> It's the same thing as saying we shouldn't buy Saudi oil. If the only result is that you buy some other oil and the people who would have bought that oil buy the Saudi oil, nothing meaningful has changed.
I'm not sure this is true for oil. For example, long standing sanctions against Iran prevented them from selling a lot of their oil and crippled their economy quite a lot (decreasing their income).
The same could be done with Saudi Arabia if there were will to do it (there isn't, western politicians are too intertwined with Saudi money, especially so in US & UK, to a lesser extent in other western countries but without US/UK approval, no action against Saudis will happen).
Oil would come from other countries, they could increase their output while Saudis are under sanctions. I think it's not as fungible as money (and even with money I don't it's 100% fungible as bank accounts can be frozen, again see Iran).
> I'm not sure this is true for oil. For example, long standing sanctions against Iran prevented them from selling a lot of their oil and crippled their economy quite a lot (decreasing their income).
You're referring to international sanctions (i.e. acting with market power), not something anyone can do at the individual level. Not even the US could do it on their own -- if the US put sanctions on Iran by itself, Iran would just sell to Europe or Asia and not care. The only way it works is if nearly everyone agrees not to buy from them.
But the reason countries don't like sanctions on oil exporting countries isn't that they're ineffective, it's that they raise oil prices.
> Oil would come from other countries, they could increase their output while Saudis are under sanctions.
Yes it would, that's normal for a commodity market. When you remove a supplier, the price increases, which attracts new suppliers who may have higher production costs.
But the relevant part of that dynamic is that the price increases. The problem isn't that oil becomes unavailable, it's that your consumers have to pay more for it and the money goes to other countries you don't really want to enrich.
And if you have an international coalition willing to suffer higher oil prices then the much better alternative is a carbon tax, because then you get the money from the higher prices instead of Russia and OPEC, and can use it for things like subsidizing renewable energy or electric cars to mitigate the cost to your consumers and reduce the length of time you have to pay it.
> But the relevant part of that dynamic is that the price increases. The problem isn't that oil becomes unavailable, it's that your consumers have to pay more for it and the money goes to other countries you don't really want to enrich.
Perhaps. But I remember there being very high oil prices (way over $100 per barrel) not that long ago. And there were actually less sanctions on oil countries during the time of such high oil prices.
So I'd question whether the market price discovery works for oil prices very well. It could as well be manipulated by OPEC cartel. I have read articles about Saudis lowering oil price by increasing output because they wanted to put pressure on US shale oil companies to put them out of business.
Oil price has been slowly creeping up again so perhaps the cartel has decided to increase the price.
I'm not sure this is true for oil. For example, long standing sanctions against Iran prevented them from selling a lot of their oil and crippled their economy quite a lot (decreasing their income).
The same could be done with Saudi Arabia if there were will to do it (there isn't, western politicians are too intertwined with Saudi money, especially so in US & UK, to a lesser extent in other western countries but without US/UK approval, no action against Saudis will happen).
Oil would come from other countries, they could increase their output while Saudis are under sanctions. I think it's not as fungible as money (and even with money I don't it's 100% fungible as bank accounts can be frozen, again see Iran).