This is Why We Have No Hand Sanitizer

[Senegoid]

I mentioned this last night (March 14) in the Breaking News thread. You read it there first!

@Senegoid

Certain entrepreneurial individuals are hitting up all the retails stores within their driving distance, buying up their entire stocks of sanitizers, masks, and all sorts of other supplies that are in high demand, which they are then re-selling on-line at Amazon, eBay, and other such venues for mega-markups. To read some of their interviews, they seem to not have a hint of a clue of a concept that this might be frowned upon.

More recently, the on-line platforms have been cracking down, suspending or banning these accounts, leaving these resellers with literally tens of thousands of units to sell and no venue to sell them. Meanwhile, the rest of us can’t get any of this stuff because the shelves are bare.

This is flat out illegal in at least some states, and some district attorneys are starting to take notice.

Story at New York Times: He Has 17,700 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer and Nowhere to Sell Them, Jack Nicas, NYT, March 14, 2020.

Same story on Yahoo.

Google search turns up umpteen related articles.

@Senegoid

A second thought on price gouging by those on-line entrepreneurs: If they are selling stuff across state lines (which they are), do the states have any authority to regulate it?

Is this something that only Congress can crack down on, under the Commerce Clause?