What's wrong with PRICE-GOUGING? during a DISASTER or any other time?

[coloradoatheist]

Certainly liberals are much more in favor of spending other people's money than conservatives and libertarians. But I thought Loren was talking about not enough people willing to spend their own money to help.

Well of course, since rethuglicans are bent on giving all the money to themselves. Once they succeed, spending other people's money isn't very lucrative for them.

Has the proposal been for every tax payer to chip in $100 a year for disaster recovery?

 

[Bronzeage]

Well of course, since rethuglicans are bent on giving all the money to themselves. Once they succeed, spending other people's money isn't very lucrative for them.

Has the proposal been for every tax payer to chip in $100 a year for disaster recovery?

I've lived in Louisiana all my financially responsible adult years, and have never suffered a dollar's worth of property damage in a hurricane, so I'm not paying anything.

Fuck that shit.

 

[RavenSky]

Yes, of course, nothing works better than rationing X to get people to calm down about getting X.

In a disaster situation it helps more than price gouging. With rationing you don't have to worry about there being nothing for you and your family. With rationing sociopathic opportunists can't buy out the supply to resell at a 3000% markup putting the goods out of the price reach of people that need those goods.

And it's not like real world experience would suggest rationing rewards the wrong people and creates black markets.

"Wrong people" . . . you mean those dirty poors?

Strangely,one of our local grocery stores announced that they had received a shipment of water ahead of this hurricane. People lined up, and each were given 2.5 gallons. There was no pushing, no price gouging, no panic, and especially no hoarders.

Contrast with the scene at another local store that did not <whispering the dirty word> ratio the water... it looked worse than a Best Buy on Black Friday.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Even with no idea what you're on about, I can confidently predict that it doesn't support your contention and probably isn't even relevant.

But for a lot of the things that can be price gouged, the government would not be in a position to prevent it. Water and food, yes, but not everything. Airlines raising their prices to compensate for everyone wanting to leave the state by air. The gas lines in Dallas where the government can't just ship in enough gas to meet the increase in demand. Hurricane preparation supplies too.

Raising prices solves a lot of problems, the only problem with it is the questionable moral issue.

I don't see that it solves any problems in those cases.

 

[Elixir]

Has the proposal been for every tax payer to chip in $100 a year for disaster recovery?

I've lived in Louisiana all my financially responsible adult years, and have never suffered a dollar's worth of property damage in a hurricane, so I'm not paying anything.

Fuck that shit.

If such donations were to be mandated, they should proportional to income, not 1% of the total income of someone making 10k and 0.001% of the income of someone making 10m.

 

[skepticalbip]

In a disaster situation it helps more than price gouging. With rationing you don't have to worry about there being nothing for you and your family. With rationing sociopathic opportunists can't buy out the supply to resell at a 3000% markup putting the goods out of the price reach of people that need those goods.

And it's not like real world experience would suggest rationing rewards the wrong people and creates black markets.

"Wrong people" . . . you mean those dirty poors?

Strangely,one of our local grocery stores announced that they had received a shipment of water ahead of this hurricane. People lined up, and each were given 2.5 gallons. There was no pushing, no price gouging, no panic, and especially no hoarders.

Contrast with the scene at another local store that did not <whispering the dirty word> ratio the water... it looked worse than a Best Buy on Black Friday.

In 2016 I stocked thirty gallons of tap water from my kitchen faucet in part of my preparation for Hurricane Matthew. I was without outside power, telephone, transportation, food, or water for almost three weeks after Matthew went through. I had no problems except a lot of clean up effort during the day and boredom after sunset.

This year I have made the same preparations for Hurricane Irma.

A little personal preparation by individuals would eliminate a hell of a lot of the crisis of FEMA trying to ship in and distribute sufficient supplies such as millions of gallons of water each day. Most of the houses in Houston were only water damaged, not destroyed, so any stocked supplies should still be available. This would leave the FEMA available to concentrate on those who did have their houses completely underwater or completely destroyed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Liberals aren't, either.

If you look at the data on budgets, it's the liberals who are more for spending on infrastructure, emergency preparation and social services. That spending would be even more if it weren't for unnecessary wars that we get into while still maintaining a surplus or whatever you call it. Take hurricane katrina, for example, it could be seen from previous budgets that democrats proposed much higher spending on levees and so forth while republicans slashed those proposals. Now, if we weren't involved in useless wars at the time, the proposed numbers would be even higher. Whether that meets your specific, arbitrary criteria of ending a need for whatever, it would certainly greatly help during disasters to be more prepared because of proper funding.

