I saw this Tweet by Florida Senator Rick Scott, and it got me thinking.
Today I’m urging attorneys general in all 50 states to take action against bad actors that are taking advantage of this crisis & price-gouging on personal protective equipment.
This equipment is desperately needed to save lives & keep healthcare workers & first responders safe. pic.twitter.com/Wi44LvOUbc
— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) March 15, 2020
My wild political phase (every kid goes through that) was to become a Libertarian.
As I got older and (dare I say just a little bit) wiser, I realized that Libertarianism had some decent principles, but was an impracticable way to run a country.
But what really drove me out of Libertarianism were the principles that were just awful but Libertarians defended.
Under Libertarian principles, you could screw someone out of all of their money as long as you didn’t coerce them with violence or completely defraud them with lies. If you did take advantage of someone, good for you because the other person was a stupid rube free for the taken.
Some years ago, John Stossel went off the Libertarian deep end. One of the videos he posted was a defense of price gouging.
That was brought to mind because of this article from the New York Post:
Hoarding bros hoping to profiteer off coronavirus stuck with 17K bottles of hand sanitizer
Matt and Noah Colvin cooked up a get-rich scheme to glom all of the antibacterial wipes and hand sanitizers they could find after the first U.S. coronavirus was reported March 1 and make a killing on the re-sale, according to a New York Times interview.
The Colvins — piloting a silver SUV — snapped up all the sanitizers they could find across Tennessee and Kentucky. They thought they were on the road to Easy Street when the first 300 bottles of hand sanitizer they purchased sold out for between $8 and $70 a pop, which was “multiples higher than what he had bought them for,” the Times story said.
The brothers cleaned out a Dollar Tree, a Walmart, Staples and Home Depot and bought thousands of packs of antibacterial wipes from “little hole-in-the-wall dollar stores in the backwoods,” the Times reported.
They ended up with 17,700 bottles.
These two gargantuan assholes bought out stores across Kentucky and Tennesse of hand sanitizer that they were selling for orders of magnitude above regular market prices because of a shortage they helped create.
People, especially the elderly and at-risk wanted and needed this stuff to protect them from a potentially lethal virus.
These bipedal piles of garbage are taking advantage of a panic to hurt people.
The elderly person on a fixed income who wants hand sanitizer so they can go to the grocery store or big-box retailer to buy food and pick up prescriptions shouldn’t be forced into paying $70 for a bottle of Purell because two sentient enema nozzles bought it all explicitly to sell it back at hyper-inflated prices.
But according to John Stossel, these ambulatory rectal prolapses are great enterprising businessmen.
This isn’t like the guys in NYC buying cigarettes at an Indian Reservation in Connecticut and selling loosies on the street because it’s NYC punitive tax rate that makes cigarettes so expensive.
These immoral hemorrhoids took advantage of scared people during a panic.
I for one am glad that the Tennesee State Attorney General’s office decided to shut their shit down hard. They were forced to donate their stockpile to charity and are left holding the bill for the items they hoarded.
If you assume an average of $3 per bottle for that stuff pre-panic prices, on hand sanitizer alone they spent at over $53,000.
I hope they are bankrupted by this. I truly do.
I believe in liberty and still hold dear to many Libertarian principles of individual rights. I just cannot abide a society that lets some people wildly profit by screwing the others during an emergency.
Update:
I don’t think I made myself sufficiently clear.
The Libertarian arguments for price gouging are all a defense of the market economy, which I believe in. Except, that for the market economy to function it has to happen in a reasonable time.
If more people buy hand sanitizer in preparation for flu season, companies who sell it will order more, companies who distribute it will supply more, and they will order more from manufacturers who will ramp up production.
This is a process that takes weeks. A slow, steady increase in sales can be responded to by the market.
When there is a sudden spike in demand that is much faster than the market can respond, you end up with wildly out of control situations.
I grew up in Florida. I still think like a Floridian in Hurricane season. You can only store so much gasoline. It has a shelf life, and frankly, having lots of gas cans sitting in your garage is dangerous as hell.
