Stop, Tim. You are making Scrooge look like a great guy.
You keep pushing a failed ideology and it does not serve you.
Lowering your prices, in the context of a shortage, is a rather questionable way to help people. For an item that's still trading (not centrally rationed, or being distributed as charity), higher prices keep the good from running out so quickly, while at the same time they encourage replacement supply.
Its easy to think of customer A who saved 50% on his purchase, and say "lower prices are a good thing", but that ignores potential customer B and C who wind up not getting any because the shelves are bare. Its not a matter of "getting the most possible money is always the best thing", which it seems is what you think of as "the capitalist credo", its not just a matter of benefit to the seller, its also a matter of benefit to the customers. Prices that are too low for the balance of supply and demand result in inefficient distribution of goods and services. That inefficient distribution, isn't a matter of lower profits (although it probably causes that as well), but a matter of people in need going without. Its not an ideological point at all, unless you think "going without is not ok" is an ideological rather than a practical issue. |
