alt Hacker News> The act of eliminating surge pricing is not a price ceiling.
If you force companies to price products lower than what they want, then you have a price ceiling by definition.
> Neither approach increases supply.
I didn't mention or allude to supply at all, although it's true that price ceilings also decrease supply (less so if there is monopoly or collusion, but they still do).
I was talking about resource allocation. The person who needs a new system because their previous computer broke will be willing to pay the extra money, but the person who already has a DDR4 system with a 5950x that runs their games well enough will be content to hold off on their AM5 upgrade to DDR5 because the marginal improvement isn't worth the extra $400.
If you have a price ceiling like what you proposed, the person with the DDR4 system may buy the DDR5 that they don't really need 1 day earlier than the person who actually needs the DDR5, creating a misallocation of resources.
(that's an example of the more abstract principle at play).
Theoretical arguments aren't even needed here. The empirical history of price ceilings is there for you to google.
If you didn't know that what you were proposing is a price ceiling, and you thought that I was talking about supply instead of resource allocation, then I mean this with no offence intended but you should study elementary economics before forming confident opinions on the subject. Society is in a vulnerable point with cost of living pressure and we don't need more energy behind these harmful populist ideas.
>> you have a price ceiling by definition
Price ceiling definition: a government-imposed legal maximum price
My original comment: First come first served is a better <snipped for brevity>
This is not a legal maximum price, this is a legal maximum in the derivative of price.
> I didn't mention or allude to supply at all
>> get what I need with 100% chance than get what I need cheaply with 5% chance
How do you square these two statements? One claims 100% supply certainty when no such thing exists in this context. Without making certain assumptions (unstated, but ludicrous, assumptions are rife in economics discourse), you can't state much of value about which buyer will get the goods in the surge pricing model, you especially cannot say that the buyer with the larger wallet will always win. Think for a second what assumptions you've made to this point in the conversation - you're still down the rabbit hole of price ceilings in the comment chain thus far.
>> The empirical history of price ceilings is there
Not disputed but as per your call out of definition above, not relevant.
To make the point further - the name for a limit on rate of change of price is not a price ceiling, anymore than the 0-60 time of a car is its top speed limit.
>> you thought that I was talking about supply instead of resource allocation
My challenge to you is to name the assumptions you've identified in your reasoning around resource allocation. I'm confident i can point out the deficiencies in your model because that is the nature of models.
>> you should study elementary economics
That's a great idea, a really good follow on from that is to identify logical fallacies you discover i. that process, especially those so accepted that it's not a stretch to say they are underpinning the discipline. A good example of that would be the conjectural origin theory of money but i digress.