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Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by mschuster91 on Friday May 29, 2020 @02:15PM (#23353550)
> I still don't understand why price gouging is not accepted.

It's generally, libertarian/ancap circles aside, viewed as immoral to exploit the essential needs of people; also it incentivizes hoarding which puts the availability of critical goods even more at risk. We have seen this in action with loo rolls, hand sanitizer and non-perishable food in the recent crisis, and with people actually getting punished for it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-pu...

Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by WalterBright on Friday May 29, 2020 @04:06PM (#23354872)
Rationing and price fixing cause hoarding. People hoard because they fear not being able to buy something in the future, which happens with the shortages caused by rationing and price fixing.

For example, back in the 70's with price controls on gas, people hoarded gas. All that nonsense stopped literally overnight when Reagan repealed all gas and allocation controls.

Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by KozmoNau7 on Saturday May 30, 2020 @01:06PM (#23362656)
People hoard because they either fear the prices will get jacked up soon, or because they hope the price will get jacked up soon, so they can make a neat profit off of other people's desperation.

Anti-gouging and rationing prevents that hoarding, as long as they are implemented intelligently.

Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by WalterBright on Saturday May 30, 2020 @04:14PM (#23364252)
> Anti-gouging and rationing prevents that hoarding

That's the theory, but the practice is the opposite. When people know they'll be able to buy something, they have little incentive to hoard.

Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by KozmoNau7 on Saturday May 30, 2020 @05:30PM (#23364932)
When people know the price won't increase wildly, and know that rationing means the shelves won't be suddenly empty due to hoarders, they will buy what they actually need and not try to hoard.

Additionally, since the price is kept manageable, everyone who needs the items will be able to afford them.

If you don't combat hoarding and price gouging, people will panic buy, because they know the price could increase at any point, and because the want to get ahead of the hoarders. Now they become the hoarders.

Libertarians fail to understand why businesses often do not extract the maximum possible profit from the market at all times, because they do not understand that commerce is much more complicated and human, and not solely based on supply, demand and price signals. They do not understand the business/consumer relationship. They do not understand morals and ethics, and why businesses would want to maintain a good relationship with the customer base, instead of fleecing them to the maximum possible extent.

Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by neilparikh on Friday May 29, 2020 @03:30PM (#23354465)
I think you’ve got it backwards. The only reason people were able to hoard so many units of hand sanitizer etc. was because stores sold it for too low of a price (ie. the store didn’t “price gouge”).
Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by zhoujianfu on Friday May 29, 2020 @04:26PM (#23355086)
Exactly, if there are no price gouging laws, the increase in prices will “trickle up” to the manufacturers, who will then increase production, thereby lowering prices. With price gouging laws, an increase in demand is not allowed to increase prices, so there’s no incentive to increase supply, and the result is shortages.
Re:Amazon sellers marking products as collectible to get aro... by KozmoNau7 on Saturday May 30, 2020 @01:04PM (#23362628)
The incentive to increase production supply is the ability to sell more products, which is decoupled from the ability to sell the same amount at higher prices.