(08-18-2024, 10:05 AM)HURRICANE!!! Wrote:

(08-17-2024, 01:37 PM)flsprtsgod Wrote: Would a doubling of the price of toilet paper in March 2020 have been a net positive or negative?

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Certainly you would believe that.

Re: Doubling the price of TP ...... Yes, this is what I'm talking about .... doubling the price of a necessity item would constitute gouging.  This is a prime example that can't be shrugged off by Supply / Demand justification that the suppliers can simply take advantage of crisis situation.

And that's what you don't get about economics, prices control scarcity and supply. Since the prices DIDN'T double (or more) half the people who would've bought some at that price couldn't find any to buy and we had severe shortages. Meanwhile, people like my mother-in-law had 30 cases of TP in her garage for two people. That's the function of price increases, to passively prevent hoarding. 

The same can be said of generators after a hurricane. My uncle in South Carolina owns three box trucks that he used to bring supplies to my family in SW Florida after Ft Myers got wiped out. "Price gouging" laws made it unprofitable for him to load up 300 generators and bring them in to sell. So instead of having those generators available for people to buy at a higher price they had none to buy at all. Because higher prices also incentivize people to bring supply to the market. Artificial interference in these mechanisms simply make people unaffected by the supply problems able to puff their chests and virtual signal about how the fight "profits."

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