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.
I'm not even gonna argue about the effectiveness of whatever choice. Fleecing people in crisis is anti-social behavior. It's treating people as a resource, not as your people. Now obviously this street shitter sees whites as nothing more than resources, but under lolbert beliefs, that's true of all people. They don't believe anyone is part of a people to whom you have some reciprocal duty to, it's just every man for himself (and then incoherent rambling as to why just breaking his legs and stealing his shit is the exception).
Of course that's just the way the world is. It's not as if this dude growing a soul and acting honorably would make anything better. There's probably ten more people who are just as happy to fleece him, and his behavior won't change that at all. Being selfless is a losing play in a world filled with people like him. Doesn't mean I won't hope he gets robbed though, and I'm certainly not going to be a lolbert and make up bullshit as to why it's actually okay.
This is the issue. Either there's a moral code we all subscribe to or there isn't. The law is a poor substitute, as it's written by the wealthy and powerful, which is why a lot of immoral behavior that those in power do isn't criminalized (predatory lending, rent seeking, Congress trading stocks with advance knowledge of legislation, etc.).
What are they gonna do for him after he spends all of his time and energy away from his family in a crisis breakdown situation, so that they could have some gas in a car?
Spoiler alert: nothing. Nothing when his bills are due.