Price gouging is like porn, you know it when you see it.

You drive them in and park them a day or two before, yes.

It's apparently you that doesn't understand hurricanes. I've been through several tropical cyclones including being in Cairns during Yasi, a category 5, although it tracked south at the last minute. The cuck storm that hit Florida was 3 except the keys

As to your points:

1) LOL at a parked let alone laden fuel tanker blowing over in the wind

2) Yes, and what are the odds of a tornado hitting a particular parked truck? Less than 1 in 10,000? Here (and everywhere) is yet another example of where distant intellectualizing fails - tornados are totally irrelevant to the EV of this situation, but large in your mind. The free market would weed out people like you from running businesses.

3) What? Then what is the issue with gouging?

I really don't. You haven't thought this through at all.

so liberals riot to protest a hardworking American from trying to make a living?
and you find this ok?

So the reason there were shortages was because Walmart and other merchants had no desire to meet increased demand at their current profit margin?

????????? this is how liberal's have made billions and will continue to do so.
You think otherwise because you get force fed lies.

Billions are made by the likes of Hillary, Soros, Obama, Schumer by talking out one side of their face while investing in just what they speak out against.


You are trying to justify stealing and rioting while condemning HARDWORKING people from making a buck.

Yes. It's expensive to reroute supplies, do extra storage, etc, when your margins are razor thin and there's a 50+% chance it'll all blow over.

The point, sir, is that not allowing price gouging leads to far greater suffering. But you have a stick so far up your moral vanity that you don't even realize that such is in fact the point. That makes you a bad person, not a good person. It's people like you who hurt the poor and the suffering.

We don't differ at all in morality - we both want the best for the poor and the suffering - but where you become a bad person is when you resort to moral preening and thinking you're on the side of righteousness and that people who propose other systems besides your dumb-as-rocks caveman view of economics, are bad people who don't share your morality. It's incredibly stupid and immoral of you, but if that's the person you want to be, hey, free world.

Front page of the NYT business page today: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/11/b...e=sectionfront

Wouldn't be tough at all. It is the equivalent to saying the Earth is round.

Here is an economics professor having no trouble on CNN. http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2017/09...good-thing.cnn

Yes, better than Wyoming.

years of brainwashing from the so called media breeds this mentality.

This is true and at the same time not. Parents often cosign for their kids student loans or bear a lot of the burden and society has indoctorined a stigma with college that is unrealistic which expecting a 18 year old to overcome is also somewhat unrealistic.

I think the real problem that people don't understand is that charging 50% more for goods is usually not price gouging even though people like to complain about it and cry they are being cheated but is actually the market reaching a stable equilibrium. Charging 100$/case of water that's usually 6$/case is gouging and is not good for the economy especially when the supplier doesn't unload all of his supply because he's simply maximizing profits (makes 1000 selling 10 cases at 100$ vs 500 selling 25 cases at 20$).

I was unaware of the water monopoly.

When people can only walk to their closest store and are rationing gasoline so can't drive anywhere that by definition creates a monopoly for that store

Anybody ever return to the gas station/mini-mart that price gouged you?

Stomp all over the Golden Rule at every opportunity to make a couple of dollars once in a while, that's the way to treat each other.

But this is exactly what people are doing. Why is this so hard to understand? When the early buyers buy up excess water because the price is very cheap, they're stomping all over the golden rule for the late buyers, who have no water left to buy. This is why increasing prices is so good.

That you apply the golden rule so narrowly is ****ing weird, man. The early buyers who stock up too much are much more evil than the shop that puts up prices. Yet you're laser focused on money. It's human nature to think in such clownishly narrow terms, but we should be above that.
That is how the world works. The free market bringing together of the greedy for money with those greedy for goods. It works amazingly well. In fact it is the only economic system that does work.

There are at least five things that contribute to needed supplies not being available at a reasonable price or at any price:

1. Early buyers overbuying. This is huge, and a price increase dampens this behavior, helping late buyers
2. People being wasteful. This is huge as well, and a price increase dampens this behavior, helping others
3. Suppliers not rerouting goods before the event because of increased costs for abnormal behavior. Again, a price increase solves this
4. Suppliers not rerouting good because of uncertainty (say, only a 30% chance a hurricane will hit badly). Again, a price increase solves this. A free floating price allows risky bets to pay off. It allows the market to properly price risk and prepare for risk.
5. Avoidance of alternatives. When I was in cyclone Yasi, I bought disinfectant and chlorine tablets, not bottled water. I washed down the bathtub and filled it up with tap water, enough for two weeks of drinking and quick washing water should the worst happen. Others might instead choose to buy storage containers rather than water if the price of water goes up. In terms of fuel, people choose to leave their cars and use public transport. Or carpool. In terms of accommodation, people who can will choose to leave earlier rather than stay in a hotel. And so on. Price signals encourage those that can to find alternatives, to prepare earlier, leaving needed supplies for the actually needy.

It's just a slam dunk all around that increasing prices are a good thing in rationing scarce resources and having then left when people need them.

Lets not forget the other GOLDEN RULE
" no good deed goes unpunished"

As someone pointed out Walmart is very very good at forcasting supply needs and loads up on things like generators ahead of these.

How do they get re-paid
people buy them at a non inflated price
then either return them afterwards both used and unused costing WALMART millions.
Does anyone point out the SCUMBAG behavior of these so called victims?

Yeah. Everyone hates the rich and businesses but it's the poor that are scum. It's like harping on about billionaires wasting money, when half of all food gets thrown away because of cosmetic blemishes - by the poor. Hunger could be solved 10x over if you taught the poor to be less selfish.

I'd hand out free supplies before I'd profit excessively off of a natural disaster.

And you certainly have the right to do so.
Others also have the right to profit.
Are all those homes getting rebuilt with free labor ?
how do you or anyone define excessive?

I call Nancy Pelosi have a 767 jet all to herself at taxpayer expense
excessive. She angrily Defends it; stating "I deserve it"
Liberals in Hollywood agree and defend her.

Really? Did you drive down to Katrina hit areas with generators like this guy? No? Why not? Lack of a profit motive?

How many people altruistically drove down with generators?

Define "excessively".

More than I normally charge.

ETA: If Wal-Mart - those masters of efficiency - repeatedly lose money as some poster above mentioned on these sort of events, why do they do it?

Because the money they'd make off a localized event would not be nearly enough to justify the (undeserved) hit to their reputation nationally.

We can all imagine a scenario where people can exploit the weaknesses to such a degree that it would lead to this kind of revolt.

Like some guy crawls up to your gas station on a rural desert road on the brink of collapsing from heat exhaustion with no one else for miles, and you know he has no choice but to buy from you, so you insist he signs over the deed to his house in exchange for the water.

Supply and demand!!!

But there're aspects of this scenario that distinguish it from what's happening around the hurricane. Even a little bit of competition or alternatives or flexibility in supply changes the dynamic significantly.

That's right (leaving aside the 'undeserved' part). But they also don't have to stock up and increase their loss either. So why do they do it?

I'll tell you why: They want to keep their loyal customers. Nothing could be worse for them than to make their customers feel like they are getting raped.