I just added some new commentary to the original "Price Gouging" info. But this blog site is so HORRIBLE that the old Price Gouging post remains hidden away forever in the September 2005 archive. I don't think it's even worth using these blogs anymore, since the site is so dreadful. Now nobody reads anybodies commentaries. If the point of this excersize was to kill communication, it has succeeded!
http://reformedleftist.blogspot.com/2005_09_01_reformedleftist_archive.html
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11 comments:
That may be Paul, but when I was getting inundated with email from you guys I end up not reading a lot if it either because I couldn't keep up. Kinda the old six of one, half dozen of the other thing as far as I'm concerned. I do have to say though that it's nice to not have my email inbox not filling multiple times a day. I agree though, these blogs are clumsy.
The blogs are clumsy, but I'm reading them. I'm just being more selective with my comments, and they may come days later instead of immediately.
We can always use the forum at http://www.distortedsoul.com/board
Nadir: Your distortedsoul blog is slightly better, in that it lets you organize your posts into catagories. But it doesn't let you expand/contract the post, so I still have to see all 2.5 pages of the article that you posted, rather than just the headline with a +/- icon that lets me expand/contract. I haven't noticed any capacity for people to comment.
So, which is better: (1) email bombs that nobody reads, or (2) a clumsy blog that nobody reads? Nadir claims that he read these things, but they are so clunky to use it's impossible for him to even know if there's anything new to read other than cliking around. Surely there's a good blog site out there.
Maybe the democrats have instituted a ban on blog price-gouging. That would explain lack of supply! (PS: The republicans are just as bad in opposing price-gouging. This is really a libertarian issue.)
I should clarify.
The emails I fail or have falied to read are for the most part ones I have received when I've been away from my email for a length of time.
Under this scenario, they pile up and pile up and can never get caught up with them all. They're all socked away in an email folder right now. Otherwise, I read them as I receive them and respond if I have the time, and/or if I feel they deserve a response.
I'm going to be switching my server to a new system soon. It is supposed to have a superior blog/forum system. I'll keep you updated.
So, do you guys have any opion on the subject of, "Price Gouging"? Have either of you looked into it (ie, read articles pro and con)? Or do you already know your view prior to examining the issue?
As for blogging: I assume that there is a good way for this to work, one that is far superior to emailing. But this site ain't it.
I'm no economics expert, but I've heard quite a few opnions on this subject lately, most recently on Michael Medved's radio show yesterday and I have to agree with you Paul that you have to let the market do its job. Walter Williams stesses this point continuously and I think he's absolutely right. While no one likes, or wants to pay exorbitant prices for things such as gasoline during shortages, the alternative, as in price controls create way more problems than any good they may do.
This I think lies at the heart of the liberal/leftist vs. conservative/libertarian dichotomy. The leftists seek a perfect utopia, believe it is possible, and employ means suggested by their fantacy, resulting inevitably in a situation that falls far short of the best *possible* outcome. Meanwhile we heartless, greedy bastards see the world as it actually exists, accept that it cannot be otherwise, and employ means suggested by the facts, which result in the best possible result.
Thus you have leftists creating empty gas stations with pre-hurricane prices, vs. capitalist pigs creating gas stations selling petro to people at prices two or three times the pre-hurricane level, prompting people to -- as Walter Williams calls it -- "self-rationing."
"self-rationing."
I was just thinking about this very thing this afternoon as I was putting gas in my car, although I didn't think of it in that particular term.
With the price of gas back up where it is currently, I only put $10-15.00 in my tank at a time, because the price could drop significantly within a day or so.
The free market is a beutiful mechanism. It's really nothing but the observed way in which free people interact with each other when they have a standard, common, transferable entity to represent their efforts: "money." If you think about it, money simply represents effort, whether that be the effort to pull oil from the ground, to refine it, to distribute it, to transport it, to build the transportation vehicles, to write a song, to record a song, etc.
Someday paid Nadir money for a song that Nadir wrote and recorded. That money represented the buyer's efforts as a male street hustler. Nadir now holds that man's truck stop mens room efforts in his hands, which no represents a portion of the effort that Nadir exerted to write and record his song. How much is Nadir's effort worth? We will not know until people stop paying him for it. Anyway, Nadir now has part of his effort realized as $20 in cash, which he can choose to trade for the various efforts that went in to realizing petro at the nearby service station (where his original customer might be turning a trick!).
Regulating this is rediculous and counter productive. Let free people make their own decisions about how t allocate wealth.
Walter Williams describes "self-rationing" very well. He uses the example of an early carload of Houston evacuees, we'll say: Nadir, his wife Akanke, me, and my kid Alexis. I have family in Austin who will put us up, 3 hours away. But halfway to Austin we decide we'd rather spend the night at a hotel.
In the pre-evacuation days, the rooms let for $50/night. But with all the thousands of evacuees, they now let for $150/night. At the pre-evacuation price, we would get two rooms. Now, we might either share a room, or interject some more effort into driving, perhaps until we get far enough away to reach cheaper rooms. And with 50$ hotel rooms selling for $150, some residents might start opening their spare bedrooms for $100.
Well, if the socialist do-gooders (including many Republicans in this case, including Bush!) ban "price-gouging", our early carload would take two $50 rooms, rather than leave one or both rooms for other people.
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