[CTOCS]

In a vacuum he makes his point.

I operate a small grocery store in Virginia's Northern Neck. When Isabel came through here last year we were without power (and everything else) for a minimum of four days, some places, as much as two weeks. I kept the store open with a battery powered calculator, a cigar box, and a sidearm. I was the only game in town. I raised not one price. My ice and water went in a matter of hours.

I could have raised prices but would be paying for it today. As it is, people still comment on the fact that I was available and didn't try to take advantage of their grief. They even talked about me on one of the local radio stations that was up on a genset.

Had I, I would have far fewer customers today.

I understand the laws of supply and demand perfectly but profiting on the backs of my own neighbors during a time of universal suffering is not my idea of how to run a business or be a responsible member of a small community. I have to live here when the weather is nice too.

My two cents worth from personal experience...

[r9etb]

Wow. Excellent post.

[Quick1]

Excellent example, thanks for sharing.

[tiamat]

Your post is the most sensible thing on this thread.

Ther eis one thing to add a little more to cover cost of transport, ( as the other poster inferred). there is another to simply gouge and yell, "Hold out the bowls, Ma! it's raining soup!"

That last is simply unclean and certainly isn't Christian.

And you are right.

Profitting off your neighbor's suffering has a nasty way of coming back on you.

Makes people mad, and you need them.

[Atlas Sneezed]

I understand the laws of supply and demand perfectly but profiting on the backs of my own neighbors during a time of universal suffering is not my idea of how to run a business or be a responsible member of a small community.

---

See? There is no need for government restrictions on gouging. The free market works.

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

You are not the only one. Let's say Home Depot can sell a sheet of OSB (strand) plywood during this crisis for $200. Everyone in the community would remember that shining example of "pure capitalism" long after the immediate crisis had ended and THEY WOULD NEVER FORGIVE OR FORGET.

Pure capitalists at that extreme can never win popular support. Nobody is going to vote for people who really believe that. They will be too busy hunting them down, burning their houses and hanging them for their pure profit exploitation in time of natural disaster. Do you want insurrection? Go ahead and allow "pure capitalists" to charge anything they want to victims of a disaster.

Such "practical" profiteers would be lucky ONLY to have their neighbors spit upon them.

[flying Elvis]

I know some folks who ran a convenience store in Georgia during the big blizzard during the early 1990s. When the power went out they jacked the kerosene price up to obscene levels. They went out of business shortly thereafter for no other reason than everyone in the area remembered their greed.

[Dan Evans]

I operate a small grocery store in Virginia's Northern Neck. When Isabel came through here ... I raised not one price. My ice and water went in a matter of hours.

Suppose that, after you sold all supplies, someone came through with a supply they wanted to sell at a premium price. Would you have bought it so you could then have supplied your customers at a higher price? Should that be legal?

[Don Joe]

And what would you have done if you'd hired people to purchase supplies from whatever sources they could find, and then risked life and limb driving across the country to deliver them to that region?

I'm presuming that in this little exercise, you would be a person engaged in a going concern, and not a charity or philanthropist or government agency.

When you rolled into town, and five merchants showed up at the back of your truck, all crying "Me! Me!", would you charge a price commensurate with the risk and effort you put into it, assuming the market would bear that price? Or would you become a defacto charity?

I've been to lots of auctions, and even though I knew the auctioneers, and the sellers were often local people like yourself, no one ever cut me a deal. I either offered the highest bid for an item, or else I didn't get that item.

Should I have gotten upset, offended that the seller, a guy I knew, insisted on making me pay the highest price of all, or else go home emptyhanded?

These are serious questions.

[Badray]

"My two cents worth from personal experience..."

Thanks for relating that story. Your action was commendable BUT completely voluntary. Did you limit the quantities that customers could buy?

If not, I hope that others were not harmed by shortages caused by the hoarding of supplies by those who bought more than necessary at artificially low prices. Perhaps when you sold at the pre-disaster prices, those buying them resold them at much higher prices. If the higher profits were earned by you instead, could you have been in a better position to restock and supply all of your customers?

[Woahhs]

Your point is admirably made. Nevertheless, the backlash you are forced to consider is the direct result of profound economic ignorance and bigotry on the part of consumers.

I do not think boycotting hotels that allow blacks to swim in their pool is an inappropriate analogue.

[MineralMan]

"I could have raised prices but would be paying for it today. As it is, people still comment on the fact that I was available and didn't try to take advantage of their grief. They even talked about me on one of the local radio stations that was up on a genset.

Had I, I would have far fewer customers today.

I understand the laws of supply and demand perfectly but profiting on the backs of my own neighbors during a time of universal suffering is not my idea of how to run a business or be a responsible member of a small community. I have to live here when the weather is nice too.
"

Bingo!

[mtbopfuyn]

I could have raised prices but would be paying for it today. As it is, people still comment on the fact that I was available and didn't try to take advantage of their grief. They even talked about me on one of the local radio stations that was up on a genset. Had I, I would have far fewer customers today.

Ah ha! That's my point exactly. The guy didn't make his case. Sure, he would have made a killing off a few bags of ice, but he'd have also lost his customers. Supply and demand doesn't always work.

[Thinkin' Gal]

I kept the store open with a battery powered calculator, a cigar box, and a sidearm. I was the only game in town. I raised not one price. My ice and water went in a matter of hours.

You were supposed to gouge the early birds so the folks who didn't get around to buying supplies until late in the day could have made purchases also. /sarcasm

Why is it, that the merchant is usually the one presumed greedy, when buyers may be just as inconsiderate of their fellow citizens? Why are merchants held responsible for the preventing of hoarding or reselling by others? In an ideal world, merchants needn't increase prices for current stock in a crisis (having to increase prices for increased supply costs down the road is another matter... you run a business,not a charity), AND IN TANDEM purchasers would only buy what they truly need, so their neighbors could access supplies also.

Living in an imperfect world, however, where the judging motives/thoughts/intents appears to cause more harm than good, each person can only be responsible for his/or her own individual conscience. You chose wisely. When the government has to mandate price freezes and/or rationing, it's a reflection of a population's inability to self govern at the most basic level of human decency. More laws and regulation and the clenched iron fist of government are the rewards of a lawless society.