling them with catchy names.

[herufeanor]

May I ask where, exactly, the "Who Moved My Cheese" fallacy came from? That's been a saying in little_ribbit's family, which I've become rather fond of. I general, we use it to refer to any situation in which somebody dislikes something new for no other reason than that it's different, without any actual consideration for the pros and cons of that thing. (Usually with variants like "He's just annoyed because somebody moved his cheese.")

[maniakes]

It's from a popular (amongst corporate types) business strategy book. The book's main argument is built on an allegorical story about some people living in a maze and eating cheese that they find in a particular part of the maze until one day they go to get breakfast and the cheese isn't there anymore. They react in anger, demanding to know "Who moved my cheese?", not realizing that the reason the cheese is gone is that there was a finite supply and they've eaten it all. The moral is to always keep looking for new cheese supplies (or at least be prepared to find new cheese if necessary) because you can't be certain your current cheese supply will last forever in its current form.

[herufeanor]

Interesting. We've been mis-using it then.

[chevyanna]

When I tell folks how to reduce gas prices they look at me as I am out to rape the environment. Gotta love the sound bites...

[unibear]

this makes sence to me, I hope someone heard you. I don;t pretend to know how to fix the problem but what they are talking about will not work.

[herufeanor]

I actually mentioned that. :-)

(4th paragraph, 3rd sentence. I'm not pedantic. Really. I swear.)