17 ms·

I feel like the market will automatically correct? Nobody buys this overpriced stuff?

dheera 6y ago
Not really, because people still need masks, and at that time, everything else was sold out, even the local shops. Lots of people overpaid, and it went into the hands of some eBay armchair hoarders.
- eurg 6y ago
  It's easy to quote a low price if you have zero stock to sell. The alternative was not masks available at low prices, the alternative was no masks.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    No, the alternative was masks at regular prices with sales restricted to hospitals and industries (jobs that need N95 or better for occupational safety), and unallocated flow sold out on consumer market with purchase limits.
pmiller2 6y ago
This is not a thing the "free market" can do. We need to get PPE into the hands of hospitals and healthcare workers above all. The "free market" is literally designed to make that not happen, if someone else with more money is out there and willing to pay more money than the hospitals.
- barumi 6y ago
  > The "free market" is literally designed to make that not happen, if someone else with more money is out there and willing to pay more money than the hospitals. The free market is not designed at all to do anything, let alone acts with a bolted-on moral load. What the free market allows is that economic actors like the hospital are free to purchase their supplies from anyone at all from anywhere, and allows anyone who has any interest in producing said supplies to present their offering. That's it. I live in a country where, when the demand for N95 masks started, had a few unrelated corporations quickly enter the market with their own product. I'm talking about companies ranging from office supplies to coffee makers. Hell, even beer producers quickly entered the hand sanitizer market. Consequently prices dropped drastically and not only is there no shortage of protective equipment but it's also affordable. That's what happens in a free market. How come you're talking about this sort of stuff not happening in your country, and still you talk about a free market?
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > I live in a country where, when the demand for N95 masks started, had a few unrelated corporations quickly enter the market with their own product. I'm talking about companies ranging from office supplies to coffee makers. Hell, even beer producers quickly entered the hand sanitizer market. Consequently prices dropped drastically and not only is there no shortage of protective equipment but it's also affordable. Interesting, because IIRC there were global shortages of both hand sanitizer and N95 masks up to at least May. There were a lot of scammy products sold in between March and May, though. The problem with price gouging in large-scale emergencies is that companies just can't retool that quickly, especially when - as is the case with both hand sanitizer and N95 respirators - a complex supply chain is involved. That takes months, and through those months, you're dealing with extremely inefficient distribution of goods - from the humanitarian/life saving point of view. Free market does what it does. For instance, price the poorest out. A well-known example of the free market at work was in the US, when some people drove a van around towns and villages in their state and bought out all hand sanitizer to resell it on-line (with significant markup), thus depriving less wealthy communities of access to hand sanitizer.
  - baq 6y ago
    If you believe the free market isn’t designed you’re in for a few bad experiences. Rules of the market are absolutely required to be consciously created, otherwise the free market becomes a monopoly. Remember that anarchy is just a prelude to despotism, both economically and politically.
