Re: Price gouging is beneficial. Price gouging is great!

Bob LeChevalier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> "Robert N. Newshutz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> >> "Robert N. Newshutz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>>Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>"Byron Canfield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>>If price gouging were limited to disaster areas, perhaps the support of it
> >>>>>would no be so questionable, but that is typically where it occurs.
> >>>>
> >>>>Whenever a libertoonian posts that kind of tripe, I am moved to pray
> >>>>that they are struck destitute, left handicapped, or otherwise suffer
> >>>>some sort of problem wherein their mere existence requires the support
> >>>>of society.  
> >>>>
> >>>>Whereupon society should "gouge" them.
> >>>>
> >>>>Then I remember that I am a Christian.
> >>>
> >>>On 9/11 I decided to top off my gas tank, just in case. I was 
> >>>disuaded by the newly elevated "gouging" price.
> >>>
> >>>"Price gouging" is an effective means of countering hording.
> >> 
> >> I don't think it is.  Allowing price gouging merely encourages people
> >> to attempt to corner the market on needed supplies, whereupon they can
> >> hoard goods until the price reaches truly exorbitant levels.
> >> 
> >>>Do you have an alternative solution to hording?
> >> 
> >> No.  But hoarding is at best a secondary problem in a crisis.  making
> >> sure that everyone has food, clothing, and shelter is preeminent, and
> >> I for one would have no problem with government confiscation of vital
> >> supplies from both hoarders and gougers in an emergency, providing
> >> that compensation at fair market value is given after the fact in
> >> accordance with due process. 
> >> 
> >> For this I will surely be called a totalitarian fascist, but I don't
> >> much care.  Private property rights are secondary in a true emergency
> >> where lives are at stake.
> >> 
> >> (If it matters, my stance on this derives from gougers who trucked in
> >> water after the last big LA earthquake, and claimed it was moral to
> >> turn away the thirsty. 
> >
> >I do not think that you have provided an example of cornering the 
> >market,
> 
> I did not claim that I did.  I found the attitudes expressed at that
> time to be of subhuman morality.  My own feelings on the matter, and
> my utter antipathy to libertarianism, came as a result. 

No one expected that you would either.  I found the socialistic
attitudes expressed at that time to be of subhuman morality.  My own
feelings on the matter, and my utter antipathy to socialism's violence
and theft, came as a result.

> >was there only one trucking firm that brought in water?
> 
> Doesn't matter.  It is possible that one could control the market
> sufficiently to drive up prices due to the shortage without a total
> monopoly. That one would try to deny others the necessities of life in
> an emergency in the interests of profit, makes one morally subhuman.

Doesn't matter to a socialist.  It is possible for socialists to try
to control the market sufficiently to drive up prices and create
shortages without a total government monopoly. That socialists would
try to deny others the necessities of life in an emergency in the
interests of their political profit, and greed coupled with theft and
violence by government, makes them morally subhuman.  That is what
they did in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Communist
China, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, that slaughtered
the most people, in that order.
 
> >However, your example does show that private sources were faster 
> >than public ones in providing water.
> 
> I'm not sure that they were.
> 
> >Would it have been better if they had stayed home and not brought 
> >water into LA?
> 
> It would have been better if they had a shred of human decency.

It would have been better if the socialists had a shred of human
decency.

> >> By contrast, in the recent Isabel storm,
> >> electric companies bought up all the dry ice available for hundreds of
> >> miles around and distributed it for free on a rationing basis.
> >
> >Good for them, charity is often an appropriate response to tragedy. 
> 
> It is the ONLY appropriate response to tragedy.  Libertarians prefer
> greed, however.

It is the ONLY appropriate response to tragedy, along with voluntary
trade in economic freedom.  Socialists prefer greed coupled with
government violence and theft, however.  That is what they prefer in a
tragedy. And they create their own tragedies that way as they did
following the same reasoning in the former Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, Communist China, the National Socialist German Workers'
Party, that slaughtered the most people, in that order.

> Libertarians aren't afraid to use force.  They're just afraid of a
> more powerful force countering their use of force (i.e. government).
> They also think that the only kind of force that matters to morality
> is the kind that results in immediate lethal injury.

Socialists aren't afraid to use force.  They're just afraid of a
more powerful force countering their use of force (individual
self-defense against their greedy violence and theft). They're afraid
of the right of self defense, and that is why they want to disarm
everyone, as they did in the former Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, Communist China, the National Socialist German Workers'
Party, so that they could slaughter the most people, in that order. 
They also think that the only kind of force that is good morality is
wholesale use of government force for greedy theft and violence of the
kind that results in massive and even lethal injury.  That is what
they did in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Communist
China, the National Socialist German Workers' Party, where they
slaughtered the most people, in that order.