Would surge pricing help alleviate hoarding, like with TP?

Great Debates
1

Let’s pretend that we could devise a way to adjust prices in real-time (like Lyft and Uber) for some essential commodities. When people start a run on TP the price starts to increase until (hopefully) it stabilizes. It won’t prevent all hoarding but it will likely reduce it and make it harder for profiteers to attempt to make money.

Some people will look askance at stores making more money during times that could lead to hoarding so maybe a percentage of all proceeds over the base price could go to the state (like a 50% tax) for something like inner city scholarships at state schools.

I don’t have a problem with stores limiting purchases but that doesn’t do much to prevent profiteers like this guy.

From a practicality it would be difficult to implement so it’s mostly just a thought experiment.

2

How about instead of saying “screw poor people, they don’t need essentials” we just limit the number of items sold to each individual like a sane society?

If you can’t buy 20 family packs of toilet paper, you aren’t going to be hoarding them unless you buy them slowly over time, which gives everyone a fair shot at getting supplies instead of just the rich or just the timely.

3

Think of how this would impact low income people in the event of a food shortage.

4

Eventually, everywhere everyone, will finally figure out there will always be those who have or can and those who don’t and won’t.

So much time and effort is spent on the latter.

You can’t do anything about the won’t or can. You can change slightly the have or have nots but not if it’s based upon can or won’t.

5

Why do you repeatedly use “can” and “won’t” as opposites instead of “can” and “can’t”?

6

It also means poor people won’t be able to purchase the commodity, which, for certain essential items, could become a very, very big problem.

Surge pricing means the rich can get what they want because they can afford it, but the poor, then the middle class, are left behind and left without.

7

As discussed before in the other thread about price-gouging, it all comes down to “wallet pain” (don’t know if there is a formal economic name for this.) People who are wealthy can afford to splurge without feeling any wallet pain at all - you could quadruple toilet-paper prices to “deter hoarding” but a millionaire would still feel no pinch in paying for a thousand rolls of toilet paper, whereas a poor family could suddenly find it very financially painful to buy even a week’s worth of it.

8

or in other words: If they would die let them do it quickly and reduce the surplus population.

9

There was a bar years ago (maybe called The Echange?) that had constantly adjusted draft beer prices. Popular choices would creep up in price, less popular choices would drop in price.

10

As a deeper dive into the thought experiment, what is the goal of this surge pricing effort?

You say it is to prevent hoarding and profiteering, but hoarding and profiteering are not inherently bad things. Hoarding is just some folks buying more of something than they currently need. Profiteering is the backbone of a free market system.

If it isn’t hoarding and profiteering in concept that is bad… what IS the bad thing we are trying to avoid? I would say it is the hardships these activities create when they are engaged in during an emergency.

Does surge pricing eliminate the hardships? It would likely reduce the hardship caused by unavailability of toilet paper. It would also create hardship among the poor as their already limited resources are spread thinner with surged prices on staple goods. Would overall hardship be reduced? Perhaps, but it would also serve to shift the burden from the financially secure to the poor.

Other methods of preventing hoarding and profiteering can also reduce the burden of TP scarcity, without shifting the burden to the poor, or creating additional burdens to other groups.

11

Because you can change can’t, you can’t change won’t. You can help those who can’t.

12

Teach a man to fish and he can eat daily.
Give a man a fish and he expects one tomorrow.

13

Build a man a fire and he will be warm for the rest of the day.
Set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

14

Tell him to go fish and slam the door in his face, and you can feel smugly superior to him til the end of his days.

Actually, it amazing how, like “pick yourself up by your bootstraps”, this proverb has been twisted by conservatives to convey basically the opposite of the original meaning.

The whole point of it is that we need to take a more active roll in assisting the needy, to provide them the tools they need to achieve equality. Instead it has been turned into an excuse to do even less.

15

I don’t really believe that we should do and/or offer nothing to the needy.

What I do believe is that we focus so much time and effort into making sure that the people who just flat out won’t do anything to help themselves get treated the same way as the people who really do want to put forth effort into helping themselves.

This is wrong, and maybe, yes maybe, the won’ts need to get left behind.

16

I think the only way to cut down on hoarding is what they did in WWII, to shame people into it. I love how old time radio shows would write public service announcements into their scripts.

(Gracie and George go to meet their neighbors and share their extra coffee)

George) [knock on door] Hi, we’re the Burns’s do you have coffee?

Neighbor) Coffee? You know there’s a shortage, the nerve you have begging door to door for coffee

George) I wasn’t asking…

Neighbor) Don’t give me that, I had you pegged as a moocher the second I laid eyes on you. And you ought to be ashamed using your daughter to help you hoard coffee

George) She’s not my daughter, she’s my wife. Tell 'em Gracie

Gracie) What’d you say Pop?

17

Maybe they could have quantity-based surge pricing. The first 1-2 is normal price and each one after that goes up by X%. That way the hoarders would be paying a lot for buying a bunch, but normal purchasers would pay normal prices for normal quantities. They would need to incorporate some kind of ID check or something to discourage people from just making trip after trip to get around the quantity-based surge pricing.