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Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by londons_explore on Monday October 11, 2021 @06:43AM (#28826815)
The root cause is because "anti price gouging" laws are being enforced.

Previously, if there was a shortage of say plane brake discs, the wholesaler would jack the price up 10x for the last 3 sets. That would lead to one of the 4 customers who wanted to buy them to say "nah, it's too expensive, we don't need it that badly".

The person who wouldn't get a set was probably the guy restocking the spare parts shelf, while the people who really really needed those parts right now so a plane can takeoff got them.

In todays world, it's illegal to jack the price, one customer buys all the cheap stock (one to use, 2 as spares cos they heard about a shortage), and now 2 planes can't take off.

The same happens for thousands of other products all across the world. The end result is the people who really need goods can't get them, while others sit on piles of stock 'lucky we bought some just before they ran out!'. Endgame: The economy grinds to a halt over tiny shortages everywhere.

The proper solution is to allow and encourage price gouging again, and have a PR campaign to explain to the public how changing this law really is in their interests, even if it appears on the surface that paying $100 for a flashlight in an emergency can't be good for anyone.

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by brandmeyer on Monday October 11, 2021 @08:41AM (#28827669)
Careful: you're letting ideology get in the way of the facts.

Price gouging laws are exclusively a local and state matter, and only apply at the retail level. Although there have been proposals for price-gouging laws at the federal level, none have been enacted. State laws don't generally apply to B2B interactions.

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by londons_explore on Monday October 11, 2021 @09:55AM (#28828330)
I'm not sure it matters...

Any goods wholesaler I know of goes straight from "in stock, the price is X" to "out of stock, even if you offer a million $ you can't have any". Nobody auto-increases prices as stock runs low.

Perhaps it isn't illegal to do so, but nobody does it, probably because businesses believe it's illegal to do so.

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by nradov on Monday October 11, 2021 @10:35AM (#28828780)
What an ignorant comment. Commercial suppliers are fully aware that there are no price gouging laws. They choose not to boost prices when stock runs low because they don't want to burn relationships with long standing customers.

Also as a practical matter the software they're running simply doesn't have the feature to dynamically change prices based on inventory and lead time. So someone would have to manually update all the parts prices, then lower them again later. Not worth the hassle.

Re:Southwest operational meltdown as hundreds of flights can... by mywittyname on Monday October 11, 2021 @11:08AM (#28829183)
Any major business is going to have an army of lawyers to look into any potential business practice. It would be trivial for them to shoot off an email to legal asking, "can we jack up the prices of our parts based on inventory levels?"

The answer might be affirmative, but that doesn't mean that doing so is a good business move. If you were in charge of sourcing at a company, and a supplier pulled that shit on you, you'd be finding a replacement supplier rightquick. If a supply will gouge you for this reason, you can be sure they will be looking for other reasons in the future.

TL;DR: price gouging, even if legal, is bad optics.