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[EuchreJack]

Once upon a time, a single person managed to accumulate a little bit more than everyone else. Of course, they were outnumbered by their peers, who could take that surplus with their numbers.
And thus, the first Rich Man invented Government to keep his riches.

It's a misnomer perpetrated by the Establishment that Government helps the poor and hurts the rich, when it's actually always the opposite. The Poor have numbers and a lack of connection/responsibility to the Establishment. It's ultimately the Government that keeps them from just taking what they want.

The Establishment has a love/hate relationship with Middle Class. On one hand, they never want to share their wealth with the Middle Class, and they profit from the Middle Class. On the other hand, they need the assistance of the Middle Class to control the Poor.

Ultimately, one doesn't aspire to overthrow the System, since it's as old as civilization. One simply aspires to join the Rich.

[Loud Whispers]

Hardly applicable. It is easy to say men should not harm other men, and to punish those who won't follow the rules. It's another entirely to try to tell Mother Nature to stop harming people and punish her if she won't listen.

It is hardly unforeseeable that there would be circumstances where you would want spare batteries or extra aspirin or a case of water. Heck, some countries got darned close to that with their COVID lockdowns. The time to lay in a month's supplies is before you get welded into your apartments for a 14 day quarantine.

Perfectly applicable; you are saying that someone taking advantage of a catastrophe to price gouge people out of essential supplies is a good thing. This is an argument which is so basically wrong it falls apart at the first glance. A price gouger no more incentivises people to stock up on essentials than an armed robber incentivises people to stock up on defences. Because if you live in an area that is prone to natural disasters, the natural disasters themselves incentivise people to be prepared. Someone taking advantage of panic and ill-prepared persons is not providing some moral good, they are a robber and scum of the highest degree. Especially since not everyone has the storage space or resources to have weeks of supplies in the event of a catastrophe, as the majority of the human race is just living paycheck to paycheck.

Have fun dying of thirst or making do at half or less of your normal insulin dose.

Lmao is this an American thing? You talk about the real world and the imaginary world as if it's controversial to help your fellow man with the resources your nation has in abundance. It's not some hypothetical to punish price gougers and deliver emergency relief to people in crisis... This has been business as usual for thousands of years of human history. I don't have to worry about dying of thirst, I don't have to worry about insulin dose rations, my healthcare is free and my country maintains supply lines in times of crisis instead of allowing a small number of price gougers to hoard vital supplies. This mindset of "Lol pay up little piggy or die" just displays a total absence of basic empathy. I would give a beast a sip of water if I saw it dying of thirst, the idea of looking forward to punishing swathes of humanity for not being able to prepare for a supply crisis that is entirely manufactured by price gougers is - like I say - the mentality of an armed robber who chides his victims for not having sufficient defences against their predations.

[Thorfinn]

Once upon a time, a single person managed to accumulate a little bit more than everyone else. Of course, they were outnumbered by their peers, who could take that surplus with their numbers.
And thus, the first Rich Man invented Government to keep his riches.

Probably not how it came about. Why would anyone obey someone's dictates just because he had two bushels of apples when you only had one? Would YOU?

More than likely, the story starts with a bully who takes others' lunch money. The smarter of these bullies hires his friends to sit around his lodge and drink his ill-gotten booze and eat his ill-gotten feasts, and occasionally shake down people for their lunch money. The more sadistic of these brutes takes a shine to making the people do humiliating things in addition to forking over lunch money, and the modern state is born.

The Establishment has a love/hate relationship with Middle Class. On one hand, they never want to share their wealth with the Middle Class, and they profit from the Middle Class. On the other hand, they need the assistance of the Middle Class to control the Poor.

This has rarely been true. Particularly in American politics, ever since general (white adult male) sufferage the winning tactic has always been for the rich and poor to team up against the middle.

Don't fall for the leftist nonsense about no one's taxes are going up if you make less than $400k. They publish the tax rates. You can look them up.

[Thorfinn]

...you are saying that someone taking advantage of a catastrophe to price gouge people out of essential supplies is a good thing.

I'm actually saying its better than the alternative.

