And hate it I do!

I pass, easily, 8 gas station on my route to work. Today, only one of them was priced under $3/gallon. I'm not one to run around, reflexively screaming "Price gouging!"

Call it the curse of the MBA; those of us fortunate to have such an education know enough economics to draw the distinctions between hard economic reality and scapegoating. Still makes situations like this no more palatable. The Arizona Republic today makes the same point:

It is another matter entirely to see gas-pump prices leap 30 to 50 cents per gallon overnight, almost before the remnants of Katrina had blown out over the East Coast.

Consumers are outraged, of course. Who wouldn't be? Most of the gasoline in underground tanks at the corner gas station was there well before Katrina shut down a single Gulf Coast refinery. Thus, the shocking price spikes that began greeting us on Wednesday and Thursday are de facto evidence of gouging. Are they not?

Well, no. They aren't. At least they aren't evidence of gouging on the part of station operators, who know full well that their next tab for a tanker full of regular is going to shock them out of their socks. That is, assuming the almost certain depletion of gasoline supplies nationally doesn't leave them off the delivery list.

Infuriating as it may be, the rapidly rising cost of gasoline may be explainable as "gouging" - that is, reckless demonstrations of appalling greed - in only a very few circumstances. In 2003, state Attorney General Terry Goddard investigated more than 600 complaints of gouging following the summer pipeline break that threw Phoenix into a gas-buying panic. Fewer than 10 of those complaints would have violated anti-gouging legislation in states that enforce such laws, which is a good argument in itself for avoiding such well-intentioned but largely futile laws in Arizona.

As Jerry Taylor of the CATO Institute points out, there are two ways to ration an increasingly scarce commodity like automotive fuel:

• You can regulate price artificially, thus assuring its scarcity.

• You can allow the price to find its balance between supply and demand, thus helping assure a relatively uninterrupted supply.

At $3-plus per gallon, that is an infuriating choice to have to make. But it beats the unanticipated consequences of regulation.

Color me infuriated.