I think the distaste of price gauging comes from the exploitation aspect. In the $5,000 dollars or freeze to death scenario the generator seller is basically making a bundle off a life or death struggle to survive. Further distaste is added by the inequality of the situation. The rich will do fine and the poor will die. Nothing the poor can do short of theft.
Except that this is not true at all. To make what I can make where I am I am not going to drive into a disaster area but for a substantial premium I and others will go. I remember that is what happened in Florida after a big hurricane. Many constructions workers drove there because they could earn more than at home. Take away the incentive and that source of supply has disappeared.
Where is the dividing line between “normal” and “disaster”? It is never totally impossible to deliver a generator to any point on earth. It is only a question of cost.
So five customers come in (or one customer, his brother, his wife and his son) and they take away the generators. Are you also going to control at what prices they can rent them or sell them? Are you going to control at what price people who had generators can rent them or sell them? Because in that case someone who had a generator and might be willing to part with it for a premium would prefer to keep it, even if he doesn’t need it.
Your intentions might be good but the practical results are extremely bad.
Where are you getting this stuff? What’s the point of me trying to discuss something with you when you are apparently only listening to yourself?
The price IS the problem.
Are you even reading what I and Little Nemo are saying ? I said that if necessary the people who need those generators should KILL the profiteers. I didn’t say anything about charity; I’m talking about force. Whether it’s the force of the government or of individuals; if those profiteers aren’t willing to share, what they are withholding in a time of emergency should be taken. If they want to essentially declare war in the name of profit on the rest of society, too bad for them.
How you got “sterilized labels” and “insulate yourself from others deaths” out of “kill” I don’t know.
If you don’t want to include the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in the discussion, then you are correct – there is no meaningful discussion.
Only simple-minded analysis thinks that. The problem is not price. The real problem is scarcity and how to respond to that scarcity with a sensible policy that creates maximum benefit for the most # of people. If you want society to put on their thinking caps and solve scarcity, you need incentives.
You’re hyper-focused on “sharing” the last 5 generators. Instead you should be focusing on the ENTIRE COMMUNITY instead of just 5 people. You’re missing the forest for the trees – which is ironic since you claim repeatedly that you’re a humanitarian at heart.
I wasn’t responding to your wacky idea of killing the profiteers.
I’m saying that if you insist that the store is “killing” victims because of a high price, then you also have to insist that a politician is killing people with a misguided pricing policy. The politician has created a disincentive for the world to bring more generators to the damaged community. The politician is killing more people than the store!
Why does the politician get a free pass for murder but the hardware store does not?
[QUOTE=Der Trihs;11266221Are you even reading what I and Little Nemo are saying ? I said that if necessary the people who need those generators should KILL the profiteers. I didn’t say anything about charity; I’m talking about force. Whether it’s the force of the government or of individuals; if those profiteers aren’t willing to share, what they are withholding in a time of emergency should be taken. If they want to essentially declare war in the name of profit on the rest of society, too bad for them.
[/QUOTE]
Isn’t that basically a summary of every post you ever make? “I ‘need’ what you have so I should be able to just take it by force.” How are you any different from any other criminal looting an appliance store or grocery store?
Wow. And I suppose the same applies to private individuals who might have a generator and do not want to share it. Just kill them and take what you need. And only each individual is the judge of how much he needs something and if it is an emergency.
I now understand well why many people feel the need to be armed. With some people feeling entitled to kill in order to take my stuff I would certainly kill them first. You come into my store with a gun to steal my generator? I blow your brains off. Works nicely for me but I am not sure it is a good way for society to function.
Which means you crack down hard on price gougers.
What makes you think it’s “wacky” ?
Don’t be silly. The politician can simply use force. Using force to maintain order in an emergency is a standard government function.
Because the politician is at least not trying to kill innocent people ( profiteers don’t qualify as innocent ), assuming that anyone DOES die due to them.
Criminals aren’t normally IN that sort of situation. They turn to crime to out of choice get what they want, not by necessity to get what they need. And I expect most of the population is a “criminal” by your standards, since I doubt they would willingly just sit and starve rather than take what they need to live. For most people, survival trumps the Holy Free Market.