So after a hurricane when the power goes out, letting gas spike to $20 per gallon means that poorer people can’t fuel even modest generators to run things like a refrigerator for insulin or a CPAP machine.
It prevents people who buy the gas they need to run chainsaws to clear the trees from their yards.
The reduced supply of gas after a hurricane isn’t driven by normal supply and demand channels, but by an aberration like the highways shutting down and trucks being able to resupply gas stations.
More importantly, market workes when people act like rational actors. When there is a panic, people don’t act rationally. This drives others to act irrationally and the system falls apart.
Lastly, the idea of letting gouging happen, especially when it comes to a potentially life-saving resource means that we value the lives of the rich over the poor in a very callous way. Sure, the 40-year-old bank executive can afford $1,000 in hand sanitizer and not give a shit, but the 75-year-old woman who is a much greater risk of dying of Coronavirus and on a fixed income can’t afford one bottle.
If your goal is to conserve a resource, rationing works better.
What I learned from being a Libertarian is that Libertarians are some of the most intellectually self-fellating people in politics.
They think of themselves as being the smartest and most rational people and a libertarian society will benefit them the best. Any imposed rules that restrict their ability to profit off the stupidity and gullibility of the “sheeple” is unfair to their intellect.
Yes, I actually heard that argument from Libertarians. “If they are stupid enough to fall for it, then why shouldn’t I do it?”
This isn’t a recipe for creating a stable nation. It is a recipe for allowing sociopaths to justify their predatory behavior using economics.
Also, this was only one of the reasons I’m not a Libertarian anymore
Don’t get me started on the number of Libertarians who said to my face:
“The US shouldn’t have fought in WWII in the European theater. Hitler never attacked us, and intervening to stop the Holocaust was a waste. If the Jews didn’t fight back, why should Americans have lost their lives to save them.”
This is not a rebuttal of libertarianism. It’s just a hit piece and it’s no different than the left calling everyone a fascist.
If you actually want to learn about “price gouging” without all the emotion that anti-gunners tend to use, search for Bob Murphy and price gouging.
I am the one usually dumping crap on Libertarianism and it is well deserved: They have become a joke of movement after they were taken over the left and used as tool for the Hillary campaign
Libertarianism was taken over by the left and used by the Hillary campaign? That is news to me and down right rediculous.
The libertarian party is a joke because Gary Johnson was too stoned to participate meaningfully and Vermin Supreme is too much for normies.
Yet they still almost managed 10% in the last election.
As far as these guys. Sure what they are doing is distasteful. It is equally distasteful to me that the government can force them to donate them. That’s up there with insurance mandate levels of horseshit imo.
https://gunfreezone.net/the-day-the-libertarian-party-was-buried-weld-says-whatever-you-do-dont-vote-for-trump/
And yet one person is not the party as a whole be it Weld or the Hillary voter.
Very astute observation. The libertarian party is to libertarianism what the GOP is to small government/constitution.
Libertarianism is an economic/private property philosophy routed in peace and freedom with an understanding of human action.
The modern day LP is just a bunch of misfits who are endlessly trying to appease the cultural Marxists (excluding the Mises Caucus of the LP).
I tend to consider myself a believer in most libertarian principles; however, the Libertarian Party is a joke. Unfortunately, during emergency situations, government control (rationing) of critical goods and services will be needed.
By the the way, what the Colvins did is technically profiteering. I have no sympathy for them and hope they go bankrupt. On the other hand, people paying up to $70 a bottle for hand sanitizer when ordinary soap and water is as effective is a special kind of stupid.
If I had 53 grand laying around Id RETIRE. This whole thing is a special kinda stupid. Be glad when it blows over and assdems come up with a new get Trump idea. The voices in my head said stay home and clean yer guns today…
Wait! What?!?? I thought that those were *** MY*** voices!
Then, the voice of SHE WHO MUST BE OBEYED entered the conversation.
And I went to work. At the clinic.
