alt Hacker NewsIs it better? As with all price gouging, better for those who can afford it, sure, but not for those who can't. The proper way to combat scalping is to implement fair allocation methods (for a start purchase quantity limits) and punish people for scalping.
Look at how most places handled war-time gasoline shortages. Rationing coupons, purchase limits, demand leveling (like the odd-even system), price or profit controls, strict prosecution of scalpers and price gougers. And it's not like only the communists did this - even the US had most if not all of these things. And it worked far better than the shit that happened during the pandemic shortages. Governments used to know how to govern.
Replies
If you want to be "fair" for a necessity such as gasoline, you can have tradable rationing coupons. That way you are rewarded if you buy and use less gasoline, but the excess windfall due to the shortage is still transfered to you and away from the supplier. But even this assumes that gasoline is in fixed supply and there is no way of increasing its total production by paying more, which is not a very good assumption.
During the pandemic there wasn’t gouging? I just remember complete shortages of inventory like toilet paper, basic microchips, etc.
It would have been better if people did raise prices during the pandemic for those things to prevent hoarding so I could actually wipe my ass at 2 cents a wipe instead of 1. But alas, the “price gouging” cry babies would have come out and lambasted them for “being greedy”.
Nope, governments were famously bad at this. Coffee rations and gas rations were a disaster.
(Edit: Replying here because of dumb rate limits)
>You guys are being unreasonable, we have plenty of toilet paper for everyone. Each person gets two rolls per week unless you can prove you need more until you calm the fuck down
And this is why it’s dumb. There actually was a supply shortage. You should read about it.
Toilet paper manufacturers made industrial scale toilet paper for offices, schools, public buildings, rest areas, etc.
1/3 of the entire toilet paper market for giant single ply rolls sold in bulk disappeared overnight. And that same demand flowed back into home multi-ply toilet paper that couldn’t be scaled up quickly because it came from a different mill.
Rations would have been completely stupid in reaction to a legitimate 50% increase in legitimate demand.
The high prices ("price gouging") perform a social function because some cannot afford it; they prioritize what matters to them more, and ram is left available to those who absolutely require it. Trying to get around that by forcing prices below the market price simple encourages scalping behaviors. If prices are below the market price, but at the market price you would prefer the cash in your pocket over the ram stick, then you have every reason to sell it higher than you bought it because people are willing to buy it. It is those willing to buy it that are the main culprit in establishing the true price.
In reality, it is almost never a true binary of "afford" or "cannot afford" like critics of surge pricing make it out to be; people evaluate the price according to their circumstance and make a trade off. It is because of these decisions, the state of demand, that surge pricing is possible, not because of the machinations of evil price scalpers. That is why manufacturers couldn't lower prices even if they wanted to; gpu msrp being a great example of gpu vendors being caught between consumer ignorance about economics and the facts of reality that gpus are scarce enough to warrant higher prices.