Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
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Notes -
"Bad" gouging is about raising prices beyond compensation for (1) risk and delivery costs, and (2) demand increase. Legality of price gouging increases incentive for profit seekers, yes. But if they are profit seekers, why not cooperate and arrange high cartel prices for this short period of time?
Why pretend that market never fail? Especially during disruption and uncertainty of a disaster, when there might be not so many arbitragers rushing to close all price differentials.
Could you provide a brief example of this method?
You could, but it's still a strong signal that will draw outsiders to the local market in order to capture the profits. And what coordination method do you use to ensure compliance amongst your cartel? All it takes is one defector to undercut the rest.
Don't have to. Just have to assume their failures are less frequent and less egregious than government failures, and are certainly corrected faster, since some government failures just never get solved.
You can convince me there's a specific market failure in certain conditions. You probably can't convince me that a governmental solution will actually work out better!
Have you noticed how Gas prices went up abruptly earlier this year?
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