Too much of the libertarian movement seems to be special snowflakes that declare themselves libertarian because neither party if just exactly right for them. That’s fine, call yourself what you want, but you’ll probably never find 100 people who are in 100% agreement on anything that ever comes up.
It ends up being self-defeating in the long run. What’s that joke about they libertarian party will be a force when the gun nuts and druggies get together?
Gouging is complex issue, because it depends too much on discretion of a government that isn’t really concerned with your welfare. All the state has done here is incentivize relying on the state to confiscate property and give it away, and disincentivize trying what the guys did. Since the state’s best interest is always growing, the government gets their interest served and increases their powers.
The government could have disincentivized trying to gouge like the guys did and not pushed their own best interest, but that would have required a thoughtful response and states don’t do “thoughtful” very well at all.
Price gouging is only possible when there is an artificially created shortage. Otherwise it is quickly self correcting. And when the government imposes rules to stop “price gouging” it often prolongs the time it takes to recover.
So take your $20/gal gasoline.
If you are going to a gas station, and the pumps are dispersing it at $20/gal, you can almost surely bet there is another station down the road that will sell you gas at a lower price but might impose restrictions.
The station selling at $20 is using pricing to control amount purchased rather than rules. And what will happen is that the price will quickly stabilize as people move to the price they are willing to pay for gas.
If, on the other hand, you are paying $20/gal from the guy at the end of the line with a couple of 5 gal gas cans, you are not paying $20 for the gal of gas, you are paying HIM for standing in line to fill his cans and then waiting for you to pay him. You are exchanging your dollars for not waiting in line. And maybe getting to the head of the line and finding there is no more gas.
After hurricane Sandy the state imposed “price gouging” rules. Why? Because the price of gas had almost doubled. It had doubled because the cost of gas had gone up. Those stations that had gas were paying for generators to run to run the pumps, they were paying drivers and truckers to go further to get gas and return with it. They were paying more for the gas that went into the tanks to be pumped.
This lead to the price of gas going up over the “magic” government mandated max.
When the government stepped in and stomped down on the “price gougers” they stopped buying gas.
And the people of the area suddenly had the ability to pay less for the gas that did not exist.
As for our two bros that tried to make a killing on hand cleaner, the government isn’t what really stopped them. It was that people were not willing to pay what they wanted for their product. And therefore those people waited a day or two for product to get back on the shelves.
The government is never the answer to a pricing situation.
If you believe there is an objectively-defined thing called “Price Gouging”, because you believe a “Labor Theory of Value” is how economics works, then you were never a libertarian. Being a libertarian means understanding the mechanisms well enough to know why libertarian values are the best choice available. Furthermore, you have shrunk the area of behavior which should be controlled by conscience and reputation to zero, so that all “mean” actions deserve a law enforcement response to stop them. This makes you a totalitarian liberal, or alternatively a religious dictator (same behavior, different fancy hat).
Except, that for the market economy to function it has to happen in a reasonable time.
Incorrect, the free market is at its most useful during disruptions. When the hurricane threatens, would you rather have gas available at $20/gal, where price is a rationing mechanism, or no gas available at $2.50/gal? You do not get to have ‘everybody fills their tank with the sudden extra delivery volume supplied by magic’. You also do not get to have ‘the wise selfless all-knowing benevolent elected official micromanages all gasoline use producing a result better than any other available’.
“The US shouldn’t have fought in WWII in the European theater. Hitler never attacked us, and intervening to stop the Holocaust was a waste. If the Jews didn’t fight back, why should Americans have lost their lives to save them.”
If the Germans who were Jews didn’t believe their lives were worth fighting for, who am I to say differently? You want somebody in the same position of authority as Hitler, making decisions about other peoples’ lives. Those German victims could have stayed home with their guns and ignored the dictates to register and concentrate and been fine, just like gun owners in Connecticut in 2014. The action of getting on the boxcars was at the same time both great physical courage and great moral cowardice. ‘Look at us, we’re victims, blah blah blah’. Depending on the empathy of others for your own defense is a cultural shortcoming. Whereas, I admire Israel’s culture of being willing to be successful at defending itself.
