Funny that it is the "rational free thinkers" that completely misunderstand economics and expose their misunderstanding so blatantly and completely. The only thing that price gouging GUARANTEES is that it will reduce or eliminate consumer surplus per unit sold, in this case the consumer being disaster victims.

The price gouging lovers believe that the increase in units distributed will make up for this loss in per unit consumer surplus but this belief is based on nothing more than feeling and emotion. It also belies an irrational hatred of government as the government is in an strong position to prepare for emergencies and spread the cost across society.

The best thing about this post is that global adoption of capitalism has raised more people out of poverty over the last 50 years than at any previous point in human history.

This isn't a good time to be claiming that the poor aren't poor by choice. There are jobs literally everywhere right now. Jobs that pay 2x the poverty line are available to anyone with a pulse.

It's in good times like these that we see how much of a lie a lot of the stuff people say about the poor is. The reason they are poor is that they are broken. We need to figure out how to unbreak them rather than give them money. You know how they say you shouldn't enable an addict? Same situation except done at vast scale.

Now UBI has the advantage of providing a small (like 15k tops) bump to every adult that is not sufficient to mean they don't need to work, but IS sufficient that they can survive on a part time job... Which thanks to automation may end up being the new norm for those whose skills aren't in heavy demand.

Market forces exist whether you want them to or not. People here seem to think we can opt in or out from them. These people are economic denialists akin to science denialists.

Miraculously, market forces left free to act unfettered are the absolute most efficient at allocating private goods. These same market forces don't fix income inequality and inequality of outcomes, which seem to be what most people in this thread have a problem with but aren't able to articulate. Income inequality is a social issue that can be ameliorated by a government applying sensible methods of income redistribution. The solution to income inequality isn't to prohibit price discovery and efficient resource allocation in a hurricane.

When you interfere with fundamental economic forces to get your desired social result, there is a guarantee you'll create inefficiency; the question just becomes if this inefficiency is justified by the social benefits. In a hurricane it's not. We don't fix income inequality. We get dire shortages because of indignant economic denialists shouting down reason.

Here's your reality party: free markets allocate private goods more efficiently than any other mechanism and it's not even close. Governments are able to do what the free market cannot, namely provide public goods, reduce negative externalities, provide various forms of social insurance, and reduce income inequality. During a hurricane people need certain private goods. The free market provides these at a price that is fair for suppliers and consumers given the circumstances. Prohibiting people from transacting business at the situationally-fair price in a natural disaster hurts both suppliers and consumers, and the only rationale that has been put forth by anyone in this thread is an emotional one. The government can do its part by providing aid to needy residents, not by spending valuable resources prohibiting private business from doing the same just because it's at a higher price than it was before the hurricane.

There is only a "guarantee of inefficiency" if you are concerned with producer surplus in times of disaster and emergency. When you focus solely on consumer surplus, aka the well-being of the victims, there is absolutely no way you can make such a case. Your claim that it hurts suppliers is granted but your claim that it hurts consumers is completely unfounded and requires many assumptions that are based on nothing more than your feelings and emotions.

You don't understand basic economics.

Look at a supply and demand curve sometime.

I did, clear that you just read the first page of your Econ 101 book and never got to the parts about demand and supply inelasticity.

These free thinking third-rate economists all forget that all those little charts come with a list of assumptions. You would think that as free-thinkers they would question whether those assumptions hold in extreme situations.

Your poorly reasoned posts had nothing to say on elasticity, which in and of itself is not a justification for government intervention. Are you a troll?

Free thinker here can't surmise on his own that natural disasters distort elasticity, needs his hand held. I did not force you to make your rant that made the idiot assumption that elasticity does not exist.

I would bet the overwhelming majority (between 80% to 100%) of Nobel Prize Winners in economics would be against price gouging laws.

Here is "third-rate" Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker writing an extensive blog post on this topic.

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/20...ng-becker.html

-no rational arguments put forth
-unsubstantiated generalizations
-personal attacks

Get lost, troll.

For anyone else sincerely interested in the topic, here is the effect of price caps:



Priced fairly, markets provide producers with the red and orange portions of excess value, and consumers with the green and yellow portions. Under a price cap, producer value plummets to include just the tiny red triangle under the demand line. The yellow and orange triangles are lost completely. Consumers lose the yellow triangle of value but gain the producers' red square above 20... we can't say if the red square is greater or less than the yellow triangle, so we can't say if consumers as a whole are better off (producers are much worse off). But what we do know for certain is that many fewer consumers will be able to purchase the goods. The aggregate value obtained by consumers under a price control is confined to a small portion of consumers while the rest go without. Does that sound "fair" to you? It isn't... in fact it's extremely unequal.

So if we only consider consumers, we know that consumers gain a slice of value, and lose a slice, and maybe the amount gained is more, and maybe it's less, but with 100% certainty the total consumer value gained is now gained by a small minority of total consumers, not evenly distributed between them all. And we know for certain that producers are much, much worse off.

On a side note, I'm not sure why it's okay that producers are much worse off. Producers are also consumers. Small-business owners, contractors, tradespeople etc. are not some wealthy elite. The economy works because everyone can gain from it. It's not the free market's job to provide charity and we shouldn't expect it to. Let it do what it does best and let the government and private aid organizations do what they do best.

