Gas Loadshedding

To the lucky souls that are yet unaware of the monster known as load shedding, it is a beast which the gas management company has decided to unleash upon the Pakistanis every weekend. This monster cuts off all gas supplies in the gas stations!! With such draconian a regulation in place, almost all activity comes to a standstill in the weekends because the cars do not have fuel. I have (un)fortunately experienced first hand the consequences of the regulation and can tell you that they are not pretty. But I am not going to grumble about this because I have something else to talk about. The actual imposition of this regulation is not as strong as it might be expected. (Still, most of the gas stations adhere to the rules set) but occasionally, during the load shedding time, one of the gas stations ignores the rules and continues to operate even in the prohibited period. Today, as I watched my car slow down as it used up the last traces of the gas and frantically prayed to God that I find some gas station which has decided to evade the regulation (I didn't!), it occured to me that this situation is very similar to collusion. The various cartels that form between the firms in the industry also follow the basic assumption: the other firms would also act according to the cartel rules and not take unfair advantage by cheating. Similarly, in the Load shedding model :) , the stations agree to forgo their potential earnings because a) it is a law and b) they can console themselves that they are not the only ones suffering but just as in cartels, a firm might cheat and earn even more profits, a gas station might risk ignoring the ban and open up. It would not only attract infinitely many customers (which does happen) and can act as a monopoly and charge as much as it wants (and consumers pay the price it wants; gas has inelastic demand) . Although, this practice is extremely unethical but what can we do: in economics, everyone is a profit maximiser :)