Supply & Demand, the supply of water is suddenly scarce in Florida after the disaster, the demand is high and Amazon is showing it! Is it merely a matter of being nice? Is there any responsibility on the sellers part to not Gouge? Do you know your States gouging laws do you agree with them? Do you believe higher prices prevents hoarding......? Oil companies have hoarded for decades in advance of & during price climbs rented storage and fleets to store oil. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/hurricane-irma/amp/ahead-irma-outrage-toward-sky-high-amazon-water-prices-n799251 Here are some of my thoughts... Price gouging serves an important economic purpose in incentivizing retail businesses to stock up necessary supplies for the possibility of a disaster. No business, for example, is going to stock up on a thousand gallons of bottled water unless they know there's a possibility of making a huge profit by having all this extra water on hand. In the mean time it takes up a lot of space and they may never be able to sell it all. Guess what? In any disasters there are going to be shortages, and it's only a matter of how those scarce goods are going to be rationed out. Sudden higher prices can also help discourage hoarding, otherwise you'll have one guy come in who will want to buy ALL the water bottles. That's why after major disasters most people can't find toilet paper or the other basic essentials in all the big corporate retail stores. (because they don't raise prices to be opportunistic off the situation) You can still find toilet paper in the little mom and pop stores though. 4 dollars a roll. Just look at it this way: Being able to price gouge is one of the perks of running a business. In any case, I'm sure the upside doesn't come anywhere close to making up for the risk they take of a disaster causing damage to their business. Either way that's going to get passed on to the consumer somehow, so in the end the consumer's still paying for it.
maybe. if you don't price gouge when demand is high someone will buy all your stock and price gouge himself. if you don't let building contractors price gouge after a hurricane what incentive is there for out of state contractors to move in, meet the demand , and begin the rebuilding process?
As far as hoarding goes... A simple limit on amount purchased can curtail that. People can make several trips if they want but they would be fighting lines and it wouldn't be easy. Raising prices during a life and death situation, in a specific region is not in the same category as supply and demand.
and how are you going to enforce it? and what incentive do suppliers have to get toilet paper into FLA through new more expensive and possibly dangerous supply chains if they cant raise prices?
At the grocery store I go to they have things at sale price and limits on quantities are common. It's not a new concept. Plus most places like that acquire security during shortages due to catastrophic events. As far as expenses, I don't know what they are or if that was the reason for raised prices. As a rule drastic price changes dont happen from suppliers over short time frames.
don't be silly, when a hurricane hits the supply chain is knocked out and a new temporary one has to be built to keep supplies flowing. this is time consuming dangerous and expensive. Supplies won't do it without getting compensated.
I think it is amazing that people actually BUY the water instead of just filling up pots and other containers. Yes bottled water might be safer but any water is better than none.
Price gouging should be legal. Its not unreasonable to raise prices when demand is up. If people feel like they're being screwed, good luck staying in business afterward. The 'laws' of supply and demand are natural, no legislation necessary.
If you try to ban price gouging or enforce a one-per-person sales limit, there are all sorts of ways around it and it will just lead to a black market. You think with all those looters taking advantage of the situation during a disaster there won't be a black market? To get around the one-person limit someone could just bring in all their family members and children to buy the goods for them, and stop by all the different retail stores in the city. Trying to enforce such a limit is a lot easier said than done. And besides all that, Florida's law can't really do anything here. A seller could have a bottle of water listed for $30 on Amazon all the time. Then when disaster strikes and all the other cheap bottles of water have sold out, only the $30 bottle will be left. Maybe it will be some "luxury" brand of water to avoid being a commodity and skirt around the law. (might sound absurd to some of you but luxury water from far away places like Iceland is commonly bought at more upscale supermarkets in parts of New York or Southern California)
Yup. Theres always a loophole. By trying to restrict trade, it only serves to drive more of the market to the shady side, giving them more influence over the honest ones.
so a store is going to hire security at $7.00/hour to interview people to determine how much water the need, how many times they have been through the line, and how badly much they need the item in short supply? Silly idea that would destroy incentive for suppliers to rush goods and services into the hurricane zone
well, the people who got the every day price would be happy, the people who got empty shelves would be very unhappy, and the people who got price gouged might be happy and sad because they got gouged but got needed product, so it would be neutral in terms of for staying in business.
No....you simply have security on hand and you limit number of purchases on same item. You have signs. And don't micro manage. Sure some people don't respect the policy and try to get around it. Doesn't mean that we throw up our hands and say animals rule..
what you describe is soviet system that starved millions to death. In hurricane you want prices up so suppliers will find a way to get supply to hurricane zone. Do you understand?
This has nothing to do with an economic system. We are talking about short term emergency situation. I would expect companies, suppliers and stores to do the right thing not the profiting thing in this short-term emergency situation. It's not to much to expect ethics.
I don't see anything unethical about price gouging during an emergency. Businesses don't have any obligation to provide you with any product or service. Their only obligation is to be transparent about the deal and not try to cheat people. If both you and them can agree on something then an exchange can be made. Unless someone's life is very probably at stake. But even in that case, if I only have a limited number of something and I can't give it away to everyone, might as well choose to save the lives of the individuals who can give me the most money. Why do you think just because someone starts up a business and has an inventory of something they have an obligation to you? Just as a business assumes all sorts of potential risks by staying in operation (theft, robbery, natural disasters, fire) I think a business should also be able to have the potential chance of a windfall from price gouging. It's not like that's unfair. You think businesses should take on the risk of being flooded and having all their merchandise stolen by looters, but you don't think that businesses should be able to reap inflated prices, if it can manage to do so, during that disaster. You want to take take take, but I don't see you paying for that business's insurance premiums. Well maybe those inflated prices the business is charging is going to pay for the flood insurance. Did you ever think of that?
The thing of it to me is that "oh we can't have the woman who refused to get out of the way of a hurricane pay $6 for gas" but we sure as hell can make everybody else in America pay 60 cent more a gallon for gas because of the hurricane in a blink of an eye.
Supply and demand, temporary inflation followed by deflation. Pretty much what we see happened from before our founding as a Nation up to 1913.