Imagine a city which is prone to disasters, but where inexplicably, people continue to live. You are likely familiar with the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. This city's denizens choose the ant's tactic. They commit themselves to having one shelf of their kitchen that always has food and a couple cans of Sterno, and a couple cases of water in the hall closet. When disaster strikes, they clean up their yard trash, haul it to the curb, and then, if they are not part of the general reconstruction (roads, power, etc.) they go back to their homes and read a book or play a board game or something. Point is they are staying off the roads, not interfering with the people who need the roads to haul away all the yard trash and rebuild the roads and reconnect the power. A couple days later, the city is back to 80%.

Now imagine they choose the grasshopper strategy. The storm no more than passes and all the grasshopper putzes are out clogging the roads trying to get a latte. The power crews are unable to get through, and instead of focusing on getting infrastructure going again, the disaster response has to be hauling food and water and other supplies in, while trying to get through all the cars that ran out of gas trying to find a store that still had water. Instead of being more or less back in business 48 hours later, this strategy is still limping along 2 weeks later.

So the question is how do you get the population to choose the ant strategy, which is self-evidently superior in terms of minimizing human suffering?

It's not so much that gouging is objectively good in itself, but rather that it puts in place the right incentives. Sure you ignored the speed limit sign, and you can't do anything about what has already happened, so maybe a fine will make you slow down next time. Whereas if the policy is just to ignore all the yutzes doing 90 in a school zone, that behavior is likely to continue. A fine works exactly the same way gouging does. Indeed, it's a little odd to think that "gougers" should be fined, as it is an implicit acceptance of the idea that incentives matter.

[anewaname]

@Thorfinn

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I greatly agree with that. The cost of being prepared for a bad month is "put $200 of stuff in a closet and leave it there". This is something that should be done in every town, partly by the town but mostly by the citizens.

But, it is also true that the price-gouging is possible because the supply system is intentionally routed through the price-gougers.

Example: Your local farms were bought up by a conglomerate that is contractually bound to sell their harvest at a set rate. But the buyers of that harvest are not contractually bound to sell it at a set rate; so they raise prices. But if these buyers of the harvest are contractually bound to sell it at a set rate, they are probably exporting it and price-gouging the public through control over imported foods. And when the government makes a show of forcing these price-gougers to maintain their prices, the government backroom'ed subsidies to the price-gougers using tax-payer money.

But, like you say, price-gouging is a good incentive. It will work on some people and they will maintain a reserve. It just will not work on all people, because some people will only see the grasshopper's dream of being free and festive 24/7, or whatever self-crippling idea they got in their head.

[Duuvian]

May we assume the ants would want to trade for that which they do not produce themselves? It seems the grasshopper in the story would have been better served by working to control these trade lanes rather than sitting idle. After that control is established, perhaps the Ant's own merchants would by necessity work with the grasshopper. This way the grasshopper can continue as he pleased. When the Queen's drones point the myrmidons in his direction, the ant's own merchants would protest, as this would disrupt their supply. Perhaps the grasshopper gains great wealth, and purchases a growing portion of the existing and expansions to the volumunous ant tunnels, If this were to occur, perhaps the grasshopper would not want further excavation that does not benefit them, and some ants must live outside. Are the other ants to begin to call them Grasshopper?

[scriver]

We are not ants and grasshoppers.

We are ants and ants who did not have room to stock up in their own homes.

We are ants and ants who had their homes crushed under falling trees and all their stocks carried of by the flood.

We are ants and ants who are too old or sick to care for themselves.

The ants who need goods after disaster are not grasshoppers. But the people who would gouge prices are wasps and ticks.

[Loud Whispers]

Imagine a city which is prone to disasters, but where inexplicably, people continue to live. You are likely familiar with the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper. This city's denizens choose the ant's tactic. They commit themselves to having one shelf of their kitchen that always has food and a couple cans of Sterno, and a couple cases of water in the hall closet. When disaster strikes, they clean up their yard trash, haul it to the curb, and then, if they are not part of the general reconstruction (roads, power, etc.) they go back to their homes and read a book or play a board game or something. Point is they are staying off the roads, not interfering with the people who need the roads to haul away all the yard trash and rebuild the roads and reconnect the power. A couple days later, the city is back to 80%.