Liberals do better than conservatives but still not enough.

 

[fast]

I've lived in Louisiana all my financially responsible adult years, and have never suffered a dollar's worth of property damage in a hurricane, so I'm not paying anything.

Fuck that shit.

If such donations were to be mandated, they should proportional to income, not 1% of the total income of someone making 10k and 0.001% of the income of someone making 10m.

Such donations? Donations?

 

[Elixir]

If such donations were to be mandated, they should proportional to income, not 1% of the total income of someone making 10k and 0.001% of the income of someone making 10m.

Such donations? Donations?

If you prefer: "extractions"
Not that I'd favor it as a mandate under any name...

 

[Bronzeage]

I've lived in Louisiana all my financially responsible adult years, and have never suffered a dollar's worth of property damage in a hurricane, so I'm not paying anything.

Fuck that shit.

If such donations were to be mandated, they should proportional to income, not 1% of the total income of someone making 10k and 0.001% of the income of someone making 10m.

Why should I pay anything?

- - - Updated - - -

If such donations were to be mandated, they should proportional to income, not 1% of the total income of someone making 10k and 0.001% of the income of someone making 10m.

Such donations? Donations?

Hilaren datorem diliget Deus.

 

[OLDMAN]

So doctors, jail guards, washroom attendants, whomever has the needed cure, essentials, or key should be able to hold anyone ransom at anytime. Sounds fair.
And whomever has more strength should be able to take it from them?

 

[untermensche]

So doctors, jail guards, washroom attendants, whomever has the needed cure, essentials, or key should be able to hold anyone ransom at anytime. Sounds fair.
And whomever has more strength should be able to take it from them?

Yes. The essence of civilization is the removal of the ability of the strongest to take advantage of the weaker.

The rich WANT to be able to fuck over whomever they damn well choose. They do not want any restrictions on their behavior.

So they invent all kinds of rationalizations to allow their harmful behaviors.

A lot of what is called "economics" is just a huge rationalization to allow the most rich to run everything without any constraints.

And some of the not so rich buy into this nonsense for some reason.

Having the ability to prosper over another's misfortune never creates a justified morality to do it.

 

[fast]

So doctors, jail guards, washroom attendants, whomever has the needed cure, essentials, or key should be able to hold anyone ransom at anytime. Sounds fair.
And whomever has more strength should be able to take it from them?

Ransom? If I take something that doesn't belong to me, that's one thing, but the gas doesn't belong to potential customers.

 

[OLDMAN]

So doctors, jail guards, washroom attendants, whomever has the needed cure, essentials, or key should be able to hold anyone ransom at anytime. Sounds fair.
And whomever has more strength should be able to take it from them?

Ransom? If I take something that doesn't belong to me, that's one thing, but the gas doesn't belong to potential customers.

It simply has to do with who holds the power. The government can take your land and only give u fair market value whenever they build something they deem necessary for the public good. Shouldn't they have to pay what the landowner wants? Doesn't work that way, especially for people who have no political, financial or military power.

 

[skepticalbip]

Ransom? If I take something that doesn't belong to me, that's one thing, but the gas doesn't belong to potential customers.

It simply has to do with who holds the power. The government can take your land and only give u fair market value whenever they build something they deem necessary for the public good. Shouldn't they have to pay what the landowner wants? Doesn't work that way, especially for people who have no political, financial or military power.

It doesn't work that way if it isn't challenged. The government can and has been successfully sued for confiscation and only paying "fair market value". Sure they can confiscate property but a jury can decide on much, much higher payment than the government considers "fair market value". Undoubtedly, some of those juries decided on the much higher reward as a punitive move.

 

[fast]

Ransom? If I take something that doesn't belong to me, that's one thing, but the gas doesn't belong to potential customers.

It simply has to do with who holds the power. The government can take your land and only give u fair market value whenever they build something they deem necessary for the public good. Shouldn't they have to pay what the landowner wants? Doesn't work that way, especially for people who have no political, financial or military power.

But therein lies the failure to make a critical distinction. If I back over someone with my car, I have a legal duty to help, and if I am the only one with a much needed phone and hold the power, it's not that I have the power but the duty to help.

If you back over someone, yet only I hold the power to help, I have no legal duty to help.

Many people are blind to the distinction between harming and not helping. In many cases, if I choose not to help someone, then right or wrong, that's not harming anyone, despite people's desperation to conflate harmful acts with wrongful acts. For instance, if a child is drowning because I threw the child in the water and walk away, then that's harmful and wrongful, but if you throw a child in the water and walk away, then even if it's wrongful for me to not help even and especially if I can easily do so, I have not harmed anyone. Not helping doesn't imply harming.

