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$5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

caloes.ca.gov

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Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#441

Post by CodeMage »

nate_meurer wrote: post #418
CodeMage wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the argument was pretty clear: we're at this point because the majority has been tolerating -- and even defending -- similar behavior for a long time; therefore, we should stop tolerating this kind of behavior in general, not just for this special case under these special circumstances. And the argument is correct. You cannot keep teaching people unlimited greed and profiteering is okay because "it's free market"…

Ok, but that's not what OP said. Allow me repeat the quote: > It's not right to vilify these people while we give a free pass to everyone else doing equally unethical things. Seems to say, we should stop criticizing these scumbag disaster profiteers, simply because there exist equally loathsome corporate profiteers. Taken at face value, this is quintessential whataboutist bullshit. Now maybe I misinterpreted, which i…

It's not about moving goal posts, it's about interpretation. Allow me to repeat the same quote, with my own emphasis:

> It's not right to vilify these people while we give a free pass to everyone else doing equally unethical things.

If "A and not B" is not right, you can conclude that we should stop A, or that we should start B. You interpreted it as the former, I interpreted it as the latter. I guess we have different biases.

Regardless of whether the goal posts have moved or have always been in the same place, I'm not sure which of your questions remains unanswered. If it's "who is this 'we' you speak of", the answer is "look around you". If the majority were truly intolerant of the behavior OP describes, then we would have a lot more social unrest than we do.

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#442

Post by ghshephard »

gwright wrote: post #303
georgemcbay wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with short term need? 7-10 days is a long time to go without some things like food, cleaning supplies (particularly in time of pandemic), masks for those who actually need them like healthcare workers on the front lines, etc.

Have you noticed that the shelves are empty? The price gouging laws don't help that situation they create that situation. How are empty shelves better than the items available for 2x, 3x or even 5x the regular price for a short period of time?

People who price gouge are highly incentivized to go buy all the stock in a community and resell it on the internet. That guy in the NYT article essentially drove to all these out of the way places and cleaned out their stock.

Allowing price gouging would not result in more of that stock being available on the shelves - responsible retailers and distributors know better, and behave better than that - they make all of their available stock, and when they run out - they run their factories at 100% to try and catch up.

Note - I have zero issue with ticket scalping - love the fact that there is a free market where people can buy and sell tickets at the price the market can bear. Also have zero issue with a free market in general - it encourages new suppliers to come in when prices go up, and consumers to find relative substitutes - things find an equilibrium.

What I have a problem with is people taking advantage of an emergency or shortage, in such a way that further increases the shortage of items that are critical to people's health and well being, people who may not be able to afford to go out an pay 10x prices on amazon for something like a mask or hand cleaner.

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#443

Post by gwright »

salawat wrote: post #440
gwright wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want to engage in arbitrage and play "the Free Market cures all ills"? You do that with your own community Free market is already solving this problem. I was at my local store today and they were restocking the shelves with TP and paper towels. There was no line. You seem to have completely missed my point that the price surge should have been happening in the regular stores. By not raising their prices, the st…

>By not raising their prices, the stores enable the hoarding, speculation and secondary market nonsense you are blabbering about. By threatening to fine vendors when they raise prices, the government enables these arbitrage schemes. Prices going up does not achieve the goal of enabling universal access to current supply in order to damp the strain on the currently existing medical/distribution infrastructure, which i…

> To be clear, the only "government intervention" I'm advocating for is for the prosecution of those that participate in widespread buying out of supply for arbitrage purposes in order to ensure the primary market with visibility is the primary means of distribution, and to minimize the level of chaos.

The market is penalizing those people long before the government will get around to it. Shelves will soon be stocked again, there are alternatives to pretty much everything that is in short supply, the arbitragers have found themselves with stock that they can't easily get rid of without loosing money as well as finding themselves hated by the public in general. They made poor choices and the market is penalizing them.

The danger of your prosecutorial approach is that it is often applied to the wrong people. The current situation is somewhat unusual in that demand is increasing everywhere but these laws are often applied during localized disaster situations (hurricane, etc.) where it would be helpful for people to take unusual/more-expensive steps to get supply relocated. That involves extra costs and price controls work against those initiatives.

I think the biggest failure here is the media, whose terrible reporting caused people to believe that there would be a shortage of things like TP and also caused people to focus on hand-sanitizer as opposed to plain old soap, for example. The not-quite-panic buying is unwise and ill-conceived.\

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#444

Post by UncleMeat »

gwright wrote: post #436
UncleMeat wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also a lot of people wouldn't be able to access supplies. In both cases a lot of people get screwed. In the "floating price" case it just isn't highly paid software engineers on HN.

So you prefer no one to have access to the items at any price (empty shelves), rather than a limited supply being available at a higher price? Why do you prefer that? Why do you think that individuals have no ability to adjust their personal spending such that they can purchase TP or hand sanitizer even at 2x, 3x or even 5x price points.

