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I was able to get kleenex and paper towels saturday because the grocery store is now limiting people to one purchase per day. I am sure there are people who ne

I was able to get kleenex and paper towels saturday because the grocery store is now limiting people to one purchase per day. I am sure there are people who need more than that, and any system of rationing should allow for exceptions. But when people insist that a "free" market is inherently correct, it's no different from insisting that your OS scheduler is perfect even though some processes never get to run https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(computer_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_(computer_science)

alexmingoia 7y ago
The article and my comment are not about rationing. The article is about anti-"price gouging" laws.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Don't they go hand in hand? If you can't charge as much as you want, that is an obvious incentive to ration.
chillacy 7y ago
Makes sense, in the short term if you have a fixed quantity of a good and demand which exceeds supply then the solution markets will find is to allocate to those with the most resources. At that point the markets are not a particularly fair allocator. In the medium to long term though high prices slowly incentivize people to produce more of that good. So it would be like if your hardware gained more and more CPU threads to dish out over time, until we reach some equilibrium again.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > In the medium to long term though high prices slowly incentivize people to produce more of that good. So it would be like if your hardware gained more and more CPU threads to dish out over time, until we reach some equilibrium again. Except the demand is going to fall back down in the future, and your hypervisor is sentient and realizes there's no point in spending its own resources to provision more vCPUs if they're going to be running idle by the time they're activated.
lettergram 7y ago
If they had allowed dynamic pricing then people who needed more would probably be willing to pay $10/roll of paper towels Vs the fixed $2/roll. They aren’t necessary for life, so setting fixed prices are why they need hard limits. Seems crazy to me we aren’t seeing a “free market” at play, where both inherently the stores “win” and the people receive the goods they need / can justify.
- coffeefirst 7y ago
  It's weird how in that scenario software engineers and lawyers always seem to "need" paper towels a lot more than laid off waiters do. It's as if there's something going on there that this reductionist model didn't account for.
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    If someone has to go without it, why can't it be poor people? Seems crazy to leave money on the table.
- someguydave 7y ago
  You aren't seeing a "free market" because all of these big corps are scared to death of being accused of "profiteering" on supplies (with potential liability from anti-"gouging" laws), so they can't raise prices. Their only other option is to restrict the buyer's quantities.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    They can raise prices moderately on everything to make up for it, and/or stock things that are slightly less appealing in normal times to slow turnover and bias sales towards those more in need. For instance, the pasta section was about 5% full and almost entirely things like whole wheat, cauliflower gluten-free, or turmeric. But that's fine with me. Your tone is that this is not the optimal solution and some misguided people are causing it by mistake. I don't think that's the case. People who get upset about the lack of high prices for scarce commodities seem to me to be inconsistent - if you aren't in a high stakes zero-sum competition, then why should you care much about being able to outbid others? And if you think that you are, how can you ethically defend everyone not getting a minimum ration or be sure that in a so-called free market you will get yours?
Scoundreller 7y ago
> I was able to get kleenex and paper towels saturday because the grocery store is now limiting people to one purchase per day. The grocery stores don't want to keep stocking-out and restocking kleenex and paper towels either. People opportunistically filling up their carts won't have space to buy other higher-margin products. And kleenex and paper towels take up a lot of space on the trucks, taking up space from higher-margin deliveries.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
CryptoPunk 7y ago
Per store limits prevent arrangements like one person purchasing supplies for large numbers of people.
dehrmann 7y ago
> I was able to get kleenex and paper towels saturday because the grocery store is now limiting people to one purchase per day. Maybe, but depending on where you are, you might be 3 weeks into this and demand is subsiding.
specialist 7y ago
Capitalism is just an algorithm, heuristic. Game theory shows a mix of strategies works pretty good. Just tweak the proportional mix of strategies as necessary. Open markets only span something like 1/3rd of our economy. (Most other trades are intra organizational, government appropriations, etc.) We're geeks, right? Obsessed with optimization, right? So it seems crazy to me that so many will only consider Freedom Markets™ while dismissing every other possible strategy. As seen in this very thread, the meme of Freedom Markets™ is so engrained that even the critics only argue in those terms, rather than having an affirmative agenda based on alternatives.

