ExxonMobil just reported its quarterly earnings and guess how much they made--$10 billion (yes, with a “B”). Why are they making so much money? Are they being more productive? Not really. They’re making more money thanks to the unethical (and should be illegal) behavior of OPEC. Now I’m sure many of your will think I’m an asshole for saying that, but it’s true. Saudi Arabia and OPEC are engaging in an activity that is illegal in most countries in the world; they are manipulating the market by using their dominance. Cartels are illegal almost everywhere in the world for a really good reason; they harm the consumer and produce above-fair profits for producers. Let me explain more. Let us say that the current price of a gallon of milk is $2. This is the price that is prevailing in the market as a result of healthy competition between many, many producers. Producers know they can’t charge more than that price for their product because they know you would go and buy your milk from their competition. Why is that possible? Because if I were a milk company and my competitor raised their prices, I most likely won’t because I know that my competitor’s customers would come to me now that my price is lower. The result? Competitors charge a low price for their product and consumers win. Now, let us say that all milk producers get together and decide to simultaneously raise the price to $3. Consumers would have no choice but to buy milk at the new price because there are no alternative sources of milk, all producers raised their price at the same time. In fact, they could probably get away with $5 milk because most people drink milk because they need it. Why don’t milk producers get together and do that? Because laws make such a behavior (forming cartels) illegal! The law protects consumers from greedy producers and ensures that consumers pay a free market price, a fair price. Islam also prohibits such behavior because the producers are taking advantage of their market power and make more and more money, more than a free market price would generate. That is exactly what OPEC is doing! Billions of consumers around the world are paying more money for essentials (oil affects the price of everything because of its effect on transportation—e.g. shipping—costs). True, speculation is affecting oil prices, but if OPEC didn’t exist, the price of oil would be much lower, even with the speculation because the supply of oil would be bigger. Unfair profits are flowing into the bank accounts of oil companies like ExxonMobil and countries such as Saudi Arabia. Just because we’re Saudi doesn’t mean we have to defend OPEC’s unfair, unethical, and haram behavior. It is unfair to every consumer in the world because we are using our market dominance to make more profits than we would if we couldn’t control the supply through OPEC. I think that international law should ban cartels just as the local laws of most countries do, and I think that what we are doing (as a country and as citizens supporting what our country is doing) is very shameful, especially since we’re Muslims.