"That's an illogical reaction. Gas stations won't charge you less for using the same amount of gas. "
My gas usage is roughly unchanged from week to week. The price of gas goes up - max was about $3.97/gallon.. The price of gas goes down- currently $2.17/gallon. So you are VERY wrong about energy price fluctuations. The amount of gas required to move me and my vehicle to work and back is very much the same. So it is not an illogical reaction. Demand for oil dropped, but not in proportion to the drop in price. The oil producing countries are mostly in OPEC which is a cartel that tries to control the supply of oil to meet their price goals. The price of energy has long been somewhat divorced from demand.
Cable used to be a la carte. The cable company created bundles because they could charge for things you're not going to use - you could only watch one channel at a time. HBO or SHO used to be 15/month alone. Then HBO got bundled with SHO for $25/month, so you saved $5 if you got the bundle. The cable company is paying based upon number of subscribers with a volume discount - so the more subscribers to a channel the better the rate is for the cable company. So they get a better deal on their end whether you use the SHO or not and you are paying more for HBO than you would if you got it alone - but it's a great deal, amiright? IT just got worse and worse as time went on. Basic cable was priced at about 20/month which was CBS, NBC,ABC, PBS, the local college station if you had one, and TBS when it got started. The premium channels were HBO, SHO, Cinnemax, and The movie Channel each priced at about $15/month. So cable was a pretty good deal. You could get a movie channel and basic cable for $35/month. Now, there are hundreds of channels and mostly they are not any better than the stuff that was on forty years ago and the cost is WAY higher - but not when you figure price per channel. LAst time I had cable TV the price was $120/month for 140 channels of TV which included all the premium channels. That works out to $0.85/channel per month. Basic+ HBO was $35/month and that works out to about $6/channel per month. So the cost per channel per month is much less, and the price is much higher due to the volume of channels provided. But as the man said: "100 channels and nothing on." Mostly we look at TV and see two or three things we want embedded in a large pile of stuff we don't want for a large price and don't buy the value of each channel. Sadly, the option to just by the channel we want is not an option the cable company is willing to provide anymore, I think, because of all the deals they made with all of the channels. So wanting to buy only the thing I want and not pay for things I am NEVER going to use, is not the moral equivalent of "use less electricity." It is a value based reaction to the product being offered. It is the same reaction that music lovers had to the one good song but you have to buy the whole album issue. Really, bundling is good only when all of the items in the bundle are desired or useful.