The Glade 4.0

We were talking about Katrina and the subject of the "price gouging" of bags of ice.

Ice was selling for 2.25 a bag before Katrina and at $20 afterwards.

After I explained how the ice manufacturer in Kentucky wasn't going to pay overtime and extra truck rental fees to ship five trucks of ice down there daily for 1.00 a bag but would at 11 a bag and thus more people had access to ice and thus more in need were helped - she still favored a law restricting the price increases.

I pointed out that the choice for the baby who needed formula, the person with a fever, and the diabetic man were:
1. No ice available but if it were it would be $2.25
or
2. Ice is available but it is $20


Her responses were:
No one could buy the $20 a bag ice because nobody had cash (then how would they buy the $2.25 one)
People should donate ice (and they did but not nearly enough to meet demand)
and my favorite "I disagree" - and I told her there was nothing to disagree with - this is economic reality of price signals. I offered her the option of "I would prefer lower prices and more people suffering than higher prices and less suffer OR I would prefer higher prices and less people suffering than lower prices and more people suffering".

And she choose the first one. HOW!!!

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Price gouging laws only make sense if you have a situation where the increased price is unlikely to result in increased supply, and those cases are really rare.

Price controls result in scarcity.

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Faulty logic circuit.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

She wants the government to supply the ice for free. No, really, it won't cost anyone anything. Well, it'll cost everybody in the US a couple of pennies, but that's insignificant... right?

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In time, this too shall pass.

But government and charity aid combined still couldn't satisfy demand in the area.

So she can have it all she wants - still same problem.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Based on her choice, it sounds like she's more interested in preventing the vendor from profiting than she is in making sure ice gets where it is needed.

edit: Righteous indignation over compassion, to oversimplify.

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My one theory is she was weighting the suffering of poor people as worse than suffering of rich and so in a situation where there is water and no chance of someone with less cash buying one or where there is almost no water and a chance of someone buying one - it gives the poor a shot.

So then I pointed out that the overall demand for the donated and free water would shrink because the ones who had met some of their demand by buying water at the higher price would consume less free water thus making more free water available to the poor....and same answer.

?????

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

She simply cannot get past the mental image of a person in need having to fork over $20 for a bag of ice. She's one of those people who simply can't understand that dealing with situations like this is more complicated than just "ZOMG emergency! Everyone pitch in, help out and get them <ice, food, clothing, batteries, whatever> and don't worry about your profits! People are DYING here!"

This is the sort of person who simply cannot accept that something counterintuitive actually works, especially when it's counterintuitive to them. If something doesn't work the way their common sense tells them it should work, they are absolutely convinced there's some funny business going on somewhere and if they only insist hard enough, eventually it will reveal itself.

This is like the sort of person in SC2 who insists on making nothing but one unit and keeps doing it even after his opponent clearly has countered that unit.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If that unit is Stalkers, Mutalisks, or Marines ... it really doesn't matter.

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It's not complete bullshit, there are cases where price controls aren't bad, those cases are just rare.

For example, imagine there's an epidemic of a highly lethal disease occurring. A vaccine exists, but at the start of the epidemic only a few million doses were available. New doses are in production, but the production cycle for the vaccine takes nine months because they are produced in bird eggs. In nine months, there will be enough vaccine for everyone, but it's impossible for there to be more vaccine before that point, no matter how high the price goes, because it's fundamentally impossible to shorten the production cycle.

In this case, price controls, or even just distributing the vaccine at random, would make sense. More lives would be saved with them than without them. You wouldn't have super rich people buying themselves multiple doses because they think that would help. You also avoid the real moral problems associated with rich people getting to be immune while poor people just have to hope they don't catch it.

See, I don't see that as a moral problem.

You putting your thumb on the scale, tipping it so you feel good about things, is what I see as a moral problem. It was just a socio-economic issue 'till you wanted to interfere.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Why stop there, why not distribute them to the people the Gov't feels are the most worthy?

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

Or if it's made by a private company, why not the people the private company wants to give to?

They do that as a matter of course: You pays your money, you gets your stuff.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

What if the private company didnt use money, but contacts as a means of distribution? Only family and friends of the company (and their employees) could receive the vaccination first?

Yes, yes, we know you can't let a comment about a video game pass.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The first problem is easily avoided; you simply don't allow anyone to buy more than one dose. The second is not really a problem either; there's no reason we need to ensure all socioeconomic classes die equally.

What makes sense is to immunize medical personnel, the people that actually make the vaccine, and enough security forces to protect those people. After that, you sell the rest.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You are correct. This is why in world war z generals shot themselves after evacuating key personnel and leaving towns they had under their protection to the zombie apocalypse. Hard calls.

/relevantinput

It occurs to me (and not for the first time) that issues such as the one mentioned about the vaccine are a civilized version of Darwin's theory about survival of the fittest.

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In time, this too shall pass.

QFT

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Social darwinism has lead to some marvelous sociological results, its true.

Well, "social Darwinism" seems to imply some sort of external force is being applied, exactly the situation I disagreed with when X suggested the distribution of a vaccine be influenced to satisfy some moral philosophy.

"Survival of the fittest" is offered as my observation - the most accurate description of what I see when one person or group achieves their desired goals within the environment and accepted behavioral constraints of their society.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Do you have evidence that this is how it would work, or are you just assuming that markets behave normally even in emergency situations? For instance, it seems equally plausible to me that the opportunity for short-term price "gouging" will prompt people to hoard resources in the initial stages of the emergency, thus creating the very shortages they later profit from. We saw that with batteries here in New York when Irene came up the coast. A few days ahead of the storm, some enterprising young bucks (i.e. dirtbag street vendors) started buying batteries by the bagful and then on the day before the storm, when most people started actually getting their supplies, the stores were sold out of batteries and the only place to get them was on the street, for 3 or 4 times the sticker price. The upshot was that fewer people had batteries (i.e. there was more "suffering") and there was a net transfer of wealth from consumers to hoarders with no gain in overall utility. Not exactly an efficient market outcome.

Also, Elm, just an aside, but I'm surprised you're relying on outcome-based ethical reasoning to critique your friend's preference for ethics based on first principles. She feels it is morally wrong to profit from people's desperation in an emergency, so even if allowing such behavior reduces overall suffering, she believes the principle is more important. You've often taken a similar position when responding to criticisms that your hardcore dedication to personal liberty might lead to more overall suffering.