Sun Devil 92
Diamond Member
- Apr 2, 2015
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Consumers face coronavirus price-gouging
As fears over the coronavirus grow, people are frantically buying up supplies and leaving store shelves empty. Prices are also sky-rocketing online as demand grows, such as two large bottles of Purell hand sanitizer on sale for nearly $300 on Amazon. The same size normally sells for about $9 a bottle. An Amazon spokesperson says the company does not allow price gouging and it has "recently blocked or removed tens of thousands of offers." Anna Werner reports from a pharmacy in Manhattan on how coronavirus price gouging is affecting consumers.
How coronavirus price-gouging is hurting consumers
Have you experienced price gouging? I've heard several people say that they have. Since I don't do much shopping, I can't speak to any personal experiences - yet.
Here's the issue with price gauging. If you don't allow prices to fluctuate with the market, the result is there is no product.
When demand goes up, the cost goes up, which results in there being an incentive to bring products to market.
If you deny that system, then the result is there simply is not product.
I can think of dozens of examples of this. After Hurricane Sandy, the mayor of New York sent out police to stop gas stations that were charging a higher price for gasoline.
The result after that, was that gas stations sold out of gas, and people simply.... didn't have any gas for their cars.
Before that, with higher prices, the gas stations were willing to pay gas suppliers a higher fee, to get gasoline shipped into the hurricane zone, which then allowed them to sell to customers, albeit at a higher price.
But with the government sending in police to shut down gas stations engaged in this, the result was no one was willing to pay a higher price for gas, so gas simply didn't show up, the gas stations ran out of gas, and everyone couldn't fill up their cars.
Similarly after Katrina, a hardware store owner contacted private trucking firms, to pick up gas generators, and truck them into the hurricane zone to his store. Of course doing that is horribly expensive, so the store owner sold the generators at a much higher price.... now interestingly, even at the higher price, he lost money on every generator sold.
Nevertheless, he was attacked and destroyed in the media for price gauging, and never had another generator trucked into New Orleans. He lamented that all the other hardware stores were not attacked for price gauging, even though all of them had no generators at all. And of course he closed his store, and provided no generators after that either.
Now as it relates specifically to this situation, I read a post from someone complaining about price gauging. They went to walmart or some other store, and found absolutely nothing. They went to a small independent shop, and found the shelves were full... but the prices were higher.
See, walmart and the other big stores, know that if they provide product at a higher price, that people will scream about gauging. And you know this is true.
So instead, when the product runs out... it just runs out. That's what you want. You'd rather have no product, than a product at higher price. So... no product.
The smaller shops are less likely to be mentioned on that national news, so they raise prices, which allows them to pay for more product, and thus they have product.
When you prevent product prices from adjusting, you result in Venezuela results. Price controls always.... ALWAYS result in shortage.
There's a reason why you can't even find coffee, in a country in the very center of a coffee bean growing region. Price controls.
So whether it is price controls on gas or power generators in a hurricane zone, or price controls on food in Venezuela, or if you control the price of hand sanitizer in the name of "price gouging", the result will always be shortages.
This is a definite crisis where socialism should override capitalism!
This is where you show what an ignorant bastard you are.
They can only raise prices if they'll get those prices. Keeping prices low does not increase supply. It means gas lines and someone won't get what they want.
Only the poor get excluded if they can't pay.
If you lower prices then it becomes a lottery. The same number still don't get something.
That's how a market works.