I recently did a little entry on the subject of "price gouging." Essentially, beyond the core reason that it’s simply none of your business what anyone charges anyone else for a product or service — or indeed, your business what someone else is willing to pay — there are plenty of practical reason why "price gouging" is just hunky dory and I outline some of them.
This morning I have this comment, which, if you can get past the gobbledygook ,is advocating for interdicting in situations where "price gouging" has taken place.
Economic systems, like religious
or political systems, are imaginary constructions meant to help direct
human activities toward a certain goal which provides stability and
progress. When they are differential by preference to reward certain
groups or persons over others, the comfort of complacency has become
the overriding ideology that justifies the system, and idolizes it as
the authority.
Now doesn’t that just sound wonderful? We’re all just one big happy
family; we need to be fair with one-another; teach people to share and
be kind to small animals. …Oh, and "empower" them, which I think is something along the lines of teaching them to excuse their conscience. Gosh, it’s just such a warm and fuzzy feeling
to imagine living in such a wonderful Cartesian world filled with so
much compassion and empathy for the unfortunate circumstances of your
fellow diverse and multi-acculturated human beings. Not just choice (the moral leave to act for a value). Equitable choice, like, when someone makes a better choice than you, it doesn’t matter. You win too!!!
Here’s how to deconstruct this bullshit (slightly edited from the comment version).
"…help direct human activities…"
Whose activities?
"…toward a certain goal…"
Whose goal?
"…provides stability and progress."
To whom?
"…reward certain groups or persons over others…"
By what means? Should not groups or persons who adequately prepare, or
prepare the best for disaster, obtain market rewards over those who
didn’t or who prepared less?"Human empowerment is meant…"
To whom?
"…so that "systems" can be used…"
By whom; on whom?
"…maintain a value system that works for all, not just for the few."
Thank you very much for presuming to know what "value system"
"works" for me. I don’t know your values, you don’t know mine, so I’m
happy to mind my own business so long as you keep to your own values.
Unlike you, apparently, I have nothing to prescribe to you or anyone
else. I’m simply not smart enough to know what everyone wants or needs
and I don’t think you are either. That leaves brute force as the only
way to make your values "work" for all," and I don’t play that way."The ability to alter the dynamics and "mix" of conventions is the utility…"
Utility to whom?
"…and that defines both excellence, and effectiveness…"
According to whose standard of "excellence and effectiveness?"
"If price gouging occurs, it is because those allowing it…"
Begging the question. To "allow" or "disallow" presumes the right to
make it yours or anyone else’s business, which you’ve not established
because all you’ve talked about is the imposition of your values on
others by brute force."…or ignore the set of values that would prevent it…"
Again: whose values? Prevent whom, and by what moral right?
"…to alter the equities…"
Whose "equities" do you propose to "alter," by what means (brute
force?) and to whose benefit; those unprepared to benefit from such
market equities as they stand, i.e., as they were created and produced
by someone who invested their time, effort and capital?"…so that all may share in the benefits…"
Whose benefits? Produced by whom, for whom? How do you propose to
"share" "the benefits" with those for whom they were not intended by
those who produced them? Brute force, perhaps?
Now, if you thought of none of those questions or underlying issues when you read that comment (I thought of all of them, as I was reading it) then you have no business within 1,000 yards of a voting booth (not that anyone does, but you get my point). Not ever; but at least not until you have some clue as to the way in which virtually all modern expressions of value and benefit — from virtually all sources — are expressions of collective value and benefit, i.e., the notion that your values are only valid to the extent "authorities" deem them valid, and your only benefits considered earned are those benefits deemed "equitable" by those same "authorities" — which essentially means that if you produced them you got less than what was yours and if you didn’t produce them you got more than you deserve. That’s "equitable" in a collectivist context.
Human empowerment is meant to educated (sic) and accumulate sufficient
knowledge to transcend that complacency so that "systems" can be used
to maintain a value system that works for all, not just for the few.
The ability to alter the dynamics and "mix" of conventions is the
utility of human empowerment to use its systems, not to be used by its
systems, and that defines both excellence, and effectiveness to
determine whether humans are leaders or pawns in the ongoing process of
human endeavor.
If price gouging occurs, it is because those allowing it are
insensitive to its effects, or ignore the set of values that would
prevent it, to alter the equities so that all may share in the
benefits. Equitable choice is always a factor of value systems, not
necessities in any complex construction.