Posted on 09/01/2005 4:22:37 AM PDT by chronic_loser
And, if laissez-faire economics is the all saving god, why did there have to be rationing during WWII?? Oooooops, there is this little thing of an army and a navy to feed. Or else there won't BE a nation to worship Economius any more.
Some items are strategic enough to the survival of a nation to be worth the government "meddling" in their economics.
exactly.
However, some people will tell those economists, who hold doctorates and chaired economics departments, that they don't know what they're talking about.
Some guy with a computer, an internet connection, and an empty gas tank obviously knows more.
Barbarians who were uneducated in the basics of economics.
Actually, Israel was only forbidden to charge interest to other Israelites. There was no moral opporbrium attached to charging foreigners interest. There was also no immoral fed creating fiat paper money on a fractional reserve system, thus inflating prices to the point that less than 4% interest on a loan is actually losing money.
Biblical economics is not his strong suit.
That merely means that gas is a relatively 'inelastic commodity', like water. People may conserve, but they will still end up buying some regardless of cost. But that *doesn't* somehow cancel out the market forces that set price. There is still competition, for example.
Since you don't think that "the market will take care of itself", what do you propose doing?
Well guess what, you do not have a mind beam to control the mind of a population as much as you would dearly wish to. So vendors do have to deal with the law of memory, if they expect to continue to do well after the disaster is gone. There is an unwritten law of disasters in civilized societies, that nobody may exempt themselves from suffering from the burden of helping the whole during same. Those who disregard the same, will pay.
Platitudes, yes; TRUE platitudes. Unlike your worship of Economius as the Chief God.
"The subject, however, is whether or not gouging is something which should be defended as a good and natural thing."
Fair point. I would answer that "gouging" (merchants setting the price for the goods they sell at any level they wish) is neither good nor bad. It just is.
In a free society, absent any other force, it is impossible to gauge a persons "need" for a gallon of gas in any other way but price. The objective of the market is to provide every consumer with their "need". Some people "need" gas at more than $6.00 a gallon in Atlanta (at least last night)..... sounds crazy, but if that station sold at $2.00 a gallon, there would be no gas - because consumers are every bit as "greedy" as the merchant and would have bought the gas even though they didn't "need" it.
Prices will go as high as people are willing to pay. We'd all be surprised just how hight that price actually is for a gallon of gas.
There didn't have to be rationing. Or price caps. Roosevelt wasn't exactly the greatest president ever. The market would have adjusted, probably in more efficient ways without it.
Unless you now want to cite the policies of a president who started the welfare state as shining examples of how to run the country?
You know not what you speak of. This has been covered many times in the past, and the free market side has examples to back up the theories. All the "they're gouging us" side has to show is anger and rhetoric- and a complete abandonment of facts and logic.
There really is nothing to prove, my post was in reference to your post, which unless I missed something was hypothetical. Unless of course you want to go back to the source of your article and have them post a Proven, factual statement. Until then, please stop with the "Sound Bites".
"Price gauging" is simply hoarding which is done by the stores instead of by the public.Price gouging is refusing to sell something at the usual price when the customer would like to hoard it.
In this sense you are like a socialist, arguing to fix the problem with the thing that created the underlying problem in the first place. Real bright.
Indeed so, and from that arose the caricature of the Jewish moneylender. What they gained in gold they lost in image.
zdravzvoitze comrad. I'm with you! Let's have price controls and Soviet style lines and shortages. I'd much rather have no gas at all priced at $2.60/gal than plenty of gas to $4.00/gal. < /sarcasm>
The gas stations are entitled to whatever the market will bear and as far as your looters they should be shot on sight.
Oh, no, there would automagically be enough supplies to allocate to the military. Economius will do so. His prophert Flashbunny told us so.
A transparent smear-by-association.
An interesting sidenote - link to listing of the 20 largest oil producing nations as of 2002
http://www.gravmag.com/oil.html#producers
Good question, I am not for Caps or the like because I don't believe they would work, I do believe that if the government wants to do something they could just put out a public list of who the biggest gas shysters are. That and press charges against the most idiotic cases out there. For example, $5.00-$8.99 a gallon prices.
Personally I would be willing to bet that the Oil companies had a hand in starting this shortage rumor.
Shouldn't that be tovarich?
Or in his case gospadin?
You either trust "Economius" or some diluted version of Marx. Adam Smith (who was a presbyterian theologian, by the way), argued that there was an "invisible hand" directing market economies for the good of the markets. Like I said before, your references to "usury" show that biblical economics is not your strong suit.
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