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Comment by dv_dt | Hacker News Reader

You forgot to mention any downside possibilities. You made tens of thousands selling water to people who had spare money and maybe just kept the water in reserve doing nothing, when people with no on-hand money potentially died for lack of clean water.

IMHO, market transactions work poorly when both actors can't walk away from the transaction. ie. when the free market has significant constraints in the "free" precondition.

Allowing gouging means resources go to people with money in an completely disjoint optimization function vs an optimization for valuing human life in an emergency. I think that's not only inefficient, it's unethical.

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In one system, water is apportioned according to ability and willingness to spend, and the supply goes up as sellers arrive to take advantage of high prices. People also don't waste water they don't need (e.g. for washing) even if they have the money; they sell it.

In the other system, water is apportioned according to who can get to the store faster, and supply never goes up because nobody has a reason to restore it. People use drinking water for washing if they have it, because it's not like you can sell it anyway.

In both scenarios the is significant inequity (whether by money or ability to get to a store fast and fight/negotiate for water). But overall, many more people suffer in scenario 2. This is obvious given all the suboptimal water use in scenario 2.

It's hard for me to understand why you'd prefer a scenario where obviously more people suffer.

What about people that literally can't afford to spend? In disaster areas with price gouging the people that pay the premiums are the rich and more well-off. The poor and those often most affected by hurricanes not only can't afford the gouging, but they also suffer the most by price gouging.

If a poor family only has $500 to their name and has to spend $100 to buy water just to survive, they've blown 20% of their total networth just to survive. A middle-class family spending $100 of 15,000 is far more likely to not be affected.

It's hard for me to understand how many people on HN can't fathom that price gouging affects the people most hurt by disasters. I don't care if price gouging means you'd gather up more supplies and head to a disaster zone because you're still taking drastic advantage of the poor for personal profit. Countries like Japan don't pull this same shit, so it's too bad that we rationalize our greed as being 'for the greater good'.

The bizarre libertarian point of view that you are arguing with says that poor people have the freedom to not be poor, and should be happy to sell all of their earthly possessions so a hero selling $100 bottles of water can be compensated for his bravery.

We all have a moral duty to use our franchise as citizens to keep these points of view out of government.

But we have that problem as a capitalist society with or without “price gouging”. And we have a solution for that problem too – charities and the government giveaway or subsidize essentials for people who can’t afford them.

If we allow the price of water to rise when supply is constrained, people who can afford the higher prices will use water more conservatively and board less, and people will still give it away to those who can’t afford to buy it. But people won’t have to wait in line all day to get their ration of water, and there will be incentives to create temporary channels to improve the supply of water even if those channels couldn’t be supported by the normal price of water.

The choice isn't between spending 20% of their net worth on water and getting it at usual prices. The choice is between spending 20% and not getting any water at all.

Which is why gouging is evil.

Are you seriously defending price gouging because otherwise those selfish Hurricane victims will waste precious water. ಠ_ಠ

Your scenario is completely wrong given that most places will put limits on how much you can buy.

And you say you're making fewer people suffer; I say you're disproportionately forcing the poor to take the brunt of the suffering.

If there was a limit, I'd immediatelly gather my whole extended family (15 persons) and send them to every store to buy as much as possible.

Another issue is that it starts to become more coercive a well, especially with vital resources. Taken to an extreme it amounts to literal duress. For instance you can't demand that someone sign over all of their wealth to you if you rescue them when they are in distress or else you'll leave them to die in the desert. An extreme example admittedly but illustrative of why there needs to be an upper limit somewhere. The precise agreement of 'when' is subject to some debate itself.

That proposition is not so extreme, and people do awful things when set loose from the rules by disaster or war.

There are thousands of stories where death, rape, theft, looting, etc have used by folks in positions of power to get what they want in these situations.

The obvious answer is to have competent government actors who can act quickly and protect human life without a financial incentive and disengage as situations improve.

> For instance you can't demand that someone sign over all of their wealth to you if you rescue them

You can demand all that and more if in the US healthcare market if the medical GoFundMe category is any indication. But that is perhaps too much of a digression...

But you can; whether you should, or if it is a decent thing to do, is a different matter.

Placing an upper limit means that you are less likely to be rescued at all, if the potential rescuer happens to not be a nice person (or is very risk-averse and rescuing you involves some risk).

In other words - if the person is nice, you do not need to have any limits, as they would not abuse the situation anyway. If they are not nice, with the limits they will not rescue you, but without, there is a chance that they will be overcome by greed and so will rescue you.

when you price cap what you are doing is telling shop keepers and warehouse owners that there is no purpose to risk your safety and open back up until things return to normal because you cant make extra profit so they just stay home and no one gets the needed supplies. When you let them profit at least those with money get supplies. The choices really are either no one gets supplies with price caps or only those with money get supplies when gouging is allowed. If supply was capable of reaching everyone then prices would quickly return to normal. There is no fair system of delivering limited supply and high demand without raising prices. If you come up with one please claim your noble prize as you would have the solution to world hunger and poverty

> when you price cap what you are doing is telling shop keepers and warehouse owners that there is no purpose to risk your safety and open back up until things return to normal because you cant make extra profit

Sure, if your only motivation in life is money.

As a side note in this debate : the choice isn't between selfish people that wants to make money and nice caring people sharing water for free. You can have both of it : no price cap => free marketer and good samaritans supply water from the exterior of the zone AND the state helps poor people / those who can afford to buy more bottles can share them with their poor neighbors (might even pay them back later in their life if they make it : arrangement between people is not the concern of the water supplier).

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