''"Price gouging by Texas merchants in the path of Hurricane Harvey has drawn the attention of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who said Saturday that his office is looking into such cases.
“We’ve already found one big retailer that was charging $42 for a case of water,” Paxton told Fox & Friends. “Another, a gas station $99 for a case of water.”
"We’ll be dealing with those people as we find them,” he said."''
Are they stupid? This is how you radicalize people away from you. "wtf why aren't we allowed to starve you during natural disasters!"
Alexander Johnson
You underestimate just how high on ideology these guys tend to be.
Brody Davis
how does Holla Forums refute this
Luis Perez
Here's a screencap of the full thing. I couldn't archive it because Forbes has some weird welcome popup that fucks it up. The guy who wrote it is a "Senior Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute" and a UKIP supporter.
Juan Hill
ow the edge
Noah Peterson
Supply naturally increases to meet demand regardless of price. Price gouging is just a temporary way to needlessly increase the profits of the companies in Texas at the expense of people who just got hit by a fucking hurricane.
Brody Ward
Because making the poor (who are most affected by natural disaster" empty their bank accounts for basic necessities is fucking abominable. it reads more like a treatise on why using le free market to attend to disasters is a fucking terrible idea that only the worst of sociopaths would support.
Jack Hernandez
And he has the gall to lecture other people on "Econ 101"?
Regardless of what one thinks about the UK leaving the EU, pretty much every economist was unanimous in their judgment that Brexit, in the form advocated by the UKIP movement, was an economically disastrous proposition.
Mason Clark
Forbes has a bunch of weird shit on its website.
Xavier Jenkins
Because "Supply and Demand balancing out" for necessities doesn't mean everyone gets them. It means only people who can afford/shell out in desperation manage to secure them. Rationing by price isn't even a good idea, those who can afford the goods will hoard them when they could be rationed out while people wait for aid. We can't exactly rely on people in a disaster zone to be charitable/reasonable enough to share. As for the idea that "they're willing to pay so it's okay", apparently it's fine to force someone to become an indentured servant for life if you're the only person with some life saving medicine, after all, they willingly made the exchange right?
Justin Richardson
The cases the article mentions aren't of people bringing in new supplies, but rather people who held onto the supplies that were already in the disaster area.
Jeremiah Nelson
I've seen other articles justifying price gouging or, at best, arguing the issue would correct itself.
Fuck this country tbh
James Jones
Because if you just have a coordinated effort to meet people's needs then you will eventually be able to meet them, but in the meantime rationed water will be administered to the people who need it and not to whoever can most afford it. It also helps combat hoarding, since it's entirely possible that gougers will artificially limit supplies to drive up the price.
Adam Adams
Amazingly this is one of the very rare occasions when the capitalist media is (accidentally) half right. Read Koffski.
Elijah Garcia
Price gouging isn't going to get relief supplies there any faster.
Jayden Price
don't worry guyz the free market always provides
amen
Chase Hall
Literally who. Seriously I can't even find him on google.
Jordan Lee
Who is Koffski?
Owen Cooper
And people wonder why people started looting during Katrina. Lmao.
I would steal if I was in their situation as well. Fuck that bullshit. Over 20 dollars for water? These motherfuckers need to be hung.
Easton King
That's just the normal price for a 24 pack of water. :^)
Christopher James
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Jackson Parker
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David Roberts
Freedom ain't free
Adrian Rivera
Nothing, free market right? What if the poor just steal what they need? What's that? That's illegal? So is price gouging. What's the the police will kill them? There's more proles with guns than bourgeois with pigs. I thought killing was okay, oh… only when it comes to protecting your property.
Camden Sanders
How could communism solve there being more demand than supply in the case of a disaster? Give everything to the dear leader and everybody else just dies?
This guy is fucking retarded. He claims to be an economist but I took economics 101 and have a little business experience and can tell you he doesn't know shit about how the free market works.
You find a niche and you exploit it until it's no longer profitable; that's like business 101. You go there while water is $40 and undercut the competition and people buy from you. They then undercut you and people buy from them. You undercut them and people buy from you. Every time you undercut the competition you're still making buko bux, just not peak profits. Eventually the price returns to normal or to a point where it's not profitable to go lower and equilibrium is achieved.
Let me reiterate; this guy is a fucking moron.
Ryder Ross
Since when is Juche communism?
Henry Long
Disaster relief and rationing. The sane way.
Grayson Baker
And if there's not enough to sustain the entire population without some dying? What then? Who gets to live and who gets to die?