alexmingoia 7y ago

The article and my comment are not about rationing. The article is about anti-"price gouging" laws.

perl4ever 7y ago
Don't they go hand in hand? If you can't charge as much as you want, that is an obvious incentive to ration.

chillacy 7y ago

Makes sense, in the short term if you have a fixed quantity of a good and demand which exceeds supply then the solution markets will find is to allocate to those with the most resources. At that point the markets are not a particularly fair allocator. In the medium to long term though high prices slowly incentivize people to produce more of that good. So it would be like if your hardware gained more and more CPU threads to dish out over time, until we reach some equilibrium again.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
> In the medium to long term though high prices slowly incentivize people to produce more of that good. So it would be like if your hardware gained more and more CPU threads to dish out over time, until we reach some equilibrium again. Except the demand is going to fall back down in the future, and your hypervisor is sentient and realizes there's no point in spending its own resources to provision more vCPUs if they're going to be running idle by the time they're activated.

lettergram 7y ago

If they had allowed dynamic pricing then people who needed more would probably be willing to pay $10/roll of paper towels Vs the fixed $2/roll. They aren’t necessary for life, so setting fixed prices are why they need hard limits. Seems crazy to me we aren’t seeing a “free market” at play, where both inherently the stores “win” and the people receive the goods they need / can justify.

coffeefirst 7y ago
It's weird how in that scenario software engineers and lawyers always seem to "need" paper towels a lot more than laid off waiters do. It's as if there's something going on there that this reductionist model didn't account for.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  If someone has to go without it, why can't it be poor people? Seems crazy to leave money on the table.
someguydave 7y ago
You aren't seeing a "free market" because all of these big corps are scared to death of being accused of "profiteering" on supplies (with potential liability from anti-"gouging" laws), so they can't raise prices. Their only other option is to restrict the buyer's quantities.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  They can raise prices moderately on everything to make up for it, and/or stock things that are slightly less appealing in normal times to slow turnover and bias sales towards those more in need. For instance, the pasta section was about 5% full and almost entirely things like whole wheat, cauliflower gluten-free, or turmeric. But that's fine with me. Your tone is that this is not the optimal solution and some misguided people are causing it by mistake. I don't think that's the case. People who get upset about the lack of high prices for scarce commodities seem to me to be inconsistent - if you aren't in a high stakes zero-sum competition, then why should you care much about being able to outbid others? And if you think that you are, how can you ethically defend everyone not getting a minimum ration or be sure that in a so-called free market you will get yours?

Scoundreller 7y ago

> I was able to get kleenex and paper towels saturday because the grocery store is now limiting people to one purchase per day. The grocery stores don't want to keep stocking-out and restocking kleenex and paper towels either. People opportunistically filling up their carts won't have space to buy other higher-margin products. And kleenex and paper towels take up a lot of space on the trucks, taking up space from higher-margin deliveries.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

CryptoPunk 7y ago

Per store limits prevent arrangements like one person purchasing supplies for large numbers of people.

dehrmann 7y ago

> I was able to get kleenex and paper towels saturday because the grocery store is now limiting people to one purchase per day. Maybe, but depending on where you are, you might be 3 weeks into this and demand is subsiding.

specialist 7y ago

Capitalism is just an algorithm, heuristic. Game theory shows a mix of strategies works pretty good. Just tweak the proportional mix of strategies as necessary. Open markets only span something like 1/3rd of our economy. (Most other trades are intra organizational, government appropriations, etc.) We're geeks, right? Obsessed with optimization, right? So it seems crazy to me that so many will only consider Freedom Markets™ while dismissing every other possible strategy. As seen in this very thread, the meme of Freedom Markets™ is so engrained that even the critics only argue in those terms, rather than having an affirmative agenda based on alternatives.