system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How come gasoline isn’t more expensive? Why don’t oil companies jack the price way up?

People aren’t going to stop driving their vehicles if gas prices are higher, and it’s in the oil company’s best interest to make stacks on stacks on stacks of cash. So why isn’t gasoline more costly? They could pretty much charge what they wanted and people would pay; there’s always a demand.
gpt
OPEC did this in the 70s. All the middle eastern oil producers created a cartel, promising to artificially keep prices high. And it worked. For awhile. But the problem with cartels is that there is always a huge incentive to cheat. If just one of the oil producers starts selling oil for a little less than the rest of the cartel, they can make bank because everyone wants oil at their lower price. As soon as one producer cheats, the rest have to follow and then boom you’ve got market competition again.