Kevin Watson
B A S I C E C O N O M I C S
You know Professor Wolff became a marxian economist AFTER already having a Masters in economics.
Andrew Peterson
Well obviously the people with the most money are more gooder, so more people die instead under capitalism.
Elijah Smith
He must have cheated on his exams Is that even possible? Sounds like a fraud
Xavier Brooks
You didn't answer the question. Who is chosen to die?
Caleb Martin
...
William Roberts
Also appeal to authority fallacy. His argument is illogical and unsupported, mine was clearly outlined and logical
James Turner
You are the one advocating for tyranny of capital, so everyone who can't afford $100 for some water bottles should die. Under a fair system it would go to those most in need, children, sick, elderly etc. and then distributed as evenly as possible to the rest.
Levi Russell
I know this as someone with experience in business. People with a nose for business cream themselves when they find an inefficiency like that. They live to serve that market and make tons of profit. He's living in la la land
Joseph Green
So you're saying that the lives of children, sick, and elderly, are worth more than people who can actually work and fix the mess that is the disaster? Wow, no wonder communism always fucks up. When the first famine comes they let the productive people die so the useless people can live. Then nobody is left to unfuck everything and they starve too!
Ian Anderson
He's also going against the scientific consensus in economics. He's like a climate change denier of economics
Parker Sanders
So price gouging is good because what exactly?
William Butler
Those are people who are not chosen to live but those who are at most risk to die.
Alexander Jenkins
Yeah, who needs to actually study economics and it's social impacts when you can have muh intuition as a small business entrepreneur meme? Thank you for doing all you can to rip people off, blessed job creator.
James Lewis
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Ayden Clark
You either think economics is a legitimate field of study and consensus matters, or you think it's pseudoscience and his qualifications mean nothing except that he's exceptionally well qualified at fortune telling. Pick your poison
Dylan Turner
It's not good or bad. It's just something that seems outrageous to idiots, but is in fact a natural part of the market recovering
Jaxon Morales
The only way to pay for freedom is sweat and blood. The slavers won't just going to release you for paying him a hundered.
Christian Lewis
How about "economics is a soft science, being mostly sociological" meaning that it's incredibly difficult for there to be a "scientific consensus" because soft science doesn't work that way.
Samuel Peterson
A lot of bourgeois economics isn't "scientific" in any sense, it's presented as unquestionable dogma and critiques of any kind aren't even taught. Listen to Wolff talking about his experience in school.
There would be no water to photograph if the price was lower
Who wonders that? Of course there's going to be looting in New Orleans. There's looting even with no hurricane.
Christian Lopez
If there is water to take pictures of then that means there is someone who needs water but cant have it.
Easton Adams
They don't need a hurricane to run out of food and water, that's just Wednesday
Sebastian Peterson
There weren't any famines in communist nations after the Great Leap Forward, and it should be noted that there were famines in capitalist nations occurring in the same time period. In fact, "breadlines" were a thing in the American Great Depression, not in any Marxist-Leninist country (in fact, the Soviets kind of overproduced bread)
Carter Ortiz
Except this is a disaster, you idiot, and necessities are in short supply.
Could some people undercut you in price? Sure. Except that, first, people are desperate and in danger and don't have the time or resources to "shop around" and even if they were, resources at reasonable prices will be quickly bought out, forcing many to have to go to the gougers, in many ways the people "undercutting" price are idiots for missing out on a profit opportunity and, second, people don't always behave the way bourgeois economists say they ought to. These people are perfectly aware that they're able to get away with this gouging because this is a disaster and people are desperate and supplies are low, they're not going to let go of a wonderful profit opportunity because some vague law of the market says they ought to because maybe these stranded and desperate people might shop around.
Daniel Kelly
Am I the only Houstonfag on Holla Forums?
Asher Collins
He does also have a PhD in Economics as well tho. But don't worry you definitely know more than him with your babby tier economics education.
Jonathan Mitchell
no
Aaron Gray
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Jayden Reyes
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Christopher Cox
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Jack Rivera
I don't know, how do you refute a fantasy scenario based on wishful thinking?
Nolan Morgan
Don't you know? All the world's problems would be solved if "the weak" weren't keeping "the strong" from doing it somehow
t. Ayn Rand
John Richardson
I want to put my hands around this cunt's neck and squeeze until I see the lifeforce leave his eyes. Jesus Christ and God Almighty, what a pile of refuse of a human being.