 

[bilby]

If you look at the data on budgets, it's the liberals who are more for spending on infrastructure, emergency preparation and social services. That spending would be even more if it weren't for unnecessary wars that we get into while still maintaining a surplus or whatever you call it. Take hurricane katrina, for example, it could be seen from previous budgets that democrats proposed much higher spending on levees and so forth while republicans slashed those proposals. Now, if we weren't involved in useless wars at the time, the proposed numbers would be even higher. Whether that meets your specific, arbitrary criteria of ending a need for whatever, it would certainly greatly help during disasters to be more prepared because of proper funding.

No contest. Certainly liberals are much more in favor of spending other people's money than conservatives and libertarians. But I thought Loren was talking about not enough people willing to spend their own money to help.

Money is a token that indicates 'The bearer is owed stuff by the society (or societies) in which this money is used'. As such, there is no such thing as 'my money', or 'your money' or 'other people's money'; Society determines how much each person is owed via various mechanisms, including (but not limited to) payment in exchange for goods, services, and labour; the time value of money (Inflation, interest payments); control of the money supply (setting of interest rates, taxation, issuing of currency by central banks); etc., etc. All of this is essentially a rationing system; It accounts for labour and innovation automatically, and has an additional mechanism to allocate resources by need, in the form of government services. It is a hybrid capitalist/socialist system, and it is the best system we have ever had for allocating resources.

Sovereign currency issuing governments cannot spend other people's money; They issue the money, so it is ALL theirs. What they CAN do is control inflation, by taking money out of non-government hands to offset the money that they inject into the economy. Inflation is one way to do this, but it has a lot of nasty side-effects, so it is used very sparingly. Taxation is a better way to do this; And highly progressive taxation is one of the best, as it minimizes the inequity in society while still allowing people to gain a benefit from hard work and innovation. The idea that you can take away the socialist part of this hybrid economy and end up with a better system is alluring; But it is also exactly as wrong as the idea that you can take away the capitalist part and end up with a better system - which is also both alluring and deeply, deeply wrong.

Your erroneous belief that there is such a thing as 'other people's money' that the government can spend is causing you to reach any number of upsetting (but deeply flawed) conclusions.

Liberals are in favour of government doing stuff. Governments doing stuff is often a good thing, and is particularly a good thing when the stuff they are doing is disaster relief. But governments doing stuff is inflationary, unless it is offset by progressive taxation. So the options are:

1) Government does nothing, and people are left to die.
2) Government does something, but doesn't levy taxes to offset the effects of the government doing something, and inflation goes through the roof.
3) Government does something, and levies taxes to prevent this activity from causing inflation.

3) Is the least harmful option - but you oppose it because you have decided (against all reality and reason) that the money the government issued to track debt in society is somehow property. But it's not property, and never was. A pure capitalist economy leads to widespread misery for all but an elite few, just as a pure socialist economy does. We know this, because both have been tried (and have failed) repeatedly.

The only really successful economies, in terms of generating widespread access to goods and services, have been (and remain) mixed economies. But mixed economies are VERY COMPLEX. It is hard to understand them, and there are lots of nuances that need to be understood before one can take an informed position on what should (or should not) change in response to circumstances. People HATE complexity and they HATE learning stuff; Much more straightforward to come up with some catchy slogans to capture the popular imagination, such as 'Common ownership of the means of production' or 'Spending other people's money'. But these slogans, from BOTH sides of politics, are UTTER CRAP. At best they oversimplify a complex system; at worst they lead to popular support for stupid and counterproductive actions (such as slashing taxes in economies where taxes are demonstrably already too low; or confiscating productive land or machinery from people who know how to use it; or cutting government services when inflation is already low; or opposing the use of government resources to rescue people from natural disasters).

 

[fast]

Money is a token that indicates 'The bearer is owed stuff by the society (or societies) in which this money is used'. As such, there is no such thing as 'my money', or 'your money' or 'other people's money';

I don't follow that.

 

[bilby]

Money is a token that indicates 'The bearer is owed stuff by the society (or societies) in which this money is used'. As such, there is no such thing as 'my money', or 'your money' or 'other people's money';

I don't follow that.

I know. It's a great shame.

 

[fast]

I don't follow that.

I know. It's a great shame.

Ha.

I know one thing, there is such a thing as 'my wallet'.