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Comment by csomar | Hacker News Reader

You can't fix this. You either have a free economy or you don't. What you need to ensure is that there is at least a few airlines and they are not cooperating to manipulate prices.

Now you say: But there is the case of "natural disasters". So what? There are ordinary people going through disasters everyday, not necessarily natural. Should we go out of our way to accommodate them.

Most importantly, if you accommodate enough people during natural disaster, you no longer have this supply/demand imbalance. Bam, problem solved.

Also consider the following: Capitalism kills the lower end who can't sustain itself. Socialism, so far, kills the whole system because the whole system can't sustain itself. Pick which one.

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This is just deification of capitalism and conflating decency in the face of a life threatening situation with "socialism". Others have already answered the question of what to do, but I'll repeat. Don't raise prices and let the goods sell FIFO with reasonable limits on quantities. Raising prices during a disaster does absolutely nothing to increase supply.

So you are just picking a different population. How is that more efficient than the free market other than making you feel good and compassionate.

A different and likely larger population that's more likely based on need.

In the event of a disaster, I assert the thing you're sat-solving for is "as many people as possible getting enough of a constrained resource to survive long enough to get out of the disaster condition". In my mind, that's both good and compassionate.

I believe in my case, the population would be people who can make it to the store - unchanged from what it was before the store started limiting quantities.

I'm having a hard time not getting snarky here because, to be honest, you don't seem to be arguing in good faith.

> I'm having a hard time not getting snarky here because, to be honest, you don't seem to be arguing in good faith.

Really? Not in good faith? I'm neither a shareholder of these airlines, neither live in the US, and recently most of my income is not related to the US. I'm just stating my opinion.

Depends on the outcome and how you measure efficiency.

Say there is a water shortage and lots of hoarding resulting in high profits and a couple of deaths.

Is that outcome more efficient than forced rationing resulting in less profit and less death?

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