401–410 of 509 posts
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He's capturing availability, the manufacturer made the availability. There is no value-adding middle man role with a 10x value here (well value to anyone other than the middle man).
There's none available to purchase at the old, lower price. So he's providing value to me, someone who wishes to buy one.
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It is both immoral and incorrect to measure need based on who has the most liquidity.
I’m assuming this is sarcasm. Can you propose an alternative method of measuring need?
Does one person with a million dollars in excess liquidity to spend on water represent a greater "need" than one million people with no liquidity to spare?
Would it be moral for that person to buy more than they need, solely to inflate prices? Would the resulting spot price in the market be in any way a meaningful gauge of the actual need?
Market prices are only one gauge, and they are pretty faulty, easily manipulated one at that.
Next up, you'll probably tell me that story points are a solid basis for predicting delivery times and making decisions about resource allocation.
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Because he bought them all. This is why, in states where disasters are probable due to natural issues (hurricanes, earthquakes), price gouging is a crime. Not only is it a crime, but it is one where there is full bi-partisan support for the continuance of the law. If you want to put a smile on the face on someone suffering from calamity, first help them, and then arrest the bastard who tried to profit off of it. The…
If the gouger actually bought them all then you have a monopoly, which is a different problem. The gauger, instead, bought some. So did many other people. The difference is he's willing to sell his. That's the value to me he's providing. Could you retry your analysis with this corrected information?
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His masks cost 10c where Chinese-made masks cost 2c. Once you factor in the cost of this crisis as an externality, the cost of Chinese-made anything skyrockets. Outsourcing is a bait-and-switch, always was.
The other externalities being environmental degradation and, to some degree, labor abuse.
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I’m assuming this is sarcasm. Can you propose an alternative method of measuring need?
The field of moral philosophy has extensive literature on exactly this subject. The NYTimes has an 'ask an ethicist' column. Every hospital has an ethics board with prepared guidelines on patient triage in times of crisis. That the accepted answer to this question has become "who has the most money?" is a victory for... well, the people with the most money, so I guess we can call this a sterling example of the effect…
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There's none available to purchase at the old, lower price. So he's providing value to me, someone who wishes to buy one.
Right and yet most everyone in this thread can agree that it wouldn’t be the most prudent use of it when there are other lives more at risk than yours.
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Doesn't matter if he bought all or some. If he is attempting to profit off of a disaster, he will be seeing a fine or jail time in plenty of states.
Should for-profit grave-digging be illegal too?
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His masks cost 10c where Chinese-made masks cost 2c. Once you factor in the cost of this crisis as an externality, the cost of Chinese-made anything skyrockets. Outsourcing is a bait-and-switch, always was.
Coronavirus wasn’t created by cheap Chinese manufacturing.
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> If you can't pay, you don't deserve to get things for free. There's a lot of problems with this concept. We don't live in a meritocracy. Having money doesn't mean your life is more valuable then someone else's. A kid born to a billionaire has access to extreme wealth (and therefore economic power) without proving any merit for it. Humanity has tried monarchism already, and we've decided it's not the best way to run…
Actually, having more money means that your life is more valuable. Just like a sack full of gold is more valuable than a sack full of broken glass. It's just people get all emotional when applying the same concept to humans. Is it moral to replace broken things instead of trying to fix them, considering that fixing will be more expensive and the thing might just break down again after a while anyway? That's not a que…
For instance, do you believe your life to be worth less than that of everyone else who has more money than you? What if that money was inherited and they didn't work a day in their lives? What about the life is say, Nikola Tesla who didn't have much money but laid foundations upon which a lot of our world is built today?
Is the person who negotiated for more money than you make now (while doing less useful work) have a more valuable life than yours?
Imagine you were walking with a friend of equal net worth, by your logic, if they suddenly found $100 on the ground and took it, their life is suddenly more valuable than yours? What if you both got struck with an illness and the doctor triaging said "huh, Kaiyou is worth $100 less than their friend so I guess I have to let him die and focus on the slightly wealthier person".
Have you ever enjoyed the company of someone who was economically worth less you? What of the benefits of their contributions (think of your teachers, researchers, janitors, construction workers, etc.). Assuming human value can be simply measured in made up constructs of money and debt obligations ignores a lot of what makes our experience richer
> Is it moral to replace broken things instead of trying to fix them, considering that fixing will be more expensive and the thing might just break down again after a while anyway? That's not a question about morality, is it? Except if you replace "things" with "humans". I personally do not understand why this difference exists, however.
It seems a big driver of your beliefs is that humans are worth nothing inherently. Morality enters the game entirely because we're conscious and have created morality questions and concerns for ourselves. Your shoes never quite evolved to have those questions (though if we ever achieve some loosely defined form of AGI, those questions will come into play)