News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by ajmurmann on Thursday September 30, 2021 @04:09PM (#28710734)
There are laws against price gouging. I believe those only apply during emergencies.

Personally, I believe it's manufacturers not asking for the price the market is willing to pay and scalpers taking advantage of that. Charging real prices also can prevent hording in certain emergencies.

Re:Chip shortage leads carmaker Opel to shut German plant un... by simonh on Friday October 01, 2021 @03:42AM (#28715732)
Manufacturers aren’t always able to charge real market prices in a flexible way. They rely of regular reliable order volumes and can’t charge different prices to different customers, and can’t vary prices easily day to day so can’t take advantage of the fact different customers are willing to pay different prices. They also often don’t have distribution and extensive dispersed inventory, so can’t offer different prices to different geographic markets, or different markets with particular volume requirements, or different order/delivery latency tolerances.