Yesterday some dude posted a video to shame apparently Indian gas station owners charging $10 a gallon around the Hurricane Helene disaster area. The lolberts answered with rebuttals that free market pricing is the best rationing mechanism in a time of scarcity.
People are saying that the gas station could ration gallons per customer and keep the same price, and the lolberts are saying this is communist price control.
I'm not really sure how much merit is held by either position since I've never really thought about this with respect to a disaster area. Clearly the 1973 price controls were a bad idea, but this is a debate over what a private business owner should do after a hurricane. My gut feeling is that gas should be rationed by customer, not by pricing. But maybe the gas station is passing along supply chain pricing to a certain extent?
edit: Texas punished gas price gouging in 2019 after Hurricane Harvey.
Wow. Costs almost as much as gas costs in the UK on a normal day!
I'm only being a little facetious here, it's almost 8 US bucks a gallon (give or take a bit of exchange rate) in the UK right now, with no disasters, no horrors except the existential one of living in London.
My view is this: This dude theoretically owns this gas station. He likely, like everyone else, lives in the area affected (business moguls from overseas don't tend to own gas stations, they own oil rigs). Which means he needs money to repair not only his house, but also his gas station! Insurance money doesn't come quick, if at all (sorry, "act of god", no money for you!).
In a free market, you can just go to another gas station. You have a car, and you're buying gas to use in your fucking 10-gallons-per-hour generator so you can stream netflix, not to survive. And the ones that aren't doing that... Are buying the gas so they can fleece and price gouge other people! Wait, the other gas stations are all out of gas, sold out by those resellers? Massive shortages? Womp womp. Looks like that system didn't work out.
More important than all of that, though, is the concept of Fairness: The money this gas station makes is this man's employment. If you were just in a hurricane, house wrecked, and get a call from your employer saying "you're now literally the only one who can do this job, I know it's dangerous in the weather and debris, but come into work. Also, I'm only paying half your normal salary, get fucked son, I expect you here at 8am.", you'd get pretty angry, wouldn't you? But that's what you're asking of this business owner. You're telling him to show up for his job, despite the dangerous environs and trouble at home, and to earn far less money than he should doing so.
Or the PM or anyone else suggesting something might happen leading to that very thing happening as David Cameron did some years ago when he advised/warned/fucked up telling the public they might want to top up just in case.
Cue panic buying and stations running out of petrol for no fucking reason.