Welcome to the real world. THAT is why you need emergency price controls, or a government distribution program, or something else that keeps the situation from turning into a my-life-or-yours scenario. Many people, probably most when pushed to the wall will kill to survive. This idea that people are all going to quietly walk away to die because the Free Market is more important than human life is ridiculous.
- If $5000 is the going rate for a generator, then people will buy all they can for the artificially fixed price of $500.
There will then be a shortage of generators because the stores will run out, and there will be no incentive for producers (or distributors abroad) to restock any faster than they did before.
The people who bought them will then resell them for $5000 anyway. The price controls just made criminals out of them (and perhaps the buyers, as well) and will divert public resources to enforcing a silly law.
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If the going rate is not $5000, then the store can hang a “$5000” tag on the generators and nothing will happen. If they wish to conduct any business, they will need to drop the price until someone bites.
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The reason generators were on sale for $500 before the disaster was that was the market-clearing price at that time.
People weighed the price of $500 against the probability and discomfort of an electrical outage and decided it wasn’t worth it. If they didn’t purchase one for $500 at that (prior) time, it was a rational choice on their part.
During a power outage, of course, they want one for $500. But the world doesn’t work that way. Sort of like going without house insurance to save a few bucks, but deciding to call up the insurance company the moment you see one corner of your house start on fire.
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The producers and distributors also made rational choices about how to supply and price their generators, based on past consumer behavior. They acted accordingly, making the appropriate investments in plant, equipment, packaging and transportation that were justified by the sales price of $500 (and corresponding volume).
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They will certainly be incented to make expedited, and high-cost, changes to their business model in a short timeframe if the price shoots up to $5000. That would drive more generators to the distressed area as quickly as possible, along with their competitors, which will serve to (1) ease shortages and (2) drive the price back down.
Please tell me what concept above doesn’t make sense to you.
Please note the extremely high correlation between the posters you are debating, and the left/liberal big-government universal-health-insurance pro-union tend-to-support-socialism side of the aisle.
Supposedly they are the ‘Progressive’ (chuckle, snort), forward-thinking enlighted ones. Not like the Neanderthal tighty-righty types.
Do what is Right. Or else we’ll kill you. Nice.
Well, sure…that’s how you get communism to work. 
Or society can figure out how to arrange it’s self to use the resources available to ensure everyone’s survival during the emergency. The generators, for example, could be used to warm community areas for shelter till power is restored.
Your kidding right? Stores wouldn’t have any incentive to restock a fast selling item? They don’t like fast profits unless they’re gauging profits?
Besides if they’re getting a $4,500 extra what incentive do they have to meet demand? By limiting supply they can force the prices even higher.
I don’t know. If everyone’s freezing to death wouldn’t they want to, you know, use the generator to survive?
If they bought something that’s vitally needed with the sole goal of driving up the price to those who need it then they’re a raging exploitative asshole and should be jailed or open to lawsuit.
Now if they transported new items from a non-emergency area (the guy with the pick up earlier) I could see a premium for their service. Not a $4,500 premium though. That’s gauging and exploitative.
Ah good people can freeze to death till they meet the demands. Go free market.
Ahh so they deserve to freeze to death then. Tad brutal and primitive that.
If your house catches fire the fire department still comes out to help even if you’re broke. The government does intervene in an emergency to help. Which is a lot more then that hell hole libertarian country you want would do.
Right they’d make out like bandits with the ability to survive reduced to only those that could meet their demands. This is the distasteful part.
The part where you rationalize it away as “the poor deserve what they get. fuck em hard I have no empathy”.
Your argument seems to be “everyone’s a a greedy asshole. let em be greedy assholes”. Where as the optimal solution in an emergency would be to triage need till the emergency is over.
As opposed to the right wing motto of “Die For My Profits” ?
You are inventing a reason that there would be abundance of generators prior to the disaster ex post facto. You can’t do this. There are infinite varieties of disasters and “society” does not have infinite money to buy all possible items that might be in shortage.
Of course stores have incentive to restock the item but HOW WOULD THEY EVEN GET THE ITEM if distributors or other private individuals don’t have incentive to cover the extra costs of driving over impassable roads or flying a helicopter or floating a boat into flooded downtown New Orleans?
You cannot solve scarcity with a price cap. This seemingly simple concept is completely lost on you.
