[staytrue]

Tell us: 1: Exactly how you would determine someone is "gouging"

Gouging is when the customer needs something that is critical to their health and when the supplier has a monopoly over a short time period. An example would be someone needs a ladder to escape from a burning building and you have the only ladder around. Gouging is if you ask 10,000 dollars to rent the ladder for a few minutes. Here you have a temporary monopoly and the customer needs it to survive.

[OCgolfer]

Gouging is when the customer needs something that is critical to their health and when the supplier has a monopoly over a short time period. An example would be someone needs a ladder to escape from a burning building and you have the only ladder around. Gouging is if you ask 10,000 dollars to rent the ladder for a few minutes. Here you have a temporary monopoly and the customer needs it to survive

So, if you were making Florida's anti-gouging law, you would put into law that a $10,000 ladder is against the law, but a $9999 is ok? What about the $5000 ladder? Or the $500 ladder? Tell me again what is gouging and how would you write the law? Is a ladder generally considered "critical to their health"?

What about the case of generators? Is $1000 a gouge? Or $500? How would you write the law? Is a generator considered "critical to their health".

Can you see how ridiculous some laws can be?

[flashbunny]

"An example would be someone needs a ladder to escape from a burning building and you have the only ladder around. Gouging is if you ask 10,000 dollars to rent the ladder for a few minutes"

Super. Thanks for the most dire example you can think of.

Now, answer a question:

Who owns the ladder?

Now, keep in mind you may want to change the subject to what the ladder owner SHOULD do in this siutation...how he's going to hell if he charges any money, how the goverment should step in and take it, etc. That's the easy way out. Try not to take it. Instead, think about the most basic issue- who owns that ladder?

Your answer will determine what you truly believe in.

Who owns that ladder? The person who planned ahead and bought it, the people who didn't plan ahead but need it, or the government?

If you answer 'the person that bought it', you believe in freedom.
If you answer 'the people who need it but didn't plan ahead', you believe in theft.
If you answer 'the government', you believe in socialism.

Only the true owner of the ladder has the right to determine how something he sacrificed his time and money to buy has the right to determine what he should do with it. So answer who really owns that ladder.

Of course, forcing people to acknowledge this distinction will likely either get me called a nazi, cold hearted, or whatever else the offended party can managed to spew out with the hatred and anger. But it doesn't change what they believe in at their core. The personal attacks and emotional bile that spews forth is just a sign that they only can think with what they feel at the moment. They have no core principles on which they are based - they merely drift along from situation to situation, changing their principles like a weather vane in a windstorm.

[konaice]

Gouging is when the customer needs something that is critical to their health and when the supplier has a monopoly over a short time period.

I'm sorry, but you don't get to define gouging for us.

"Gouging" (to the extent that it exists at all) can occur without a monopoly and without a real shortage, and without any threat to health or safety.

All it takes is a perceived shortage, or a perceived impending shortage.

Further, in those cases where such a perception triggers panic buying, the natural tendency is for prices to go up, because a properly functioning market derives the highest price the customer is willing to pay, and/or the lowest price at which the supplier is willing to sell. This is a GOOD THING^tm. It regulates demand. It regulates supply.

Gouging is ill defined, but generally is perceived to be any price which results in "excess" profits (what ever that might be). Gouging is largely a pejorative used to describe a market situation unfavorable to the the person making the allegation. There is no universally accepted description of the term in Economics.

Gas stations in Atlanta can charge $6/gal not because there is an actual shortage in Atlanta, but merely because there is a perceived future shortage.

They can do this without any collusion in what clearly is a non-monopoly situation, by simply doing business according to the free market principals.