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.
"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.
Its not difficult, its just trying to dodge what I said by pulling it into increasingly complex discussions. Its the the classic MO of someone who caught themselves in cognitive dissonance and is trying to run around it.
Because the long term consequences of doing such is the business closes down and then the neighborhood is left without any access to such goods. As we see happening across most ghettos.
For the same reason the gas guy is making 0$ for the other 6 days of the week after his entire supply is emptied because the entire chain is disrupted and he will be needing those increased profits during the first day to offset that.
There is no morality needed, which is why I didn't deny the gas guy is still probably a shit. Its basic logic and reasoning. Helped by the fact that I've lived through dozens of hurricanes and can verify my position with actual experience instead of "well philosophically speaking" nonsense.
Ha ha. Project much?
You just answered the question of why we shouldn't allow it, not why joggers shouldn't loot. You get nothing and your neighbor gets a $500 TV for free because you're concerned over the long-term consequences which will inevitably happen anyway because the market says take the free TV? Good luck with that.
Looting and gouging are what people do when they are allowed to, because they benefit from it. If you want a Laissez-faire market where people do what benefits themselves then you should commit to it.
Yeah but it let him whine about how somehow wanting to be paid makes you equal to niggers who steal.
How can we defeat such well thought out logical thinkers?
All property is theft, comrade.