Now imagine they choose the grasshopper strategy. The storm no more than passes and all the grasshopper putzes are out clogging the roads trying to get a latte. The power crews are unable to get through, and instead of focusing on getting infrastructure going again, the disaster response has to be hauling food and water and other supplies in, while trying to get through all the cars that ran out of gas trying to find a store that still had water. Instead of being more or less back in business 48 hours later, this strategy is still limping along 2 weeks later.

I love that story. Yet you're still continually failing to justify your argument by forming a baseless link between being pro-preparedness and pro-price gouging.

So the question is how do you get the population to choose the ant strategy, which is self-evidently superior in terms of minimizing human suffering?

It's not so much that gouging is objectively good in itself, but rather that it puts in place the right incentives. Sure you ignored the speed limit sign, and you can't do anything about what has already happened, so maybe a fine will make you slow down next time. Whereas if the policy is just to ignore all the yutzes doing 90 in a school zone, that behavior is likely to continue. A fine works exactly the same way gouging does. Indeed, it's a little odd to think that "gougers" should be fined, as it is an implicit acceptance of the idea that incentives matter.

There's actually two arguments which need to be addressed here. The first and most obvious is not all actors in an economy have equal market power, information, time, resources and energy. Take a good look at how the majority of the world lives in tropical areas prone to annual extreme weather events, and how with a few exceptions (e.g. Singapore), most of these countries from Latin America to East Asia and everyone in between tend to have incredibly low median incomes relative to developed nations. A brick maker or factory worker in Bangladesh will likely have a good deal of experience with regular seasonal flooding from monsoon rains or memories of tsunamis. And yet, why do they not have weeks of bottled water, food & medicine stocked up?

Access to refrigeration, storage space, the ability to procure such items in sufficient quantity at a price within their means e.t.c. all contribute to this. Even in developed countries, even when there are no times of crisis, you can see this effect on everyday spending. It is trivial for wealthier individuals to purchase bulk items & transport them, whereas items which are sold in smaller units all cost higher per gram or per litre. As a result it is cheaper for wealthier shoppers to buy higher quality ingredients in bulk than it is for poorer persons to buy lower quality ingredients in smaller units. This disparity grows when you consider how many more facilities for storage and cooking are available for wealthier persons than their poorer counterparts. Poverty is self-reinforcing. If you have more market power you can reject bad deals; for poorer persons, they have to take what they can get. This is where price gouging becomes especially evil, in that you severely reward those who have more market power and completely fuck over those without it.
When you have a society which allows price gouging, you do not create a society which values preparedness. Disasters have an inherent ability to motivate preparedness; everyone I know has grandparents who lived through the event, be it the second world war or some great famine, and I can attest that my own grandparents have stocks for months of essentials after their experience with the Malayan occupation. There was an amusing UK study revealing too, how adults who were children during the 2008 had the tendency of taking no loans, saving aggressively and focusing on financial stability instead of personal fulfillment in careers. You don't need to add a layer of parasites who make fortunes off of misery to incentivise people into preparing for what is already a life-ruining calamity.

Because that's what happens. You don't incentivise people to be more prepared when you have price gougers. The disaster is the incentive. You incentivise parasitic and predatory behaviour, from people who have market power, against those who do not. You could have the perfect prepared ant population and they would still be in trouble if all of the actors who manage their supply chains or can constrain their supply chains are allowed to act in a predatory fashion. I work in respiratory medical health and Covid times are a perfect example of this; the hospitals were prepared with months of supply, and yet the disaster lasted years. Supply was not an issue because predatory practices were punished by law & political action; had it been permitted, you have a strong incentive to create parasites who seek only to extract as much value as possible with no regard for the human cost.

The second argument is of course, that access to resources is the easiest way to incentivise people to be more prepared for disasters - which is inherently reduced in a system which does not punish people who attempt to corner others' access to resources.

[dragdeler]

That's a lot of fucking words to argue which way people think forwards when they don't. 

[Thorfinn]

By reskinning the grasshoppers, we are back to bullies taking lunch money, Duuvian. I know you are trying to link it to merchants, but their "control" consists only of what someone else is willing to pay. There's a reason cartels fall apart.  It's either that or maintain their existence through state-equivalent levels of violence and terror. Or, as above, becoming the bullies stealing lunch money.

scriver, most of that is grasshopper excuses. Heck, two tins of canned chicken and a small box of instant rice is plenty of calories for a family of 4 for a day, and occupies considerably less space than a 12-pack of soda. Even at current prices, it's a shade under $7. I could have easily piled 6 month's food supply in 5-gallon buckets under my bed back when I lived in the dorms, though my roommate probably would have given me strange looks.