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    It also assumes everyone has the same power, which is false And that everyone has perfect infinite information, which is impossible. And that externalities are irrelevant, which is false And that all options are equally accessible, which doesn't exist. And that people act in perfectly rational objective ways, which isn't how humans behave. And that everyone instantaneously knows the utility maximization function of all potential transactions, which doesn't ever happen either. And that firms will always prefer competition over cooperation, which is the exact opposite of reality. And that any tricks such as cornering, price fixing, ramping, runs, pump and dumps, luring, spoofing, churning, pools, don't exist, which is also false. The foundation it's built on is a fundamental fiction. Conclusions based on it occasionally resembling reality are exceedingly rare and merely coincidental - it's like a form of astrology with more equations and charts. And the real clincher is the advocates are only interested in defending their ideological agenda like some kind of religious zealot. When anyone walks in thinking they already have the answer before hearing any of the questions, watch out - especially if it's the same exact answer every time.
- jijji 6y ago
  ebay, facebook and amazon blocking the sale of masks and hand sanitizer is likely a reason for spikes of viral infection.... as if blocking the sale of these items has anything to do with keeping people safe, quite the opposite.
donmcronald 6y ago
I don't think so. As stupid as it sounds, this is something I learned playing WoW many years ago with the expansion that added glyphs. Everyone _needed_ glyphs in the sense that your character wasn't hitting it's full potential and you'd get mocked if you didn't have them. Back then I wrote my own auction house addon that would scan for glyphs below a certain price threshold, buy them, and re-list them in bulk for higher prices. It also scanned for raw materials and bought them too to help strangle the supply as much as possible. It was so easy that hitting the technical gold limit (something just over 200k IIRC) was a realistic problem to deal with. The supply was limited enough that 2-3 people could monopolize an entire server. I recognized the other 1 or 2 people doing it on my server and it's something I would describe as tacit collusion. We never talked to each other, but we didn't compete with each other either. The whole time _everyone_ complained about the price of glyphs, but there wasn't much they could do about it. If someone came in and tried to compete by undercutting you, you'd just buy out their supply and re-list it at your inflated prices. It wasn't complex. You just needed to be willing to be a bit of a scumbag. The only thing that was moderately difficult was getting enough gold to start monopolizing that part of the market. IIRC it costed 5k gold to get a flying mount and most players had to save up for that, so being able to drop 5k at the auction house gave a lot of buying power. Having a limited supply product that people _need_ means your profits are only limited by your ethics. Capitalism works really well for luxury products IMO, but less so for necessities.
- blargmaster42_8 6y ago
  Communist detected!
- lopmotr 6y ago
  It sounds like this need only existed because the product existed in a zero-sum game. If supply was increased, presumably players would need more. In non-zero-sum real life, things are different. People didn't need antibiotics before they were invented just as people don't currently need to live to 200 years old since we don't have that technology either. I can't find a clear boundary between need and want. Need seems to be just "very want". Some people end up with less than others and the world keeps turning. We don't even need seemingly essential things like water because we can survive a few days without it. Just as seriously ill people can survive a few days without treatment (which may or may not have been invented yet), and normal healthy people can survive a few days when they're already 100 years old and we don't have anti-aging tech.
shock 6y ago
Wait until it's overpriced for you too, and you need it...
- sokoloff 6y ago
  If I needed something, I would strongly prefer something to be overpriced and available for purchase rather than fairly priced and sold out.
  - cool_dude85 6y ago
    If I needed something, I would strongly prefer something to be fairly priced and available for limited purchase rather than either of your two ideas.
wil421 6y ago
It doesn't matter if it's doctors or nurses in hospitals or not-so-smart people buying second hand because of a panic, people shouldn't be price gouging or hoarding PPE. There was a hoarder arrested in NYC earlier this year. https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/brooklyn-man-arrested-for-hoarding-masks-coughing-on-fbi-agents/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/brooklyn-man-arrested-for-hoar...