And you are exactly why I left the Libertarian party.
Because when I “you know, when a hurricane hits, perhaps preventing people from raising their gas prices to $20 a gallon so little old ladies can run a generator to keep their insulin cool” makes me fucking Hitler.
At the end of the day, Libertarians are just like Socialists. Your ideas are impractical and cruel. Your Libertarian society just turns into Mad Max because you want to rule Bartertown.
The article conflates two different problems: profiteering by cornering the market, and rationally responding to supply distortions after a natural disaster. In fhe former case, the rational response is simply not to buy–there are good substitutes for hand sanitizer (soap and water), and, since there’s no natural disaster, the supply distortion would be temporary and local. Ideally, the guys attempting to corner the market would suffer the same fate as the Hunt brothers with silver–significant financial losses.
However, in the case of a natural disaster, price controls can kill people. See https://realityisnotoptional.com/2013/06/18/price-controls-cause-famines/ for an example. The price change is INFORMATION, which stimulates a response in the market, which ameliorates the distortion. For example, after a hurricane, it used to be common to see a small contractor from Ohio, say, pack up tools and a camper for a couple of weeks of self-sufficiency, drive to Florida, and make very good money repairing houses, or removing downed trees, or whatever. Without a price premium, he would have no incentive to leave his family and his customers for a couple of weeks, pack up for self-sufficiency, drive to Florida, and work his ass off. In its infinite wisdom, by prohibiting “price gouging,” Florida’s politicians made it the “blue roof state.” Local contractors want to fix their own and their friends’ houses, or, perhaps, have sustained damage to their trucks, tools and workshops, so, in the absence of the out-of-state guys, everyone just has to wait.
Funny. It’s almost exactly like government health care–rationing, in form of waiting times, and no legal way to pay a premium for higher priority (like, for example, coming to the US from Canada).
Your reasoning, sir, is deficient, imho.
Price controls do cause famines. I never argued against the market being the best method 99% of the time. I’m talking about extreme aberrations in the market in short periods of time.
Florida could have done better with the roofers. New York and New Jersey did similar dumb things after Hurricane Sandy. A year is plenty of time for the market to respond.
Interruptions in the market because of localized, sudden, and severe non-market factors like a natural disaster or state of emergency are aberrations and in the very short term limited price controls and rationing until the market can respond is appropriate.
I am familiar with John Stossel’s book, and I’m sorry, but “$30 batteries for the poor are better than no batteries and it will just encourage them not to waste electricity” is just cruel.
Libertarian arguments against price gouging all breakdown into “I got mine so fuck you.”
J.Kb, thanks for engaging in a conversation about “price gouging.” There are a couple of things to look at when considering price gouging, the first is costs and the other is supply.
If I spent the last five years buying an extra bottle of hand sanitizer when I went to the store, and today somebody is willing to pay me twice as much for that bottle, I might be willing to sell it to them. My choice. If the government says “Your costs in depriving yourself of other purchases in order to buy hand sanitizer is without value. Your storing the hand sanitizer is without value. Therefore, you can only sell your hand sanitizer for the price we allow you to.” I might decide not to sell.
At that point, the government suddenly decides that I’m not price gouging, I’m hording. And again I’m a horrible person.
Your $20/gal example is only possible IF there is a continuing shortage. I’m not willing to put my life on hold and drive 300 miles for 150 gals of gas, then driving another 300 miles back if I’m going to make $0.25/gal on that gas run. $37.50 is not enough profit for the 12 hours of driving and the cost of my fuel to get it.
I need to net nearly $300 to break even (40 mpg, $3/gal my cost, 12 hours * $15). So when I get back to the place without gas, I’m not going to charge $3/gal, I’m going to be charging $6/gal maybe $7. Nearly twice as much as the $3/gal I paid for the gas.
If I can’t make a profit, I have better things to do with my time and my money.
If that little old lady, with a generator, who purchased the generator early, doesn’t have the gas to run it, is that the fault of society? Didn’t she get extra fuel when she could afford it? Didn’t she conserve her fuel so she would have electricity when she needed it?