I know there are situations where whatever preparations you take could be swept away. That's why you help those unfortunates out. I also know there are a lot of people who have absolutely nothing stored, who shop each day for that day's food. They are the ones going to the store the day before the hurricane hits land and buy bread, milk and toilet paper. Granted, there is no way to know whether someone is telling the truth about his preps being destroyed, so use your own best judgement. Don't give so deeply that it jeopardizes you and yours, of course.

Give me a chance to read and think on your post, Loud Whispers. I'll get back to it later.

[dragdeler]

If catastrophy strikes this very moment the peoole who are going to be stocked up were allways the people who were stocked up at all times, I wouldn't call it foresight necessarily , allways worrying you won't have enough is a preliminary state (non pathological) of the pathology greed.

If anything the ant is blind, it doesn't foresee anything, you gave it 2 units of food everytime it gathers 1, it would continue to stockpile anyway, on the other hand I know few insects as skittish as grasshoppers, man as soon as that 6 foot shadow enters their periphery those things are gone. So maybe shake the biblical subtones and stop discussing this shit in terms of a children fable, especially when it doesn't work on macroscale.

Yes piglet in stonehouse has the most common sense, big win, meanwhile it's easier on the supply chain to have 1000 appartment dwellers consume an average of 0,7463 sour cheese boxes per week than it is for a supermarket to anticipate single customers buying their stock of some product empty sparodically. Not moral relativism, circumscribing these thing in definitve formulation was a loosing bet from the get go, the smallest common denominator is probably something like, "everybody is a nuisance to someone.

[Thorfinn]

Because that's what happens. You don't incentivise people to be more prepared when you have price gougers. The disaster is the incentive.

Feel free to correct me, but I think this is the core of your argument. But if they are stocked up, why should they care about gougers? They are someone else's problem. Either someone who did not bother stocking up, or someone whose stocks were destroyed by the disaster.

If the former, then that argues against you that the disaster in itself is enough to incentivize preparedness, when by definition it was not, in the same manner that police have to keep picking up people for speeding in a school zone because, self-evidently, they are speeding, despite the knowledge that the disaster of smashing into a kid should have been enough of an incentive.

If the latter, that's where you had the foresight to set aside a little extra for your neighbor, trusting that if the roles were reversed, he would do the same for you.

If you don't think humans are ingenious enough to devise ways of storing food in ways that are safe from most disaster conditions, you need an explanation for why humans didn't die out hundreds of thousands, millions of years ago. Maybe we've just become terminally stupid?

[Loud Whispers]

If catastrophy strikes this very moment the peoole who are going to be stocked up were allways the people who were stocked up at all times, I wouldn't call it foresight necessarily , allways worrying you won't have enough is a preliminary state (non pathological) of the pathology greed.

If anything the ant is blind, it doesn't foresee anything, you gave it 2 units of food everytime it gathers 1, it would continue to stockpile anyway, on the other hand I know few insects as skittish as grasshoppers, man as soon as that 6 foot shadow enters their periphery those things are gone. So maybe shake the biblical subtones and stop discussing this shit in terms of a children fable, especially when it doesn't work on macroscale.

Even so, I think it's worth being prepared just in case. There are plenty of times where if you are prepared for a disaster, then you are well prepared for something which is less than a disaster. E.g. being prepared for a catastrophe means you're much less affected if there is a power out, or if there is a sudden shock in food prices, or you suddenly lose your job and source of income. The ant may not have the foresight to foresee anything in particular, but in the story the ant is just preparing for winter itself. Much in the same way that we can't tell when disaster will strike, it's not that hard to envision that one day, bad things will happen, and having some emergency funds and supplies as a safety net can carry you through.

Yes piglet in stonehouse has the most common sense, big win, meanwhile it's easier on the supply chain to have 1000 appartment dwellers consume an average of 0,7463 sour cheese boxes per week than it is for a supermarket to anticipate single customers buying their stock of some product empty sparodically. Not moral relativism, circumscribing these thing in definitve formulation was a loosing bet from the get go, the smallest common denominator is probably something like, "everybody is a nuisance to someone.