No, that’s more my argument. What I’m trying to get across is that the distasteful “greedy assholes” are solving the problem better than your brain-dead price-cap planning. It’s hard to admit that when the idea is counter-intuitive.
The concept that is odds with your “Do what i think is right or die” is not “the free market”, it’s ownership. If I on one generator or fifteen, they are mine to do with as I like. If I desire to make a profit, I have to sell them at a price they will be bought. If I get too greedy, I’m stuck with fifteen generators. Of course, profit is just one consideration. If I’m the owner of the local hardware store, I might not want to sell them at $5,000 even if I could, valuing the future relationships with my neighbors more than the increased profit. But then, how do I decide who to give them to? By what metric shall I make myself a deciding god? Shall I submit to the best “argument”, thereby giving them to the most needy, or the best sales people?
More important, as someone just upthread mentioned, “price” isn’t the problem, scarcity is. I’d argue that if YOU owned that hardware store, possibly the most moral thing you could do in order to save lives, would be to immediately raise your prices to $10,000, particularly if you only had a few generators and there was lots of need. The idea is that the community needs more generators, and fast. And the quickest way to get them there would be to increase the incentive for all those greedy guys with pickups from elsewhere to plunk down their cash buying as many as they can and driving up to your community as quickly as possible. The promise of such huge profits is a great motivator. Just think, you have harnessed peoples greed to save lives.
What would likely happen is that the first few generators (or truckloads) would sell for $10,000, but then as more trucks rolled into town and generators became available, the price would plummet back down to $500.
Also, the $10,000 generators are a way to frame the severity of the problem. And framing it so severely you also incentivize good Samaritans with means from across the state to come save the day by loading up their pickups and bringing generators they want to give away for free.
The bottom line is that higher price generators are the way to fix the scarcity problem. And that will save more of the lives you say you’re so concerned about. So, in order to save his fellow man and neighbors, Der Trihs Hardware must go Gordon Gecko.:eek:
Up to a point; killing people for profit goes well beyond that point.
Or, I get killed because I’m not surrounded by people who think the magic free market is worth dying for. And you assume that there are hordes of people who CAN get there.
And congratulations, at best - even if it works like you say - you’ve just impoverished a disaster struck region even more, for the profit of vermin. And it’s at least as likely that the profiteers will band together to keep the price high, if they can.
Except in the society you want, there won’t be any good Samaritans, only predators.
No one was “killed”. Lives were saved. They just happen to be lives of those with means.
If they can’t get there, raise the price. Make it worth it for guys to rent helicopters. The thing causing the deaths is scarcity. THAT"S the problem. You must end the scarcity.
And this is what it comes down to: you’d rather deprive money to vermin than save the lives of the throng. If these people are vermin, and you care so little about money, why do you place their outcome over solving the problem—scarcity—that will save the lives you seem to hold so dear?
I don’t think so. First everyone knows that it is a very temporary situation. The window is a small one, and no one wants to drive back with generators and return them once the scarcity problem is solved and/or the government has fixed the larger problem.
Oh, is THAT what I want. Whew! That’s helpful. Thanks.:rolleyes:
Let me spell it out for you in terms so simple even your one track mind will understand:
YOU DO NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO SOMEONE ELSE’S PROPERTY JUST BECAUSE YOU THINK YOU NEED IT.
“Take what they need to live” from whom? Who decides who gets what? Is it ok to pillage the local MegaMart (a Division of MegaGigantocorp Dynamix LLC) just because it is a large faceless corporation? What about the local grocer? How about your neighbor who just happened to stock away extra supplies?
And what happens when other people decide that they are in greater need than you?
If the incentives are there, “greedy” people WILL find a way to get there. If it can’t be a manned mission into the middle of a forest with a Rand Rover, then float hot air balloon down. If the winds are too turbulent, some enterprising individual will train an elephant to carry the generator into the area. Crazy creative ideas like this are spurred on by monetary incentives.
Let’s not invent human behavior that doesn’t exist. You’re saying a band of dis-organized and de-centralized independent truckers would band together and form an adhoc cartel to keep the price artificially high? I don’t think so. And what facility do they use as their secret Star Chamber to hammer this agreement out? The donut shop off the interstate highway?