Why should *I* pay for her selfishness? She didn’t plan well, she didn’t conserve well, she didn’t prepare well, so now I have to give her some of what I have at the price she wants to pay, not the price I want to receive. And the government is suppose to enforce that with guns?
And none of this is actually representative of what actually happens in my town. In my town, that little old lady IS conserving. And when she runs short, we gift her with the gas to run her generator. Because she needs to run it 2 hours a day to keep her fridge running. (Or what ever other reason she might have). We take care of our own.
Personal example, a family friends home burned down. They lost most of what they owned. That night people were showing up, wishing the family well and shaking hands. And in that hand shake envelopes were handed to the family. Envelopes full of cash.
Their insurance company also handed them cash/debit card to get them a place to stay that night and run on money for the next few days. But the amount of cash they were handed that night exceeded the insurance live on cash three or four fold.
So our little old lady is either stupid for not preparing. Selfish for demanding lower prices because she ran out. Or she is unprepared and needs help. If she needs help, she can ask and surprisingly enough, people will help her. Her (or you, as her proxy) demanding that the government meddle in the market, just doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.
I have written a number of posts recently about the immorality of the economics of letting the C-Suite and Hedge Funds profit off outsourcing, leveraged buyouts, H1B Visa abuse, and other business practices that create misery and poverty among Middle Americans.
They do this because of the near religious mantra of “whatever is good for the shareholder is good.”
Libertarianism as you describe it is equally immoral to me. It is a religion that uses cold hard economics to justify trying to impose financial harm on others in the name of profit.
You said “Why should *I* pay for her selfishness? She didn’t plan well, she didn’t conserve well, she didn’t prepare well, so now I have to give her some of what I have at the price she wants to pay, not the price I want to receive. And the government is suppose to enforce that with guns?” You called her stupid many times. So you see her as someone who it is your right to take advantage of and squeeze as hard as you can for as much money as you can get in a time of hardship.
Let’s take this to the extreme. Let’s say you and your neighbor are both diabetics and he loses his home in a storm. The libertarian says “I’ll sell you a vial of insulin to keep you alive until the first responders can come in a day or so, but you will have to give me every penny in your bank account.” That is immoral. The Libertarian response is “well, without my gouging him for his life savings for a shot of insulin, he’ll die, so I’m really the good guy.” No, you are an immoral piece of shit who is squeezing a man for all he is worth because of a situation he cannot control.
People who live paycheck to paycheck or on a fixed income may not be able to stock away two weeks worth of extra supplies. They are not stupid or irresponsible. When a crisis comes and makes things even more difficult for them, it’s immoral to squeeze them extra hard.
This isn’t about the raw economic argument. This is about morality. I cannot accept “whatever makes a profit” as a moral guideline for society.
J. Kb.: I both agree, as well as disagree with you.
Using the example of generators, or fuel, in a crisis (eg, hurricane or other), if i am prevented from “price gouging”, why on earth would I take time off of my job, invest $XXX buying generators (or fuel), spend both fuel, time and mileage taking this stuff to wherever, only to sell it at my purchase cost?
Answer: I will not. Therefore, no generators or whatever, added to community stores, where they plausibly could do a Greater Good.
Now, if we’re talking about cornering the market in Purell, like the tale of the jackwagons that started this thread, may stool rain down upon ’em. I flatter myself that this is a different sort of example.
YMMV.
And, in case it requires saying, thank you and Miguel for running this useful, and entertaining blog.
And there in lies where the fine line is in all of this. If you want to argue that anti gouging laws as they exist now are imperfect, I can entertain that arguement.
You get hit with a hurricane. You take the pickup 200 miles inland and buy all the generators that Home Depot has, keep yours and sell the rest.
Is that gouging? Depends. Add up the cost of fuel to get there and back, the fact that you paid retail for them at Home Depot, you decide to charge $100 over MSRP to your neighbors.
Did you gouge? According to the law, maybe because you were above MSRP. In that case I’d be fine with you showing “hey, I just drove 200 miles to buy these and this is what I paid” as an affirmative defense.
