measurablefuncSlovenia becomes first EU country to introduce fuel rationing
So... why is fuel 25% cheaper in Slovenia than in the neighbouring country while Solvenia is simultaneously having issues with running out of fuel?
Seems like the obvious solution is to raise prices so people stop driving to your country (wasting fuel, ironically) to take your cheap fuel instead of just paying for the fuel in their own country. More than that it's a solution the free market would actually find on its own...
There was an election recently and it’s possible there will soon be another… That’s why the fuel is so cheap.
It's not a free market. Off-highway prices are regulated and were adjusted by the executive govt branch on biweekly basis, now switched to weekly. Slovenia is small and "gas tourism" is common since fossil juices in neighboring countries are priced higher.
Why not raise the prices? Sure, but then don't complain about the inflation, revolt, and stoning of elected representatives.
Price increases tend to be regressive—the poor person who needs a little fuel to get to their job is hurt more than the large business that uses a lot more fuel but has much, much more money overall.
There are things you can do to try and even things out. Etherium has been considering “quadratic voting” to solve a similar problem (in this case, that would look like tracking consumption and increasing the unit price of fuel as you consume more fuel, so that cost goes up quadratically with consumption). That seems hard to enforce, though, and doesn’t help with foreign opportunists.