Theoretically, its the stores that should be raising the pricing immediately when panics like this happen.

It would dissuade people from buying more than they need, possibly in hopes of reselling, as the prices would already be elevated.

So only rich people deserve items demanded in a panic?

The proper control is limit purchase per person per day. Raising prices on things like masks in a viral contagion like this is unconscionable

No one said anything about only "rich people" "deserving" anything. If you draw the conclusion that only "rich people" will have access to something if the price is higher (notice they didn't specify how much) that's fine, but don't go putting words in other people's mouths.

> but don't go putting words in other people's mouths.

It's not "putting words in other people's mouths" to explicitly spell out the direct consequences of what they're saying. When the price of a good spikes to several times its everyday market price or even higher, it's reasonable to assume that it's gone up by enough to make it inaccessible to a meaningful portion of the usual customer base.

For a disposable item like face masks, consumers would gladly pay 3x the pre-pandemic mask prices for their own personal use. The buyers who aren’t willing to pay 3x are hoarders and resellers, because there’s no guarantee enough people will pay 5x or 6x for it to be worth it.

If the manufacturer prices are allowed to rise, the profits incentivize increased manufacturing. If the prices aren’t allowed to rise, the rationally selfish strategy is to hoard the entire stock of any non-gouging manufacturer and sell the product on a gray market like Amazon where anti-gouging rules are poorly enforced. The profits obtained by resellers could have instead gone to manufacturers, encouraging more people to become manufacturers until prices return to normal.

Nobody wants masks to be unavailable to the poor. The disagreement is what measures will best make them available to everyone, the poor included.

It’s reasonable for people to disagree on whether relaxing price controls would achieve this end. But to say that free-market advocates believe the poor “don’t deserve” access to masks is as disingenuous as saying anti-gouging advocates believe the public “deserves shortages”, or that people who aren’t tenacious enough to find masks at any price in a hoarding-dominated environment deserve to die. Any sane person acknowledges both solutions have major drawbacks.

"Free market advocates instead believe the poor should get essential goods last, if there's still enough profit in it."

That fits your narrative, no?

Free market ultimately amounts to how much can we push people's capacity to suffer in order to profit the Capitalists, can we raise the price of water, can we raise the price of food, can we work people 20 hours a day, will they still work if they can't afford clothes, can we psychological convince them not to riot and so remove even more of their humanity; will the poor still work if life-expectancy is down to 60 years, howabout 59?

It's the literal and direct point of rising the price. If an item is sought after by everyone, then rising the price primarily cuts off the least wealthy part.

Raising the price does not "primarily" cut off the least wealthy potential buyers, that is just one of the effects. Much more important is that it prevents people from hoarding, which is by far the most common result of prices being drastically lower than they ought to be. Leaving the prices low predictably causes shortages, which shut out virtually everyone from purchasing the masks, including the microscopic percentage that wouldn't be able to afford the price increase on an item that usually costs pennies.

You didn't answer why imposing limits on how many each individual may purchase isn't a reasonable solution. It prevents hoarding and keeps prices normal. Sure, the manufacturer or retailer doesn't profit, but if they were happy to get price $X pre-panic, why are they not happy to get the same price now? Their costs haven't changed (yet).

It just forces the people who corner the market to employ agents who buy the products in smaller batches. It helps a bit but doesn't fundamentally change the dynamics.

It does though. If you employ agents, you have to pay them, which increases your costs. If you're buying for yourself, you only pay for the cost of the item. So this would do exactly what everyone is recommending per economic theory - raise costs for scalpers, keep them sane for everyone else. Purchase limits provide an easy selection mechanism between scalpers and others.

Also, in a situation like this, how many people would choose to be an agent for someone else, versus buying for themselves?

All the waiters who are out of their jobs and urgently need money.

Cool. So costs go up only for scalpers and the unemployed get some cash? Sounds like a win-win to me :-)

Give poor people money, if you want to help them. Not queues and black markets.

It's usually quicker and easier to determine how much each person reasonably needs to get them through an emergency situation, than to predict how high the price could be driven by hoarders and scalpers. And handouts to poor people to cover the scalper's surcharge will quickly result in the scalpers charging that much more—cf. college tuition, for a non-emergency example.

Good point. A discussion about relative elasticity of demand and supply for college tuition, rents and eg face masks would be enlightening. Most of higher education is about signalling.

Hoarders and scalpers don't drive up the prices, they just reveal a market clearing price. Attempts to restrict market clearing mechanisms make scalpers and hoarders spring up in the first place.

In a less restricted economy, producers of masks would capture the price increases. And that would serve as a good incentive for them to keep extra capacity around.

If your ration coupons for face masks were freely tradeable, the resulting system wouldn't look that much different from letting the price of face masks themselves freely fluctuate; and giving people the right amount of money. (It would still be a bit more awkward in comparison.)

Then you just drive prices up and put the poorest non-poor people into the same class as the poor.

Higher prices encourage more supply to spring up, and economizing on use.

Your remark is right for things like land that's in fixed supply.

If there are 10,000 masks in stock but 100,000 people want to buy a mask, how do you distribute the masks to people? In a free market the price is determined by supply and demand, such that only 10,000 people will be willing to pay the higher price of the mask. Socialism doesn't work in this case, you just can't satisfy everyone's need for masks.

I'd argue that people shouldn't even buy masks during pandemics and they should be reserved for medical staff who actually need them and know how to use them properly.

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need", as the maxim goes.

You distribute according to highest need. Which is what you said.

It's strange that you said "socialism doesn't work here" and then in the next sentence gave the socialist solution "distribute according to the greatest need"; which here would be medical staff.

The difficulty with that is human greed. Capitalism embodies human greed and turns it, with careful intervention, towards a relatively useful force (when resources are limitless!). Communism tries to fight human greed, which is why it can't be imposed and must be adopted. Communistic systems readily get overrun by capitalistic actions - under war-time rationing, for example, black markets rise up ... one greedy person ruins the whole system, one generous person does not.

People should have to give up greater degrees of utility to obtain something scarce and valuable, yes. If someone rich gives up more currency to get something then so be it - they built up that currency by creating value for others in the first place.

>they built up that currency by creating value for others in the first place.

t. nonessential worker

Regardless of if they make a profit, they saw a discrepancy between current prices and what they considered more accurate prices and to the extent they made a profit they were correct. There is still the huge benefit that now these masks will be purchased in more reasonable quantities by customers, ensuring more people get the masks they need.

> There is still the huge benefit that now these masks will be purchased in more reasonable quantities by customers, ensuring more people get the masks they need

Lol, no way. The need is for medical staff. These will either sit in some gouger's garage waiting for a premium price, or be needlessly used by someone affluent. Neither which is "need".

I would perhaps grant you "evil", but "bad", definitely not. This is one of those rare things economists seem to agree on. [0] The scenario you described would be unlikely if price gouging was legal/encouraged as the extra profit would largely be captured higher up in the chain (e.g. by the production factories). This would incentivize the re-purposing of factories to manufacture the high demand products, discourage hoarding, etc.

[0] https://www.econlib.org/archives/2017/09/a_poll_of_econo.htm...

Yes. It would also encourage exactly the kind of resiliency that many commenters here think the government should mandate by law.

If you can legally sell your masks in time of crisis for a hundred dollar a piece, that's a great incentive to keep some spare capacity around that doesn't rely on global supply chains. Price controls dull the edge of that incentive.

(If more people were allowed to raise prices and thus kept spare capacity around, prices wouldn't rise so much in the first place.)