Tom: When I was a youngster, there was an energetic “price-war” going on amongst service stations in the city in which I lived. I recall prices dropping to as low as ten cents a gallon. My father told me how harmful this practice was, and I – in my defense of unrestrained economic behavior – asked him how it could be harmful to him to pay a lesser amount for gasoline than he had been accustomed to. I received the answer young kids generally get from parents who can’t explain their reasoning: “you’re too young to understand this.” I later put two-and-two together and figured out his rationale: a good friend of his owned a service station and, I imagine, told my father how harmful the gas-war was to his business.

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