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Should price gouging be illegal?

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segamegadrive

Guest
If you're unfamiliar with price gouging, it is when companies charge unfairly high prices on goods during a crisis, like if a hurricane were coming and gas prices spiked to $10 per gallon. Arguments people make in favor of restricting/banning it are that it exploits consumers, and arguments people make in favor of having it be legal are that it allows rationing to be done more efficiently and that government regulation makes the market less efficient. What say you? If you had dictatorial power to either ban it or legalize it, what would you do?
 
how do you decide if $10 a gallon gas is due to "gouging" or because the tanker trucks can't get through to replenish the supply?

form a bureaucracy in DC to keep tabs on all stores, all the time?
 

connieb

Senator
If you're unfamiliar with price gouging, it is when companies charge unfairly high prices on goods during a crisis, like if a hurricane were coming and gas prices spiked to $10 per gallon. Arguments people make in favor of restricting/banning it are that it exploits consumers, and arguments people make in favor of having it be legal are that it allows rationing to be done more efficiently and that government regulation makes the market less efficient. What say you? If you had dictatorial power to either ban it or legalize it, what would you do?

If Government has somehow helped create an unfair monopoly then gouging should not be allowed... ie. public utilities or limits on the number particular businesses allowed in a certain area, then no, that is not appriate.

But, yeah, if some dude wants to charg $10 for a gallon of gas and you can go down the road and get it from someone else, then I don't have a problem with it. Maybe he is anticipating a problem and needs to make the money too so he can weather the storm. And, someone else can always refuse to do it and thus you are free to buy from that retailer instead. WE are not entitled to goods that someone wants to sell at the price we want to pay.

connie
 

lizardking

Council Member
If Government has somehow helped create an unfair monopoly then gouging should not be allowed... ie. public utilities or limits on the number particular businesses allowed in a certain area, then no, that is not appriate.
And imagine if we had plan economy. All manufactures would be governmental and all the prices would be always determined by government and kept on the same level all over the country, no gouging! But we have the exact opposite type of economy - unholy & dishonest capitalism :D
 

Zam-Zam

Senator
If you're unfamiliar with price gouging, it is when companies charge unfairly high prices on goods during a crisis, like if a hurricane were coming and gas prices spiked to $10 per gallon. Arguments people make in favor of restricting/banning it are that it exploits consumers, and arguments people make in favor of having it be legal are that it allows rationing to be done more efficiently and that government regulation makes the market less efficient. What say you? If you had dictatorial power to either ban it or legalize it, what would you do?


Unfair, perhaps, is in the eye of the beholder. That being the case, any such law could be applied capriciously by an increasingly dictatorial government.
 

connieb

Senator
And imagine if we had plan economy. All manufactures would be governmental and all the prices would be always determined by government and kept on the same level all over the country, no gouging! But we have the exact opposite type of economy - unholy & dishonest capitalism :D
Yeah then we could all share the same shitty standards of big fat gov't cats and the rest of us in the breadlines. No thanks. I will happily take my chances with capitalism.
 
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