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When it comes to daily essentials like housing, food, medicine, and toilet paper, everybody needs them - that's why they're called "essential". When you have a
by nostrademons 7y ago
When it comes to daily essentials like housing, food, medicine, and toilet paper, everybody needs them - that's why they're called "essential". When you have a good that everyone needs, the market-clearing price becomes a function of ability to pay, not willingness to pay.
- jmckib 7y agoToilet paper isn't an essential (as a lot of us are now finding out). Also nobody really needs to hoard like 50 packages of toilet paper, and if prices were allowed to increase to reflect demand then people would be less incentivized to hoard. The same goes for real essentials like food and medicine: letting prices rise keeps people from hoarding needlessly, and it incentivizes producers to increase supply. I'm not saying we should let people starve, but price ceilings are just going to cause shortages of essentials anyway.