Argument against limiting price increases of items during disaster

[twinter11]

I was researching what the law really says about sellers increasing prices on high demand items during a disaster.

Mainly because I disagree with limiting profits on items in short supply.

Do Anti Gouging laws cause  the items to be available to No One?

A link and 2 excerpts:

https://thefederalist.com/2018/09/13/price-gouging-helps-people-recover-faster-natural-disasters/

" It’s counterintuitive but axiomatic that to make goods cheap and dependably available, businesses must be allowed to charge the highest possible price for their goods and services. This automatically does three things.

First, it entices greater supply by attracting competitors in surrounding areas to shift their inventory into the high-demand area. When price gouging is legal, it creates an extremely lucrative entrepreneurial opportunity for suppliers to anticipate shortages before the first raindrop falls. Load some chainsaws and powdered milk into your truck in Kansas City, and you might just make a small fortune bringing essential supplies into Charlotte.

Second, it automatically rations the remaining stock until more can arrive. Sure, $10 might seem like too much to pay for a gallon of milk. But at least there’s milk to be had. Have you ever tried to buy milk and bread in advance of a blizzard? Legal price gouging minimizes interruptions in supply that can stoke the kind of desperation that leads to looting and lawlessness.

2nd excerpt-

"Price gougers are entrepreneurial heroes who instantaneously begin the relief and recovery process long before the wheels of the unwieldy juggernaut of government begin to turn. If you want to save lives and maintain order, let suppliers gouge away."

Feel free to counter argue.

[myangelandmyprincess]

Price gougers are most certainly not Heros who simply want to offer relief.  A hero would be one who bought all that and brought it for free or even for normal price to an area that doesn't have access.  A price gouger is taking advantage of a bad situation making money off the detriment of others.  Allowing such would encourage someone to buy up all the stock before anyone who needs it could so they then can make their exorbitant profits off others downfall.  

[movieman630]

Bottom line. It's a FREE Market. If the items are YOURS, you own them. You have the right to price them for whatever price you want. People have the RIGHT to buy them or not buy them if they think the price is too high. The choice is the buyers. If I want to charge a million dollars for a bic pen and someone wants to pay a million dollars for a bic pen that's up to them. Bottom line. It's MY PEN. If I want to ask a million dollars for it that's my business and my RIGHT to do so.

If I have surgical masks and want to charge $1000 per mask that's my RIGHT! You have the right to NOT BUY THEM. THEY'RE MY MASKS.

How is that not easy to understand?

[dk0]

This is a lot of bull designed to make those who participate in price gouging feel better about themselves, and/or justify their actions to others.

In the long term, price is a function of supply and demand.  More demand for an item will cause prices to rise, which will increase supply.  But in a price gouging situation, no one is going to increase their dairy herd just because of a blizzard in the forecast.

Generally speaking, price gouging is just a way for sellers to line their pockets by preying on the most vulnerable.  (Unfortunately, certain drug companies get away with it.)

[pburn]

I think using the word "researching" is a bit of a stretch for the word, "Googling." Copy/pasting the opinion of a conservative blogger guy offered on a website that has, at the very best, a right bias, and, in fact, won't even disclosed its funding sources, is hardly "research."

Did you also do any "research" on that website's LGBTQ-bashing "articles?" Or its opinion-pieces in support of Ray Moore, encouraging Alabama voters to support him, despite his sexual assault allegations? And defending his dating preferences (dating teenage girls when in his thirties) because "this practice has a long history and is not without some merit if one wants to raise a large family."

I could not get off that site fast enough. For me, in my opinion, any post that cites The Federalist is not worth a counter argument.

[luckythewinner]

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@twinter11 wrote:

"Price gougers are entrepreneurial heroes who instantaneously begin the relief and recovery process long before the wheels of the unwieldy juggernaut of government begin to turn.

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If someone seriously believes that buying up all the local supply of a critical item and then doubling the price is helping that local area recover quickly, then I doubt there is any argument they would satisfy such twisted logic. 

And in that scenario, blaming some "unwieldly juggernaut of government" is laughable. 

[short_circuit.lineman61]

When demand exceeds supply for anything, prices go up, this encourages factories to pay overtime to produce more, encourages suppliers to rush shipments to market and discourages hoarding by those who really do not 

need the supplies.

In other words a free market works very well when left alone, price controls only increase shortages.

[pburn]

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@short_circuit.lineman61 wrote:

When demand exceeds supply for anything, prices go up . . .

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Yeah, well, not exactly. Depends on the price elasticity of demand (ped) for any given item. If the demand for an item is elastic, the increased price will lead to a drop in demand.

[myangelandmyprincess]

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@movieman630 wrote:
Bottom line. It's a FREE Market. If the items are YOURS, you own them. You have the right to price them for whatever price you want. People have the RIGHT to buy them or not buy them if they think the price is too high. The choice is the buyers. If I want to charge a million dollars for a bic pen and someone wants to pay a million dollars for a bic pen that's up to them. Bottom line. It's MY PEN. If I want to ask a million dollars for it that's my business and my RIGHT to do so.

If I have surgical masks and want to charge $1000 per mask that's my RIGHT! You have the right to NOT BUY THEM. THEY'RE MY MASKS.

How is that not easy to understand?

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Except there are exceptions to those rights and price gouging in a time of crisis is one. So no you don't necessarily have that right.  

https://consumer.findlaw.com/consumer-transactions/price-gouging-laws-by-state.html

This has the laws listed by state