So most people in USA#1 believe in a free market supply/demand , but even the most staunch libertarian will side eye you if , say hotels raise their prices when an emergency shifts the demand in their favor . Florida's attorney general is asking her constituents to take picture proof of any merchant raising prices and report them. http://www.myfloridalegal.com/Contac...uging!OpenForm

So I'm a little conflicted on this , i believe a business should not do surge pricing for necessities , but i also believe in the supply/demand curve . Where do you stand on this? what should be the law regarding this ?

if a private business does not want to sell its cases of water at a premium, could it be allowwed not to sell them at all ? (say keep it for their family and friends) ?

Should hotels also not be allowed to price accordingly like they always do with supply/demand?

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/09/0...-south-florida

That chick is 51?!?!

i know,, she is a repub , but she looks great for 51.. well, at least in her glossed up pictures.

If there's a bottled water shortage in Florida after Irma goes through one sure way to alleviate it is to sell it for $100/ 16oz bottle. I predict lots of bottled water shipped to Fla. if that happens.

There are zero libertarians on the planet who are for price gouging laws. This is as clear cut of an issue as you get. There isn't even much debate among liberals who understand economics. For example http://www.slate.com/articles/busine...ers_worse.html

Letting market prices adjust is more critical than ever during a natural disaster. It gives the businesses and their employees an incentive to stay open. They face the same challenges as everyone else and have risks staying open. It gives people outside the affected area an incentive to bring products like water and generators to market. And it discourages overconsumption.

This is an issue where reasonable people can't disagree. There is no case for price gouging laws.

I have never been more physically aroused by a politician. Wow. And not even for her nice looks. That women is powerful and has so much integrity. **** that's sexy.

Either you're joking or you really need to google her.

lol I'm Canadian, I didn't know much about her. Reading it now.

If you don't raise prices and demand drastically increases, there will be shortages and the goods will deplete rapidly. If you raise prices, then people who really need the product will be willing to pay. E.g, if you already have 20 cases of water, you're probably not willing to spend 40 bucks for another case. However, if you have no water, you would be much more willing to spend the 40 bucks, in this instance price "gouging" is allowing the market to function more efficiently by allowing goods to flow into the hands of people who need them most.

It's also a nice way of punishing people who don't prepare for disasters in advance. To quote defunct 2p2 poster Henry17 "being stupid should hurt".

However, defending "price gouging" is obviously political suicide. The masses aren't versed in basic economics, their thought process is "durrr the things I need are more expensive, expensive bad".

Pretty much this. Price gouging after a hurricane or some other natural disaster actually serves two very useful social functions.

1.) If you ABSOLUTELY NEED something, price gouging makes it much more likely that there will be some available for you.

2.) By temporarily raising prices to reflect the true state of demand, it provides a strong price incentive for more supply to come to market.

I guess my position is I'm in favor of "compassionate price gouging" (lol) - basically, price gouging is OK as long as the price gougers can recognize when somebody really needs something and doesn't have the money, and will make an exception for them.

For example, if somebody is selling ice for a huge markup and an old person needs it to keep medication that is supposed to be kept in the refrigerator from going bad, or something like that.

This is the theory. I would argue that in practice, the pricing mechanism in unusual circumstances does little to increase supply, so the rich end up with the goods rather than the early or the needy. Which is what pisses people off.

The poor are already, on average, stupid.

I don't think the dislike of price gouging is that simple. It's more a case of not liking to see others profit off misery or stupidity or misfortune too much.

My only experience with price gouging was in 2014 when I identified that Walmart imported 1500 units of Shopkins Season 1 Mega Pack and was the only retailer that imported them thru websites like portexaminer. With my experience buying/selling/tracking other Shopkins Season 1 products, I felt pretty confident it would be a hit. I found walmart's placeholder page before it came in stock on their website. Every day I checked the page to see if it was in stock. When it did, I bought 600 of them from walmart.com at $12-$13 and my average selling price on amazon was $78 before fees during November/December. Easy 30k profit. My experience with price gouging was a positive one.

I am fairly certain if I would have sold my units at a more "fair" price gouge, like $30-$40ish, that other resellers would have bought up my supply and the average selling price to the consumer on amazon may have been even higher.

