Economics: The Value of "Price Gouging"

[Speaker to Animals]

LMFAO

I was there, dude. They did that shit. It was terrible.

It's nothing like the water hoarding and gouging that happened in Homestead itself, though.

[SuburbanFarmer]

LMFAO

I was there, dude. They did that shit. It was terrible.

It's nothing like the water hoarding and gouging that happened in Homestead itself, though.

How much is anyone actually 'hoarding' though? You're told to have at least 1 gallon/person/day, for a week or two. For my family, that would be 40-50 gallons/week. That's just basic preparedness.

[DBTrek]

General stories about price gouging and Hurricane Andrew aren’t much better. I see the NYT has a typical, political talking point, hitpiece on it - but even they don’t mention the claims made here.

Frankly, I find the claims suspect. Hotels have owners, and those owners need profit to survive. What businessman would keep a half-vacant hotel at a time of high crises merely on the hope of getting $1000 per room? Hotels regularly offer rooms at or below costs in the off season simply to limit their losses. The idea that they’d take a loss during a time of unparalleled demand defies logic.

[Speaker to Animals]

LMFAO

I was there, dude. They did that shit. It was terrible.

It's nothing like the water hoarding and gouging that happened in Homestead itself, though.

How much is anyone actually 'hoarding' though? You're told to have at least 1 gallon/person/day, for a week or two. For my family, that would be 40-50 gallons/week. That's just basic preparedness.

It's two gallons per person per day, minimum.

[SuburbanFarmer]

LMFAO

I was there, dude. They did that shit. It was terrible.

It's nothing like the water hoarding and gouging that happened in Homestead itself, though.

How much is anyone actually 'hoarding' though? You're told to have at least 1 gallon/person/day, for a week or two. For my family, that would be 40-50 gallons/week. That's just basic preparedness.

It's two gallons per person per day, minimum.

Ok, so I've got 100 gallons of water in my garage for a single week. Now I'm labeled a "hoarder". lol

Actual hoarding, for me, would be something like a 500-gallon pool of water, at minimum.

[K@th]

Not a two week supply, though, and the water includes for flushing toilets and such. In our neighborhood, there are enough swimming pools to flush the toilets all day every day for numerous days.

We generally start freezing our own water in containers in preparation. We try to limit buying plastic water bottles (hate those things,) to as little as we can get.

I still have about 60 bottles of water from Irma. Won't waste them, there's so little actual use for water in a disposable plastic bottle, we may have them for next hurricane season.

[SuburbanFarmer]

General stories about price gouging and Hurricane Andrew aren’t much better. I see the NYT has a typical, political talking point, hitpiece on it - but even they don’t mention the claims made here.

Frankly, I find the claims suspect. Hotels have owners, and those owners need profit to survive. What businessman would keep a half-vacant hotel at a time of high crises merely on the hope of getting $1000 per room? Hotels regularly offer rooms at or below costs in the off season simply to limit their losses. The idea that they’d take a loss during a time of unparalleled demand defies logic.

They don't take a loss. They make WAY more money off of low-occupancy, high-value rooms.

And the tourists will pay it, because they have no choice. You give up your vacation money to the nice man, or you try to find a shelter in a strange state, while the family is freaked out and it's raining.

[DBTrek]

If only these anecdotes could be supported with citations. It’s amazing that a left-leaning media, completely hostile to “price gouging”, missed all these stories.

New Yorker Magazine and Mother Jones must be kicking themselves for skipping the stories about stranded motorists sleeping in stranded cars next to vacant $1000 per night hotels.

Here was everything they ever wished for to advance their political message, and yet, nary a word written about it.

Strange indeed.
/shrug

[Speaker to Animals]

The problem is that quaint little narrative in defense of price gouging is not really what happens in most cases. Price gouging usually results in excess supply not getting sold because it's cheaper to hord a large supply and sell off a small fraction at jacked prices.

Think of the diamond market. That's an example of a good that actually is not terribly rare, but the supply is cornered, so the suppliers sell off only small amounts of their vast reserves at very high prices.

edit: and your entire half-assed defense of gouging was based around a bullshit anecdote. Get real.

[Fife]

LMFAO

I was there, dude. They did that shit. It was terrible.

It's nothing like the water hoarding and gouging that happened in Homestead itself, though.

Wait, which is it, the "hoarding" or the "gouging?"

FEMA's gonna have to sweep the neighborhood to see what everyone is stashing in their closets, I guess.

There's really no other way to save everyone.