No. I'd prefer that price gouging is illegal, preventing individuals from buying what they don't use for profit. I'd also prefer systems that allow for distribution based on need rather than only allowing the wealthy to buy supplies.

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#445

Post by XorNot »

loeg wrote: post #432
XorNot wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And like most things, basic econ is not the be all and end all of how the world works otherwise we wouldn't have those all-important second year econ classes. Price gouging is not an efficient market result for anyone - the goods aren't actually, in real terms, worth the temporary price (the costs of manufacturer's switching over production is going to wind up much higher then any profit they can make once they're to…

> But really, whether anyone believes this can be viewed through a very different lens: multiple times in the past week, US exchanges have ceased trading due to automatic circuit breakers from 7% drops in the market. Surely if the market is all knowing we shouldn't trigger these mechanisms and instead just let the invisible perfect hand let people sell stocks freely. Yes, you're basically right despite intending to b…

> The government didn't do that. It loaned $1.5T over a very short term to banks. It was not targeted at the stock market and had no impact there.

But if the free market should be allowed to run unimpeded, why did the government need to intervene here, when apparently in the provision of basic necessities you are arguing this is going too far?

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#446

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

syshum wrote: post #428
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw a post on reddit where a costco was only letting you buy one (giant) case of TP per purchase. https://i.imgur.com/m0Efz3E.gifv There are obvious ways to cheat it, but it still means more people end up with TP. You don't have to go full police state to make the distribution of goods more even.

But that voluntary action by individuals, in the context of our discussion here we are talking about laws and government regulation, not voluntary actions by business. It is perfectly fine for a business to choose to only sell 1 package per customer It is not fine for government to mandate a business only sell 1 package per customer. This was my entire point, people here are advocating for GOVERNMENT action when none…

I'm fine with the government limiting the number of packages per sale. No tracking required.

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#447

Post by loeg »

XorNot wrote: post #445
loeg wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But really, whether anyone believes this can be viewed through a very different lens: multiple times in the past week, US exchanges have ceased trading due to automatic circuit breakers from 7% drops in the market. Surely if the market is all knowing we shouldn't trigger these mechanisms and instead just let the invisible perfect hand let people sell stocks freely. Yes, you're basically right despite intending to b…

> The government didn't do that. It loaned $1.5T over a very short term to banks. It was not targeted at the stock market and had no impact there. But if the free market should be allowed to run unimpeded, why did the government need to intervene here, when apparently in the provision of basic necessities you are arguing this is going too far ?

Banks are some of the most highly regulated businesses that participate in markets. One should not draw general conclusions from government intervention in regulated banking programs.

> when apparently in the provision of basic necessities you are arguing this is going too far?

I made no such argument.

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#448

Post by kharms »

waterhouse wrote: post #347
kharms wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price gouging laws typically apply at the consumer point of sale, I'm not sure they prevent a higher price from factory to store.

If the law prevents the store from charging a high price to the consumer, then that effectively prevents the factory from charging a high price to the store, because the store would make a loss if it accepted that price.

>>What if a seller increased the price of a good or service because the seller’s costs of providing the good or service increased?

>If the seller can prove that the increased price is directly attributable to increases in the cost of labor or materials needed to provide the good or service, the seller may not be liable under the statute.

It's right there on the linked page. This basically prohibits large markups while allowing for passing of costs.

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#449

Post by rtkwe »

loeg wrote: post #429
rtkwe wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stores and manufacturers aren't actually charging increased prices in the majority of cases here. It's people buying out those stores and selling. If manufacturers don't see the increased prices the Econ 101 logic breaks down.

People are businesses; businesses are people. It's not illegal to go into business as an individual and there's no special magic about stores and manufacturers that doesn't apply to arbitragers.

My point is the suppliers ie the actual manufacturers of toilet paper aren't seeing the increased prices so in an econ101 model they're not increasing supply capacity prices are just going up for consumers.

Re: $5000 per violation of price-gouging in CA

#450

Post by rtkwe »

generalpass wrote: post #227
rtkwe wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two problems; factories cannot surge up immediately and all of the actual gouging here is not actually making it to the manufacturers, it's people mass buying out stocks and reselling. So the supply side isn't actually seeing any increased price to increase their supply. The Econ 101 pro price gouging logic breaks down here because of that.

> Two problems; factories cannot surge up immediately and all of the actual gouging here is not actually making it to the manufacturers, it's people mass buying out stocks and reselling. So the supply side isn't actually seeing any increased price to increase their supply. The Econ 101 pro price gouging logic breaks down here because of that. This may be due to the fact that the retailers are heavily threatened by go…

Some items like toilet paper have and extremely flat demand pattern it turns out, so plants are already running basically at capacity 24/7 so there's not much actual slack in the supply chain to increase.

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-03-14/coronaviru...

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