> Gas and oranges are hard to hoard

During the 1970's gas shortages (due to Nixon's price fixing policies) people hoarded gas by keeping their car tanks topped up. There were a number of newspaper stories about people waiting in line for hours for gas to add one gallon to their already nearly full tank.

Disagree. Gasoline is perhaps the quintessential example of disaster price "gouging". Ask anyone in a hurricane zone.

Personally I have mixed feelings: If the prices don't go up, the incentive to ramp up production is pretty weak. It does, though, seem inhumane that increased prices can have an outsized bad effect for the very poor in disaster situations.

What happens in a hurricane zone (or used to happen until laws were passed against it) is everyone outside the zone with a pickup truck and a gas can would fill the can with gas and drive it into the zone and sell it at a profit.

This caused a huge hue and cry about how terrible it was. So the law clamped down on it.

Now people in a hurricane zone get no gas while they wait around for the government to provide some.

So, which is better:

1. gas at a higher price

2. no gas

?

Apparently it's easier to downvote than to suggest a workable alternative.

Per Sowell, there is no cosmic justice, and pretending so just makes things worse.

Yup. Designing an economy around denying fundamental human nature is doomed to miserable failure.