A town in Kentucky has lowered its gas prices with the power of socialism

The current average gas price in the United States for regular unleaded fuel is, as of the time of this writing, $3.59 a gallon. One city in Kentucky, however, has brought the price of gas down to $3.36 by undercutting the privately-owned filling stations and selling gas to the public themselves.

The small town of Somerset, Kentucky has just opened what may be the first and only municipally-owned gas station in the United States. The station opened up in the town of about 12,000 people on Saturday, prompting long lines of customers who were eager to fill up on the cheap gas.

Critics of the gas station have decried it as “socialism”, but that’s necessarily true when you think about it, and the Somerset City Council claims that it was necessary. They claim that the private vendors in the area were gouging customers with unfairly high prices, sometimes as much as 20 to 30 cents higher than neighboring towns.

Mayor Eddie Girdler said that he doesn’t care “if they don’t sell a drop of gasoline” at the municipal station, he just wants to bring the local gas prices down. “We are one community that decided we’ve got backbone and we’re not going to allow the oil companies to dictate to us what we can and cannot do,” Girdler said. “We’re going to start out small. Where it goes from here we really don’t know.”

Naturally, this lead to a lot of backlash, with the area’s Republican state senator calling the decision “socialistic” and several critics filing court injunctions and letters to the IRS to try and stop the public gas station from happening. Local gas stations aren’t liking it one bit either.

Duane Adams, a convenience store owner in Somerset, sees the city’s station as a slap in the face that could hurt his business. “They’ve used the taxpayer money that I have paid them over these years to do this, to be against us,” he said. “I do not see how they can’t see that as socialism.”

But this brings up an interesting question: How much will customers even care? The majority of drivers don’t really care where their gas comes from as long as it’s cheap. And the convenience store industry is hardly one that will garner a ton of sympathy among ordinary folks. Their taxes are already going to subsidize the cheaper gas anyway. We’ll have to see if this idea catches on in other places.

Then again, it’s not really socialism since there are still other, privately-owned choices in town that drivers are free to use. The other stations will just have to lower their prices if they want to compete. Sounds like the free market, doesn’t it? Read more about the story here.