This morning I got five nearly identical emails in my inbox:

I hear we are going to hit close to $3.00 a gallon by the summer.
Want gasoline prices to come down? We need to take some intelligent, united
action. Phillip Hollsworth, offered a good idea.

This makes MUCH MORE SENSE than the “don’t buy gas on a certain day”
campaign that was going around last April or May! The oil companies
just laughed at that because they knew we wouldn’t continue to “hurt” ourselves by refusing to buy gas. It was more of an inconvenience to us than it was
a problem for them.

However, whoever the person was that thought of this idea, has come up with a plan that may really work. Please read it and join us!

By now you’re probably thinking gasoline priced at about $1.50 is
super cheap. It is currently $1.72 for regular unleaded in some cities. Now that the oil companies and the OPEC nations have conditioned us to think that the cost of a gallon of gas is CHEAP at $1.50- $1.75, we need to take aggressive action to teach them that BUYERS control the marketplace….not the sellers. With the price of gasoline going up more each day, the only way we are going to see the price of gas come down is if we hit someone in the pocketbook by not purchasing their gas!

And, we can do this WITHOUT hurting ourselves. How? Since we all rely on our cars, we can’t just stop buying gas. But we CAN have an impact on gas prices if we all act together to force a price war.

Here’s the idea:

For the rest of this year, DON’T purchase ANY gasoline from the two
biggest companies (which now are one), EXXON and MOBIL. If they are not selling any gas, they will be inclined to reduce their prices. If they reduce their prices, the other companies will have to follow suit.

But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of Exxon and Mobil gas buyers. It’s really simple to do! Now, don’t wimp out on me at this point…

Keep reading and I’ll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!!!

I am sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300) … and if those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000)…and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten
friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes
one level further, you guessed it….. THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!!

Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. That’s all. How long would all that take? If each of us sends this email out to ten more people within one day of receipt, all 300 MILLION people could
>conceivably be contacted within the next 8 days!!! I’ll bet you didn’t
>think you and I had that much potential, did you! Acting together we can make a difference. If this makes sense to you, please pass this message on.
PLEASE HOLD OUT UNTIL THEY LOWER THEIR PRICES TO THE $1.30 RANGE AND KEEP THEM DOWN. THIS CAN REALLY WORK

A comment from a friend in a reply-all made much more sense to me:

I would go further and say to avoid all major gas companies and stick with the smaller ones (are there any?).
Better yet, let’s all demand from the government(s) that they support research and development of alternative fuel technologies, and, that existing patent holders of such technologies be made to develop their products within a time limit or give up patent rights. Oh, yeah, and let’s all who don’t have to haul stuff get rid of our trucks and SUVs. –uh, I don’t know; now I’m sounding radical–

Doesn’t sound to radical to me.