ExxonMobil’s announcement of quarterly earnings totaling $10.7B — and annual earnings of $36.1B — has this week provoked a predictable resurgence of the anti-”Big Oil” rhetoric that last spiked in early November of last year.

On November 10, executives from the major oil companies in the United States were questioned by US senators regarding the nature of their unusually high profits for the third quarter. Discussion hasn’t much dwindled on the topic since then, and I’ve consequently seen, read, and heard a good many people of all walks of life echoing the complaints of Congress that the profits in question are unfair, unpatriotic, and greedy — in short, that the consumer is being gouged by the oil companies.

Most likely, you’ll hear people level the accusation that ExxonMobil, and companies like them, are engaging in “price-gouging.” Don’t expect most of the people who say it to actually have a clear definition for what it means, because most of them won’t. It will probably come close to something like “a company charging prices that are way higher than they should be, to take advantage of people who don’t have any other option.” Let’s consider that.

What should prices be? If you were to ask one of the irate accusers this in the context of, say, a gallon of gas, they might say, “Oh, $1.40 or so,” or some other price that they remember paying at one point or another and not minding too much — a “fair” price. (Be assured they’d suddenly remember just how fair $1.05 is as soon as you get it to $1.40.) Now, ask them when they last paid that price, and ask them how much inflation has gone up since then. Ask how the price of a barrel of oil has changed since then. Ask them how much of Exxon’s machinery was destroyed or damaged in the hurricanes of 2005, impinging their ability to cheaply refine oil. Ask them what the ideal ratio is between the prices for a barrel of oil and a gallon of gas. Throw in a question about the extent to which state taxes raise the price of gas. Finally, ask them the percentage increase in demand in the world, particularly China, since then. It’s my bet that they won’t have answers for these questions. But how can someone possibly tell us what the “fair” price of gas is, without knowing any of the details of supply, demand, taxes, or infrastructure? In such ignorance, they may be recommending a “fair” price that would actually cause the company to lose money on every transaction.

The other dimension of the term “price-gouging” is the notion that the consumer has no choice but to buy, at whatever arbitrary price the company decides to charge. I heard a man call into a talk radio show who lamented that between his and his wife’s driving to work, they were going broke — they were stuck. Well, there are, of course, a number of choices there; let’s enumerate just a few options.

1) Leave earlier and carpool, leaving one car parked.
2) Buy a more fuel-efficient car.
3) Use public transportation, even if only part of the way.
4) Get a different job.
5) Move closer to your job.
6) Carpool with others, like co-workers.
7) Get a motorcycle.
8) Do less discretionary driving, particularly on weekends.
9) Yes, this really includes driving the kids to soccer practice.
10) Cut back temporarily on the other luxuries in life.

Nowhere is there a guarantee in life that you will be able to maintain precisely the same lifestyle at all times. As is implied from the options above, there need not be an easy solution confined to the transportation category itself. If you have to eat mac & cheese 2 days a week to save money for gas, do it.

Unstated here is that he and his wife, knowing full well their distance from work when they moved or accepted the most recent job, decided it was worth it. If they didn’t even figure gas prices were a variable with some amount of risk in their acceptance, they’re unspeakably naive. We all accept risks in life, tacitly or explicitly, and depending on a variety of factors, we reap reward or trouble. Their gamble presumably paid off for a while; now it’s not. The world has changed — time to change your game plan along with it.

Therefore, the issue isn’t that you truly don’t have an option in whether you buy gas or not. The problem lies within the often-unstated “or else” that hangs silently at the end of the statement “But I HAVE to buy gas…” Usually, that “or else” amounts to nothing more than: “or else I can’t eat out as often”; “or else we’ll spend another hour a day carpooling”; or “or else I can’t keep the Suburban.”

When the “or else” is that you or your family won’t be able to survive, then you can talk. And in the extremely rare case that turns out to be true, I’d bet the gas money it’s your fault rather than Exxon’s.