Some countries are capping gas prices. Here's why the U.S. is unlikely to

The oil market is a global market, which means it’s not just Americans seeing higher prices at the pump. Governments abroad are taking different measures to help control costs for consumers. Some, including France and South Korea, have issued temporary price caps on gasoline. It’s something we’re very unlikely to see happen here in the U.S.

Most countries are feeling the pain of high oil prices, but Europe and Asia rely most on shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

“About 75% of all the crude from the Persian Gulf goes to Asia. So they’re really, really hurting,” said Adi Imsirovic, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic International Studies.

Governments have encouraged people to drive less and work from home. Some have gone further, implementing price controls. But those come with problems.

“When you subsidize prices people just think things are normal and they go ahead as if it was normal,” Imsirovic said.

Creating a happy little bubble where everything’s fine is great for politicians and consumers, at first. But it doesn’t solve the supply issue.

“You just kind of exacerbate a problem by not letting consumers see that this commodity is in fact very very scarce right now and very expensive,” said Catherine Wolfram, a professor of energy economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

High prices are supposed to be a signal. And without it, people keep driving as if no oil shortage exists.

“The U.S. is a big enough consumer that if we were to cap prices it would encourage consumption enough that it would drive the oil prices up even more. It would kind of worsen the problem,” Wolfram said.

That would lead to longer term pain. There are also pretty immediate economic consequences — temporary price caps usually promote panic buying, hoarding and theft.

“Everybody who was alive at the time remembers the gas lines of the 1970s,” said Severin Borenstein, faculty director of the University of California, Berkeley, Energy Institute at Haas.

At one point during the 1979 oil crisis, the U.S. even implemented a rationing rule, where drivers could only purchase gas on alternating days based on whether the last digit of their license plate was odd or even. It created a lot of friction.

“When you have those gas lines people start having to plan their days around getting fuel,” Borenstein said.

People can’t get to work, businesses can’t deliver goods, and in the end it causes more economic damage, Borenstein said, than having to pay for expensive gas.