Economics: The Value of "Price Gouging"

[Speaker to Animals]

I cannot say for certain, but I very strongly suspect that major retailers with those massive supply chains have some kind of working relationship with FEMA to get supplies into these areas as fast as possible in order to curb gouging.

I don't even know where this Walmart shit is coming from. Walmart very likely is the primary reason we don't see more of it.

[Fife]

Walmart is a primary reason IT DOESN'T FUCKING EXIST

[Speaker to Animals]

Is there an echo in here??

[Fife]

There's plenty of empty space for an echo.

So we are clear: What doesn't exist is your "cornered market" for water and gas. It doesn't exist.

Higher prices during disasters or outside sold out ballgames are not a result of manufactured shortages or collusion, or whatever is rattling around in your head.

I don't know where you dreamed that up, but it's not part of our shared objective reality.

I'd normally be patient with you; economics requires a little thinking to get around the normie Pam Bondi programming. But, dude, we went over all this like 11 months ago.

Negative.

Collusion is unnecessary for the wild argument you are making; and probably irrelevant. You're still thinking of pricing always being the decision of some kind of cartel, and in some kind of closed up (is that what you mean by "cornered?") market. Pricing, in a free country, is a one-on-one affair on the micro level. Without an army (the baddest army on the block; big and bad enough to turn away the Walmart) to back the cartel up, it seems nonsensical. Utterly nonsensical.

The actual point is that us three jimmies ain't "cornering" shit, no matter how we collude, or just have a Mexican standoff and kill each other. The entire civilized world, in a free country, will be busting ass to get that high priced water (and emergency weed, I'm sure) into the Seattle disaster zone. We may be on the ground the "firstest with the mostest," but our position is HIGHLY fluid, and fleeting.

There will be a cocktail of the Walmart, the Target, Joe Sixpack, and some extras from The Walking Dead, all getting their shit in gear to get water, food, generators, fuel, and who knows what else into the zone, either for lead-loss positive PR for the brand, profits, or who knows what.

We ain't the federal government, broheims. We can't just tell the rest of the civilized world to stay of our corner, with our captive, starving, and desperate customers, willing to sell their daughters into slavery for a gallon of gas.

Not rocket science.

Let's at least attempt to address this honestly and charitably.

(1) Do you accept the assertion that one cannot actually price gouge unless they achieve a temporary corner on the market for a given good, or a small group of people collectively corner that market and collectively decide to engage in price gouging?

I think demand has to be part of the equation. If demand is vastly outstripping supply it doesn’t matter if people have a market cornered or not. Lower priced goods will move first, higher priced, last - but you can still charge the higher prices (aka gouge) even if there are lower priced competitors. Those competitors can’t satisfy all the demand.

As long as the Walmart exists, nobody is going to have supply "cornered," or whatever, for long at all.

Prices are signals. Organic, true, free prices are signals that tell human beings what to get shipped where.

Prices aren't static, except with the dipshits on capital hill freeze them artificially. When that happens, people in need suffer. Not rocket science; just contra to the feelz upon on Big Rock Candy Mountain, I guess. /shrug

Do you have a fetish for hoarders and starving people or something?

[Speaker to Animals]

Fife is arguing we should make an existing crime legal because incidence rates are low.

Let that little nugget of truth sink in..

What other crimes should we legalize because crime rates are low?

[C-Mag]

Have we talked about the new jobs numbers yet?

Looks like private business likes the shutdown

[jediuser598]

Here's the thing, let us take water in a disaster area.

Someone comes in and buys up all the water and then starts charging $50 a bottle.

Only rich people/middle class people then get to drink water, if everyone follows the normal rules, except that no one follows the normal rules when it's a situation about survival.

So that person selling $50 a bottle? Well poor people are just going to kill him and take the water.

You may be offended by "how dare they break the rules of the market!" Except that you made the rules in such that they either had to break the rules or die, and every single one of you are going to break the rules to survive, or break the rules so that your children survive. That's human nature.

You make it about survival, well then the rules change, don't they? Rich people get to have water because the poor people can't afford it and they can?

Good luck.

[Speaker to Animals]

The reality is that much of the water is taken off the market and not consumed by anybody. It is more profitable for sellers to gobble up the water in a certain cluster of neighborhoods and literally dump most of the water into the ground than to sell it all.

That poor people are the first to die in such a scarcity is a valid argument, but it's not going to sway Mammon worshipers one bit. They don't give a shit about that.

But their argument that legalizing price gouging would result in more water getting into that local market is quite obviously fucking farcical, which is why they have been dancing around the fact for pages and pages. You might not be able to convince them to give a shit about their ideas possibly killing poor people, but you can sure as shit show them how their own argument is false. They cannot and will not respond to this.

[Fife]

You two pixie rappers make a cute couple.

[Speaker to Animals]

What other crimes should we legitimize for money, Fife?