But when a store owner who had inventory on hand that before a crisis was $X and after a crisis decided to raise it to $10X is clearly gouging.
Those assholes from Tennessee were emptying stores with the intent to gouge. They said so.
There are shades of gray in what is gouging and what is not.
The problem that I have with Libertarians is that (in my experience) they refuse to even question shades of gray or the morality. If you can buy a generator for $500 and sell it for $10,000 to a family of diabetics who need to keep their insulin cold, good for you at making $9,500 in profit taking advantage of someone else’s terrible situation.
The biggest shortcoming of Big L Libertarianism is losing sight of the reality that freedom also comes with responsibilities and obligations and duties.
When people insist on their right to the former, but are delinquent in the latter, that’s when freedoms are lost.
When the people at large are delinquent, the government is then obliged to step in and take care of that need- inefficiently, at great cost, and with great loss to personal freedom all around.
Heinlein makes the point quite strongly in “Starship Troopers”.
Essentially, you want to argue morality, not economics. The gap in your reasoning is your assumption that well-intentioned government action is moral, and individual action may not be. We’re in agreement on the latter, but not the former. IMO, government action is, almost by definition, the antithesis of morality. In support of that position, I offer the following:
Is an “anti-gouging” statute worth killing people over?
Government is force. Force is far more often immoral than moral. What’s missing here is a force for moral action independent of government. That force, in our society, consists of the remnant of Judeo-Christian ethics.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams
IMO, the biggest problem we have in our society is the effects of the move away from “organized religion” over the past six or seven decades. Too many boomers bought into the idea that Judeo-Christian ethics could survive independent of religion. That may be true for a generation or two, but we’re proving that it doesn’t last longer than that. Management of business enterprises used to be tethered to a system of morality and ethics beyond next quarter’s profits. What you have termed the “McKinsey Effect” did not occur, to any significant degree, prior to the separation of business managment from morality. The separation of government from morality, imo, started earlier.
To move to a different topic, I find it ironic that a 2a advocate would put trust in government to do more good than harm.
YMMV….
There’s also a pragmatic aspect to this- if people were not delinquent in their duties to their communities, done by their own free will and using their own time and money, then there would be no desire for the government to provide their own counterfeited version, one that is more concerned with bureaucratic empire building and vote buying.
Deliberate price gouging in a time of crisis has a the same effect on society as a business that engages in shady, but completely legal business practices does on the market- it creates a general demand for Government to step in and “fix” things.
Again, if people insist on freedom and neglect the unlegislated duties and obligations that must accompany it, then people will demand that the someone step in and fulfill those duties- and will give away their freedoms in the process.
Buy 1 bottle of rubbing alcohol, 1 bottle of aloe oil. Mix 1 cup of alcohol with 2 cups aloe oil add fragrance if wanted, pour into small bottle and you have hand sanitizer
Because when I “you know, when a hurricane hits, perhaps preventing people from raising their gas prices to $20 a gallon so little old ladies can run a generator to keep their insulin cool” makes me fucking Hitler.
If your police force doesn’t allow prices to rise, then there is no gas available at any price for any use. If your police both set “prices” and ration supply then tens of millions die of starvation, like we saw in China and Russia in the 20th century.
The problem that I have with Libertarians is that (in my experience) they refuse to even question shades of gray or the morality. If you can buy a generator for $500 and sell it for $10,000 to a family of diabetics who need to keep their insulin cold, good for you at making $9,500 in profit taking advantage of someone else’s terrible situation.
I didn’t say bankrupting the diabetics was a behavior I considered moral, I said there should be no law enforcement response to this peaceful, voluntary exchange. Meanwhile, you are free to give the diabetics an ice chest and keep it full, and shun the generator seller, which fits your morality,
But when a store owner who had inventory on hand that before a crisis was $X and after a crisis decided to raise it to $10X is clearly gouging.