I can understand people being upset when someone balls water for a crazy price.i don't get why people get so angry when it's done with non nessesities like toys.

In college I missed a test bc I got a summons for ticket scalping Yankees playoff tickets.when I told my professor why I missed the test she told me "that's price gouging" as though it was a bad thing.when I asked how that's any different from a bar or club charging more on Friday nights I was told "it just is"

Basically most people are just entitled to things they don't even need and get mad when they can't have it at the price they want.

I think where people draw the line even libertarians is when a necessity during a disaster like water or gasoline or airfare becomes so expensive from price gouging that those who need it cannot afford it and die or suffer damages because of it. You guys are saying economics works such that the person with the most demand Is willing to pay the most but that only applies when all consumers have the same resources. What ends up happening when a limited necessary resources price goes up is only the rich buy it.

Hypothetically in auction theory in an overly simplified example when you have a situation where two peoples houses are on fire next to each other and you have two fire extinguishers to sell and one person has 10,000 funds and the other person has 30,000 funds the optimal price is 30,000. I think you can see why letting someone's house burn for a profit is immoral even if optimal.

It is actually more critical that things like gasoline, water and airfare are allowed to adjust. Every libertarian across the spectrum supports price gouging. In fact anyone who believes in economics supports price gouging.

For example
Bleeding heart libertarian https://fee.org/articles/hurricanes-...-economic-law/

Generic libertarian http://reason.com/archives/2017/08/3...crises-like-hu

Conspiracy theory libertarian https://www.thenewamerican.com/revie...-price-gouging

Anarchist libertarian https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/09/...price-gouging/

Ron Paul https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/11/...price-gouging/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffrey.../#614c40ac64d3

It's easy to be libertarian when you have money, healthcare and a home

I believe companies should be able to price gouge, but I also believe in shaming those companies in the court of public opinion and would support boycotts of their products.

Goodwill is important, airlines that made their flights out of Florida cheap should be commended for it, and people should look to fly with them if prices are similar in the future over competitors.

You picked a pretty bad example to illustrate the point, and specifically to this issue the flaw in reasoning here is that the person with 30k to their name wouldn't be willing to pay nearly as much for the second extinguisher as the first and the optimal price point (if the vendor had to choose just one) would probably be 10k allowing each to buy 1.

Cases of water diminish in value greatly too. If a case was $100, you're not going to find many people so rich that they'd spend thousands on bottles of water because they don't value the nth case nearly as much as they do the 1st through 5th. But if they're $5 a case, it's just a matter of time before someone scoops them all up.

If you wanted to institute some kind of cap on per customer sales that would be way better than putting a cap on price albeit impossible to enforce.

It's easy to have money, healthcare and a home when you take responsibility for your lot in life, and work hard. Ask any East Asian immigrant who arrived with nothing.

You missed the entire point of the scenerio and the obviously implied stipulations. If you raise the price of water to 100$/case people who are too poor to afford the price who need it will suffer. Just like the guy whose house burned was gouged out of a service he desperately needed. The difference in our opinions is that you assume people will be able to spend x amount if they really needed that water and I disagree. The problem is a large portion of the country lives paycheck to paycheck and does not have the credit necessary to survive gouging. Your focus is on protecting supply when it should be on protecting people.

FYP

Majority of crippling debt in this country is related to student loans and health care debt. I don't think either of those are because of lack of responsibility. You can rationalize anything by looking at a specific example and generalizing it to a population.

Price gouging is relative and not discrete. Extreme examples of price gouging are the equivalent of unnatural monopolies which libertarians do sometimes disagree with and all economists disagree with. Charging 5$/gallon for gas and 100$/gallon for gas create two different scenarios. Normal increases in pricing such as the first example is just creating a new equilibrium with supply and demand which is healthy for the economy. Second example is creating a non equilibrium situation where suppliers abuse the inelasticity of demand in the certain situation and exploit an unnatural monopoly. This is very bad for the economy.

A lot of people will have partially filled tanks where they are able to drive away. Higher prices help discourage them from filling up if they know they can drive to a place where it is cheaper. This isn't Soviet Russia. Gas is not a monopoly.

And what libertarian is worried about monopolies? Name one. Monopolies don't happen in a competitive market. And this qualifies as a competitive market. Monopolies only happen when government creates a special privilege.