I think that is best considered as a form of free speech. A is a statement of the value of your argument.
$5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
171–180 of 450 posts
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The fuck are we going to do with that much toilet paper. It's not like it goes bad (on a meaningful timescale); it'll get used eventually.
But if we created it at the dramatically and artificially increased demand that it has right now, it would be disastrous for that industry once this panic subsides. Imagine the increase in infrastructure these companies would have to build to keep up with this fake supply. The workers, the real estate, the building of supply chains and machinery. Now imagine what happens to that industry when suddenly the market's de…
The manufacturers aren't stupid. If they're capable of running a profitable manufacturing company they're capable of realising the demand won't last forever, and not investing an amount that would cost them too much when the demand dies back down.
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#173A lot of people in this thread are willfully ignoring some basic facts here. These products are being made in sufficient quantity for everyone. There is not a significant decrease in production. There is a significant increase in hoarding, and in many cases it is for the explicit purpose of creating artificial scarcity to increase the price of a product. This is not a case of toilet paper suddenly costing more to pro…
> We would be doing our entire society a severe disservice if our solution to this problem is simply "create so much toilet paper that people can't hoard it." If the people want to hoard toilet paper, who are we to deny them?
We're society, and we value needs over wants.
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? Regardless of the consequences? What becomes of that toilet paper when this fear has subsided? What becomes of the companies that had to scale production, create new factories, hire new workers etc... when the existing glut of supply is not only so much that those new facilities are hurting them, but also that it has decreased the demand for their product even with normal production capabilities?
>What becomes of that toilet paper when this fear has subsided? It doesn't expire? People just use it up, and don't buy more until they've used all their store. >What becomes of the companies that had to scale production, create new factories, hire new workers etc... when the existing glut of supply is not only so much that those new facilities are hurting them, but also that it has decreased the demand for their pro…
> They only would have made the decision to scale production if they estimated the profit from filling this short-term demand would make up for the cost of having to eventually scale back the temporary investment. It's not exactly hard to predict that the demand won't last forever.
So what you're saying is, they wouldn't have scaled production, so your entire proposition about why the price increase would be an effective means to alleviate the problem was false.
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Perhaps the law we need is one to control hoarding behavior or the rate of change. Aside from an authoritarian system of governance where all purchases are tracked, and one must only purchase their "allotted" amount of goods, how exactly would one control hoarding? i hope you are not proposing such a dystopian future.
By the exact mechanism in the article above, penalizing price-gouging?
That does not prevent hoarding
The idea that people are hoarding right now simply because they want to resell the goods to others is moronic on many levels
People are hoarding right now because they believe they may be months with out a supply of the good, so they are buying in multiples of normal levels fully expecting they will use it themselves, not reselling
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#176Reading this thread is the official confirmation that Americans are out of their mind.
It really drives home to me, again, how prevalent right-wing libertarianism is in the computing community.
It's full of people intelligent enough to understand how incentives and consequences work, and mature enough to be able to accept that some possibly immoral people might benefit for the greater good.
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Perhaps the law we need is one to control hoarding behavior or the rate of change. Aside from an authoritarian system of governance where all purchases are tracked, and one must only purchase their "allotted" amount of goods, how exactly would one control hoarding? i hope you are not proposing such a dystopian future.
I suggest you google "rationing" because that's exactly what happened in during World War II. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_Kingdo... Not just in the U.K., rationing was also introduced in the United States during wartime: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationing_in_the_United_States
I fully understand rationing, rationing is something done by Authoritarian governments, including the US and the UK...
So it seems you are infact proposing authoritarianism as a solution to the problem
Give up freedom for safety... wonderful. I see alot of that right now it is very sad
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
>We would be doing our entire society a severe disservice if our solution to this problem is simply "create so much toilet paper that people can't hoard it." The fuck are we going to do with that much toilet paper. If people want that much toilet paper, the only solution that's going to satisfy them is producing all the toilet paper they want. Society is just an aggregate of people, and if enough of them want for wha…
You could, alternatively, convince them that they don't want that much toilet paper. For instance, convince them that stores will not run out of stock and that they will be able to go to stores. This is the normal state of the toilet paper market. The problem here is not that we've suddenly been possessed by demons who want infinite toilet paper, the problem is that people are making rational decisions based on actua…
>Also, price-gouging laws do not "stop the market from giving them what they want." If anything, price gouging does - if someone who has $100 in savings wants a year's worth of toilet paper, they're less able to successfully get it if the market can run unchecked. It's true that an unregulated free market is good at getting products sold at the best price for the sellers - that's very different from giving people what they want.
This is missing the original point: the rise in price incentivises the market to produce more of the product / incentivises more producers to enter the market. This means more product is produced, so that in the end more people have it than they would otherwise. Without that, whether the guy with $100 worth of toilet paper gets what he wants is just determined by how fast he is to get to the store.
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree with the points you are making. I will add that hoarding does increase the cost of producing goods. If the toilet paper manufacturer needs to produce at 10x normal capacity because people are filling their car with the stuff, they will need to increase staff, work more shifts and maybe even buy/rent/build more production equipment. Does this double, triple or quadruple costs? Likely not. Yet costs do increase…
> Perhaps the law we need is one to control hoarding behavior or the rate of change. You know what would control hoarding? Higher prices.
True enough. However, this is only true if prices go up everywhere. If people can buy at Walmart for $1 and sell on Amazon for $5...
I am most definitely a free market person, yet one has to recognize controls are important in order to deal with degenerate or corner cases. One such case is when panic sets in.
I don’t know the answer. Not an easy problem.
Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
...by placing an artificial price ceiling that will ensure a shortage of goods. In a pandemic, prices go up, rightly or wrongly, because there is an increased demand. This price scales as the difference between supply and demand grows, in order to decelerate how fast the shortage occurs relative to the speed of creating the good. The price ceiling just means the shortage happens immediately.
But what is the price ceiling in this case? I fail to understand this argument, as this doesn't regulate the price of manufacturing a good but rather then price of its sale. If manufacturers aren't the ones setting the high prices then why would they be disincentivized to make more goods?
Distribution is also a cost. Imagine a hurricane where roads are damaged and supplies can't be brought it. If incentives are high enough people will urgently find a way to get it in to sell things people want
If prices are fixed, they may just wait until the normal trucks can make a delivery.