Hahaha, reminds me of the spaghetti panic runs, where people simultaneously begin hoarding spaghetti

Feel free to correct me, but I think this is the core of your argument. But if they are stocked up, why should they care about gougers? They are someone else's problem. Either someone who did not bother stocking up, or someone whose stocks were destroyed by the disaster.

Because they are a moral blight in this world I live in who provoke the same outrage upon me as I would upon hearing my neighbours got robbed. My response wouldn't be "don't care I didn't get robbed not my problem" my response would be "these gougers are criminal predators." There is more to life for me than self-interest; everything good and enjoyable in life comes from the networks I build on trust, altruism and honesty. Introducing a moral hazard and perverse incentive to be rapacious, selfish and dishonest will inevitably poison the well of society. Even if it will not affect me monetarily, I would rather not see my society endorse dickheads, and am happy with the way they are castigated.

If the former, then that argues against you that the disaster in itself is enough to incentivize preparedness, when by definition it was not, in the same manner that police have to keep picking up people for speeding in a school zone because, self-evidently, they are speeding, despite the knowledge that the disaster of smashing into a kid should have been enough of an incentive.

In this scenario you are comparing the person engaging in dangerous behaviour (a gouger exploiting people in times of crisis) with a person being endangered by reckless behaviour (a child about to be hit by a careless driver). This is funny

If the latter, that's where you had the foresight to set aside a little extra for your neighbor, trusting that if the roles were reversed, he would do the same for you.

If you don't think humans are ingenious enough to devise ways of storing food in ways that are safe from most disaster conditions, you need an explanation for why humans didn't die out hundreds of thousands, millions of years ago. Maybe we've just become terminally stupid?

See:

Access to refrigeration, storage space, the ability to procure such items in sufficient quantity at a price within their means e.t.c. all contribute to this. Even in developed countries, even when there are no times of crisis, you can see this effect on everyday spending. It is trivial for wealthier individuals to purchase bulk items & transport them, whereas items which are sold in smaller units all cost higher per gram or per litre. As a result it is cheaper for wealthier shoppers to buy higher quality ingredients in bulk than it is for poorer persons to buy lower quality ingredients in smaller units. This disparity grows when you consider how many more facilities for storage and cooking are available for wealthier persons than their poorer counterparts. Poverty is self-reinforcing. If you have more market power you can reject bad deals; for poorer persons, they have to take what they can get. This is where price gouging becomes especially evil, in that you severely reward those who have more market power and completely fuck over those without it.

Out of all possible solutions to this; whether it be through education, social values, religion, disaster relief stockpiles, support networks, community outreach, reserve forces e.t.c. why would you pick the only one that creates a perverse incentive for the creation of a parasite class of merchants of misery who actively get people killed in times of crisis and actively make things worse for those who have the will to prepare, but lack the means. The stick of a price gouger is pitiable compared to the stick of the disaster which enables them; but you're giving a carrot to predatory behaviour, and you will get predators if you allow it

[Duuvian]

By reskinning the grasshoppers, we are back to bullies taking lunch money, Duuvian. I know you are trying to link it to merchants, but their "control" consists only of what someone else is willing to pay. There's a reason cartels fall apart.  It's either that or maintain their existence through state-equivalent levels of violence and terror. Or, as above, becoming the bullies stealing lunch money.

Ah, I am glad you agree with my clumsy attempt so completely. I didn't even have to include a part where the grasshopper influences the drones, well done. The question remains, is whether the indoors ants call the outdoor ants Grasshopper, or fellow ants as they are.

[dragdeler]

Over here stockpiling is like the default position,I have ridiculous piles of some stuff myself, not necessarily food but like cleaning products etc it's pretty random, I bu at good prices is all. The independence is valuable but yeah, loads of inefficencies... What gets thrown away can not be eaten by somebody else; tho not everything could have been affordable at that moment to the people who really needed it thanks to our great distribution mechanisms...


Thing is, if one mentality is the prevalent, the majority is gonna tend to pick on those that are different, even if they're a blessing in terms of lessening rush.