231–240 of 450 posts
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Amazon isn't comparing the regular price of the seller, but on the product level. Also, Amazon this week banned all offers, not just ones that were deemed to be price gouging. eBay did the same already more than a week ago.
And what about Shopify?
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"No, you can't have more pie. You have had enough already." Literally any exasperated parent who has to deal with little children having a tantrum because they can't get what they want. Yes, that sounds harsh, but it's exactly how this works. Your statement is simply saying that society - you, me and everyone - should obediently and without criticizing enable those who can't cater to their own emotional needs; those…
>Literally any exasperated parent who has to deal with little children having a tantrum because they can't get what they want. >Yes, that sounds harsh, but it's exactly how this works. Your statement is simply saying that society - you, me and everyone - should obediently and without criticizing enable those who can't cater to their own emotional needs; those who don't know how to deal with their own drive towards se…
If one of those values is “society holds together during a crisis”, it’s a better value and I would feel deeply secure about my criticism.
What is the value of individual, civil rights (as opposed to social rights, like not being unnecessarily infected or starved through artificially manipulated markets) during a crisis like this?
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>So is your solution "good on them, they're taking advantage of people's fears to help make the rumors true?" My solution is we should do all that we can to decrease the latency that prices respond to supply and demand. It will help everyone. >Just what price do you think toilet paper should be right now in stores? That's not up to me to decide, because I don't presume to speak for the individual wants and needs for…
Increasing retail prices doesn't do any good, especially normal people who need one package of TP, limiting quantities does. That's a fairer way to solve it than treat TP like some damn Bitcoin.
So raising the price on something doesn't reduce the number of "normal people" purchasing it? Are you honestly telling me that you don't think they are fundamentally linked?
The problem is buffering. Normally, buffering happens within the supply chain -- the back rooms of stores, loaded in trucks, warehouses, distribution centers, and the factories themselves. Now, we are telling everyone "buffer at home so you don't need to go out so much". But the problem is, buffering is much less efficient at the end of the chain, so you need to buffer a lot more. That's causing a short-term strain on production and distribution.
Blaming selfishness or gouging probably doesn't do much to help this problem. My guess is that the biggest problem is the discrepancy between how much stuff would be needed to buffer within the supply chain versus how much stuff is needed to buffer at the end of the supply chain (i.e. at home).
Worse, because it's a temporary buffering problem and there's no real increase in consumption, there's little incentive for production to increase now to alleviate it. Any increased production/distribution now just means less demand later when people start to work through their caches at home (and stop buying for a while).
So the only way to alleviate this is to allow the prices (that manufacturers charge) to rise, which will give manufacturers a cushion against the inevitable slump in the future. That's not very popular and not worth the brand damage, so it won't happen.
The good news is that I don't think this will last more than another few weeks. Gougers will stop buying at some point because they don't want to get stuck with a huge supply of toilet paper and no channels to sell it. And the home caches will fill up.
EDIT: this analysis has nothing to do with things like facemasks, where consumption has dramatically risen.
A 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…
Production and logistics have gotten more expensive. That has happened economy-wide, and will only get worse as the pandemic exponentiates. They’ve also become less reliable, which is why we have hoarding.
The purpose of price spikes is to incentivise production, to create slack in the system. (It also reduces the quantity demanded. Toilet paper at a 100% premium doesn’t do much to someone purchasing a normal amount. But it is material at hoarding volumes.)
One could say “we don’t want more price discrimination.” But that is a choice to prefer shortages over price increases. (Which is fair.) If I have a warehouse of toilet paper, I am incentivised to ship it to Texas or New York over California. (Counterpoint: low income consumers there are going to face pressure to use alternatives.)
Bottom line: these are not costless policies. (That doesn’t make them bad per se.)
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It really drives home to me, again, how prevalent right-wing libertarianism is in the computing community.
How do you get from small/no government libertarianism to “right-wing”?
That philosophy is pretty darn right-wing on economic and social issues. You can't just slap "personal freedom" on top of that and claim it comes out smelling like a rose.
Prices being elastic is good for people, in a vast majority of cases. It makes sure things get distributed more or less proportional to need, as opposed to just random or worse than random. Case in point: I luckily found some hand gel still for sale online. Probably the very last one around here. So I stocked up - not resale quantities (thought it would have been trivial) but definitely more than I needed - something…
"I'm doubtful I'll get to see any more this year." - I'll take that action. All of the consumable that people have been panic buying - toilet paper, hand gel, etc... have experienced absolutely zero supply shock, and, indeed, most of the manufacturers are going to be delighted to draw down their inventory and get a boost this quarter. I'll be extraordinarily surprised if shelves aren't completely full of those consum…
Human behavior doesn't make a lot of sense, but up until a few days ago, the media and the federal government in the US were completely downplaying the seriousness of Covid-19. Many of us who have been warning our close friends and family about this for weeks have been assumed to be paranoid or crazy, but actually we learned this week that the media and government were intentionally downplaying it.
Is there any evidence consumers are stocking up to profit rather than just have enough so as to be able to avoid stores for some time ?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-pu...
I'm sure in terms of overall numbers the vast majority of people who are panic buying aren't doing it to profit, but it only takes a couple of jackasses like the ones described in the article operating at the scale they did to cause real problems.
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The price of an item is a very blunt instrument. It doesn't distinguish between producers and scalpers/hoarders. Both of those parties are equally incentivized to produce stock and sell it if the price goes up. From the point of view of a potential buyer, toilet paper straight from the factory, and toilet paper from the guy next door who bought some ahead of time are equally good. > This is a case of consumers attemp…
>To a very good approximation, the marginal impact of any hoarders on the scarcity of a product is zero. This is pure ideology. Do you have any evidence that a single person buying 10,000 masks from every hardware store in an entire state has no marginal impact on the scarcity of a product? Basic math would suggest this is not the case.
A 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…
>A 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. You neglected to mention that demand is increased. If it wasn'…