The price of a thing is what people will exchange for it; the price is not the totaling of the inputs that made it. That is called a Labor Theory of Value (LToV) and it is wrong (false, disproven, incorrect, in error, morally incorrect because factually incorrect) because it doesn’t predict human value judgments. The hand cleaner is more valuable to the buyers now. However, you are standing between the buyer and seller saying “Stop! You must follow the religious dictates of my church, which says we are all commies! I am going to impose my religion on you by the sword!” This makes you a totalitarian religious fundamentalist.
Notice that successful businesses tend to NOT engage in “price gouging” during emergencies? And not just because of laws against it.
Most of them are smart enough to know that a temporary profit made during an emergency is not worth the loss of reputation.
Reputation is very important to businesses- it is the thing the most ardent free marketers say would suffice in place of regulations to avoid crappy merch, fraud, ect.
Kwik-E-Mart may provide for my immediate need now by selling me a roll of TP today at $100. But, they will probably lose me as a customer once TP goes down to the normal price.
That is why Kwik-E-Mart would rather sell all their TP and hand sanitizer at the normal price, then run out completely- it’s the wisdom of the Free Market in action.
Poor reputation is quickly forgotten and eventually overcome. S&W does just fine. Sportsman’s guide is still ticking away. I predict Dicks will still be floppy in the next 5 years. Nike still uses sweatshop labor. Levis Jeans are still hoplophobes. Etc and so on.
If it is a small community business sure, I agree, but a major brand or chain it takes a colossal fuck up far and above price gouging to completely kill it.
Then why don’t they do it? I can guarantee that it’s been bandied about by various company boards and sales departments.
I didn’t say bankrupting the diabetics was a behavior I considered moral, I said there should be no law enforcement response to this peaceful, voluntary exchange.
I truly hope that one day such a situation smacks you right in the face like a 2X4 and you get exactly what you deserve, then go crying around that you got fucked over.
J.Kb IS NOT using the Marxist labor theory of value, YOU are fucking setting up a fucking straw man
Mr Anonymous. right
Give yourself an identifiable handle, coward
[…] were a lot of comments in my post Why I am no longer a Libertarian that I decided I would respond to with a new […]
J.Kb IS NOT using the Marxist labor theory of value
Of course he is, that’s the only way he can decide what the price “should” be, independent of what buyers decide, and then determine what is “gouging”.
Mr Anonymous. right / Give yourself an identifiable handle, coward
I suppose you would demand I put my Jewish name in the German phone book, or my Japanese/German/Italian name in the American census, so you can round me up later as a scapegoat. I hear the stock market is going down. Must be the fault of those blood-sucking parasites the libertarian businessmen. Speculators. Capitalists. Kulaks. Class enemies.
Price controls were one of the National Socialist policies. Wanting price controls does make your policy views historically similar to those of the leader of a German political party. Hitler’s administration deserves study to learn what policy mistakes not to make again; it had more economic details to it than just scapegoating a minority to shift blame for the sanctions imposed by the victors after losing a war.
This is where your shit completely falls apart into economic anarchy.
I never said I want to fix prices or the market in anything close to the perpetuity. For the few days after a hurricane until normal traffic returns to normal saying “you can’t raise your prices more than 20% over what they were before the crisis” is neither socialist or Hitlarian, and that you can’t parse the difference shows just how extreme you are.
For the few days after a hurricane until normal traffic returns to normal saying “you can’t raise your prices more than 20% over what they were before the crisis”
This is a government policy under which all the gas may be purchased, leaving none at any price for granny’s insulin fridge generator. I am reporting a historical observation of gas station conditions in Florida. It’s not a speculation or a theory, it is an observed fact that occurred in a specific time and place.
To late to this party, but the two types of insulin I use only require refrigeration before it’s opened. Once it’s open it’s good for 30 days for one, 40 days for the other. As for generators, I passed through Knoxville and bought the last one available to any Lowe’s between Knoxville to Brownsville, along with 5 gas cans. I stopped in Dallas to fuel all up and brought them home to the coast. It’s called paying attention and planning ahead. Neighbors take care of helpless neighbors, I don’t worry about able bodied people that should pay attention and plan ahead.