You just posted two "normal" curves. Do you want me to redraw your curves when they are relatively inelastic or can you do that by yourself?

And either way, the point about producers being the ones worse off and your concession that consumers can indeed be better off under anti-price gouging laws matter because you and others lied and dismissed our concerns about hurricane victims aka "consumers" by saying consumers and producers are always worse off under anti-price gouging laws based on your alleged economic expertise. That is patently untrue.

In case you forgot it, here is what you said:

You said "your claim that it hurts consumers is completely unfounded", troll. There's my reply. It does hurt consumers who can't get their goods. It might threaten their lives. Empty shelves don't occur in a normal-functioning market. The only people who gain from price controls are the few who are lucky enough to clear the shelves at everyone else's expense.

People are clearing the shelves because goods have more value in a hurricane, troll. A hurricane moves the demand curve out substantially. The supply curve moves up too. A new equilibrium price has to be found for the market to clear efficiently. The same market-clearing price discovery mechanism that works to provide maximum value in normal conditions works in a hurricane as well. You can't understand or are purposely too obtuse to comprehend that when the demand curve gets pushed out, people value goods more. A bottle of water IS worth more in a hurricane than before. So is a generator. Capping the price just causes the early-bird consumers to hoard all that value to themselves. The fact that the hurricane is temporary or "changes the elasticity" isn't relevant. If hurricane conditions were somehow permanent then bottles of water and generators would be permanently more expensive, or no one would ever supply them.

But go ahead, make a convincing argument of your own, troll, of why I'm wrong without haplessly attempting to snipe off bits and pieces of mine. I'm done with you until you do so.

You just made the best possible assumptions for yourself regarding elasticity and yet still conceded that consumers aka hurricane victims can better off under price-gouging laws. Pretty sure my job is done here. No need to get so emotional in your arguments, this is a discussion for people of logic after all.

As far as preventing hoarding, encourage stores to put a limit on how much each consumer can buy, they do it when a popular iPhone is flying off the shelf, why can't they do it with necessary supplies in an emergency? Good idea, right? Amazing what you can accomplish with you use some free-thinking instead of dogmatically applying little charts based on unrealistic assumptions.

Can they be better off without price-gouging laws? Is this possible in the real world? What's your position?

I'm glad you're not in charge of anything if you think this would work for commonly bought basic items like fuel or water when people are panicking.

Where has pure, unfettered capitalism been tried out? What you're talking about is the kind of capitalism that i'm a big fan of.

In other words in my scenario price gouging would be wrong. And in scenarios close to this it would probably be wrong.

Yes, of course it is possible. My belief in this specific instance is that consumers are willing to pay almost any price for necessary supplies and through coordination with the government the private industry already reaches near the maximum amount of supply possible in natural disasters. Thus, what we are primarily talking about is a distribution of value.

Thank God you aren't in charge of anything:

http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/F...444415663.html

Seems to me that those of us with common sense have this one figured out. Good luck with your contrarian zealotry.

This is called throwing out a quote that nitwits will bite on so you can logically destroy them with your rebuttal. That works on forums not populated by me. Because the actual question is whether people with money are more deserving of having things that they want only a little bit, (their sixth car?) as compared with poorer people having things they really need.(their first car). One can believe that the second case is wrong even if they totally agree with your quotation above.

This is just comical. The supply is far from inelastic in natural disasters. Stocking up extra beforehand (risky and costly, but possible if reimbursed), rerouting, hiring trucks and driving it in yourself. We KNOW the state often fails terribly at these things (look at Katrina), especially when scale is involved, and that price gougers bringing in supplies from outside have tremendous success in the market, like the guy who loaded up with generators and had willing buyers at 2x normal prices, but was arrested as he was selling them to willing buyers.
We were talking about stopping hoarding/rationing vast quantities of goods in the thousands of different shops over days. You're now shifting it to the country rationing what they're giving out in a few locations. You've conceded the argument, then, if you're shifting the goalposts so desperately. You're not even an averagely clever troll.

Stores themselves also imposed limits before the storm:


http://www.naplesnews.com/story/news...lee/641125001/

Somehow they weren't mobbed.

Of course your contrarianism allows you to appeal to people's emotions when told they have to be decent people and only take the supplies they need but ignore their emotions when they are being gouged.

Also, you not only disagree with your own initial thoughts in this thread, you now call them comical. This is not the sign of a "great man" as your delusions of grandeur led you to call yourself, it is that of a schizophrenic.

You are not even an averagely clever contrarian.

Nothing about not wanting the government to set and enforce artificially low prices precludes people from sharing (non-profits supplying for free) or for businesses to decide that their best course of action is to keep prices low (see below).

What's your point? Many things go into setting prices. Public image is one of them in cases like this.

Well, the limit was on quantity you can buy which is relevant to the discussion I was having and had nothing to do with price so not sure what your point is here?

Yes I completely changed my position. It is not a topic I'd thought about much, I offered a weak contrarian viewpoint, then the more I thought about it and read the evidence, the more it became obvious I was wrong.

I did the same on peak oil if you read that thread. Changing your mind now and then is a sign you're open minded and interested in ideas more than your ego. If you're not rapidly changing your opinion from time to time, you're either omniscient or not very bright.

P.S. The term you are looking for is BPD. People think you're an idiot when you use a medical term but don't even understand what it means.