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.
If the gas station owner can't refill his tanks then there's not a competitive marketplace and he's price gouging, basically extorting his customers.
Selling his cache of gasoline at extortion prices isn't what should cover his down time - that's what insurance is for - it's to abuse people in need.
Of course the line between taking profits and gouging is large and nebulous, which is why only the most egregious cases should be prosecuted.
Its literal dwindling supply driving up demand. Its the most basic form of capitalism on full display.
"Supply and demand" describes an equilibrium. It's a differential equation, where supply and demand are interrelated.
When supply is cut off (gas station owner can't get more gas) you're no longer talking about a capitalist economy under supply and demand; you're talking about a disaster economy, where the primary thing you want to solve for is avoiding collapse of social norms and law and order not abstract efficiency.
A gas station owner saying "I'm going to dick over you guys because I can" is little different from joggers looting stores: there's a supply of zero-cost goods so it's economically sound to loot them.
That's a lot of fancy words to try and talk your way around the fact that the literal supply is dropping to near zero, which is driving up the literal demand and the price reflects accordingly.
But considering you already tried the "they have insurance!" line people used to defend niggers just a few short years ago, its clear you just think its (D)ifferent when its something you don't like.
Fancy words? It's not a difficult concept to understand.
Economically speaking why should a person not take free goods? Of course they should. The same reasoning is why station owners can't sell at huge markups - not because the demand isn't there, but because we don't allow it. This is why we don't base everything on capitalism.
You can't answer this simple question because it shows your ideas are morally wrong.
He began his reply with a totally made up and absolutely fallacious and absurd definition of "supply & demand."
Well he has a lease, payroll taxes, PTO he owes possibly everyone, vendor contracts maybe, loans to repay, vehicle maintenance, expenses related to the damage from the hurricane, and his own life's expenses, and he only has for income whatever is in those tanks at the station. He might not make $1 until next summer with a property that is costing him significant expense.
Why do you need cheap gas in a hurricane zone? Why is it a right that supercedes his?