Not really, because people still need masks, and at that time, everything else was sold out, even the local shops. Lots of people overpaid, and it went into the hands of some eBay armchair hoarders.

eurg 6y ago
It's easy to quote a low price if you have zero stock to sell. The alternative was not masks available at low prices, the alternative was no masks.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  No, the alternative was masks at regular prices with sales restricted to hospitals and industries (jobs that need N95 or better for occupational safety), and unallocated flow sold out on consumer market with purchase limits.

pmiller2 6y ago

This is not a thing the "free market" can do. We need to get PPE into the hands of hospitals and healthcare workers above all. The "free market" is literally designed to make that not happen, if someone else with more money is out there and willing to pay more money than the hospitals.

barumi 6y ago
> The "free market" is literally designed to make that not happen, if someone else with more money is out there and willing to pay more money than the hospitals. The free market is not designed at all to do anything, let alone acts with a bolted-on moral load. What the free market allows is that economic actors like the hospital are free to purchase their supplies from anyone at all from anywhere, and allows anyone who has any interest in producing said supplies to present their offering. That's it. I live in a country where, when the demand for N95 masks started, had a few unrelated corporations quickly enter the market with their own product. I'm talking about companies ranging from office supplies to coffee makers. Hell, even beer producers quickly entered the hand sanitizer market. Consequently prices dropped drastically and not only is there no shortage of protective equipment but it's also affordable. That's what happens in a free market. How come you're talking about this sort of stuff not happening in your country, and still you talk about a free market?
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > I live in a country where, when the demand for N95 masks started, had a few unrelated corporations quickly enter the market with their own product. I'm talking about companies ranging from office supplies to coffee makers. Hell, even beer producers quickly entered the hand sanitizer market. Consequently prices dropped drastically and not only is there no shortage of protective equipment but it's also affordable. Interesting, because IIRC there were global shortages of both hand sanitizer and N95 masks up to at least May. There were a lot of scammy products sold in between March and May, though. The problem with price gouging in large-scale emergencies is that companies just can't retool that quickly, especially when - as is the case with both hand sanitizer and N95 respirators - a complex supply chain is involved. That takes months, and through those months, you're dealing with extremely inefficient distribution of goods - from the humanitarian/life saving point of view. Free market does what it does. For instance, price the poorest out. A well-known example of the free market at work was in the US, when some people drove a van around towns and villages in their state and bought out all hand sanitizer to resell it on-line (with significant markup), thus depriving less wealthy communities of access to hand sanitizer.
- baq 6y ago
  If you believe the free market isn’t designed you’re in for a few bad experiences. Rules of the market are absolutely required to be consciously created, otherwise the free market becomes a monopoly. Remember that anarchy is just a prelude to despotism, both economically and politically.
- kristopolous 6y ago
  It also assumes everyone has the same power, which is false And that everyone has perfect infinite information, which is impossible. And that externalities are irrelevant, which is false And that all options are equally accessible, which doesn't exist. And that people act in perfectly rational objective ways, which isn't how humans behave. And that everyone instantaneously knows the utility maximization function of all potential transactions, which doesn't ever happen either. And that firms will always prefer competition over cooperation, which is the exact opposite of reality. And that any tricks such as cornering, price fixing, ramping, runs, pump and dumps, luring, spoofing, churning, pools, don't exist, which is also false. The foundation it's built on is a fundamental fiction. Conclusions based on it occasionally resembling reality are exceedingly rare and merely coincidental - it's like a form of astrology with more equations and charts. And the real clincher is the advocates are only interested in defending their ideological agenda like some kind of religious zealot. When anyone walks in thinking they already have the answer before hearing any of the questions, watch out - especially if it's the same exact answer every time.
jijji 6y ago
ebay, facebook and amazon blocking the sale of masks and hand sanitizer is likely a reason for spikes of viral infection.... as if blocking the sale of these items has anything to do with keeping people safe, quite the opposite.

donmcronald 6y ago

I don't think so. As stupid as it sounds, this is something I learned playing WoW many years ago with the expansion that added glyphs. Everyone _needed_ glyphs in the sense that your character wasn't hitting it's full potential and you'd get mocked if you didn't have them. Back then I wrote my own auction house addon that would scan for glyphs below a certain price threshold, buy them, and re-list them in bulk for higher prices. It also scanned for raw materials and bought them too to help strangle the supply as much as possible. It was so easy that hitting the technical gold limit (something just over 200k IIRC) was a realistic problem to deal with. The supply was limited enough that 2-3 people could monopolize an entire server. I recognized the other 1 or 2 people doing it on my server and it's something I would describe as tacit collusion. We never talked to each other, but we didn't compete with each other either. The whole time _everyone_ complained about the price of glyphs, but there wasn't much they could do about it. If someone came in and tried to compete by undercutting you, you'd just buy out their supply and re-list it at your inflated prices. It wasn't complex. You just needed to be willing to be a bit of a scumbag. The only thing that was moderately difficult was getting enough gold to start monopolizing that part of the market. IIRC it costed 5k gold to get a flying mount and most players had to save up for that, so being able to drop 5k at the auction house gave a lot of buying power. Having a limited supply product that people _need_ means your profits are only limited by your ethics. Capitalism works really well for luxury products IMO, but less so for necessities.

blargmaster42_8 6y ago
Communist detected!
lopmotr 6y ago
It sounds like this need only existed because the product existed in a zero-sum game. If supply was increased, presumably players would need more. In non-zero-sum real life, things are different. People didn't need antibiotics before they were invented just as people don't currently need to live to 200 years old since we don't have that technology either. I can't find a clear boundary between need and want. Need seems to be just "very want". Some people end up with less than others and the world keeps turning. We don't even need seemingly essential things like water because we can survive a few days without it. Just as seriously ill people can survive a few days without treatment (which may or may not have been invented yet), and normal healthy people can survive a few days when they're already 100 years old and we don't have anti-aging tech.

shock 6y ago

Wait until it's overpriced for you too, and you need it...

sokoloff 6y ago
If I needed something, I would strongly prefer something to be overpriced and available for purchase rather than fairly priced and sold out.
- cool_dude85 6y ago
  If I needed something, I would strongly prefer something to be fairly priced and available for limited purchase rather than either of your two ideas.

wil421 6y ago

It doesn't matter if it's doctors or nurses in hospitals or not-so-smart people buying second hand because of a panic, people shouldn't be price gouging or hoarding PPE. There was a hoarder arrested in NYC earlier this year. https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/brooklyn-man-arrested-for-hoarding-masks-coughing-on-fbi-agents/ https://nypost.com/2020/03/30/brooklyn-man-arrested-for-hoar...