3 ms·

Spoiler: Price controls.

by wmf 3y ago

SoftTalker 3y ago
Which don't work. They just cause shortages. If you don't like the price of your Pepsi, buy Coke. Or buy the store brand. Or do your health a favor and don't buy that garbage food in the first place.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  Did you expect something sensible from Vice? A literally bankrupt company giving economic advice..
- kube-system 3y ago
  It's not that simple. It all depends on the supply elasticity and the implementation of the particular control.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    Food is like the #1 example of a highly fungible good where supply responds aggressively to price fluctuation. Incredible amounts of marginal farmland that comes in and out of production based on market prices. (so, to be crystal clear, price caps are a horrible idea).
    - kube-system 3y ago
      Price caps are not the only example of price controls. There are price controls on some foods in the US. There's also farm regulation that manipulates farmland going in and out of production artificially. It already isn't driven solely by the free market.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  Do you think sellers inflation affects only luxury goods?
- 15457345234 3y ago
  The issue is that the prices of staples have also been increasing precipitously an there have been clear cases where prices have risen universally across suppliers in a 'why leave money on the table, our competitors have raised prices, let's match them' type of way. Something does need to be done about that type of situation; in a properly working free market the competitor would gleefully accept having 100% of the market and waiting for the high price supplier to go bankrupt or lower their prices. Instead you're seeing what appears to be cartel-like 'we've got your back' from suppliers. This was most recently visible with eggs.
churchill 3y ago
Lol. It's universally agreed on by economists that they don't work and only cause shortages, quality/quantity shrinkflation, and long queues. Relevant: https://cdn.mises.org/Forty%20Centuries%20of%20Wage%20and%20Price%20Controls%20How%20Not%20to%20Fight%20Inflation_2.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/Forty%20Centuries%20of%20Wage%20and%20...
- palmfacehn 3y ago
  Submissions from Mises dot org are shadowbanned at ycom. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=mises.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=mises.org You can post articles from Vice, Oxfam or even Jacobin Mag. Just don't share the canonical sources debunking socialist canards. Articles from laissez-faire economists eloquently describing the problem of economic calculation aren't valued here. HN prefers the pop-culture journalists at Vice Magazine to rehash the virtues of price controls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices
hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
I don't think it's as simple as that. For example, one of the first items mentioned in the article is how prices are regulated in France, which is really not traditional price controls: > France has set up a food pricing system that will sound foreign to American ears: Consumer goods companies like PepsiCo must negotiate with the country’s grocery stores on prices in the stores during a set period. If they can’t come to a compromise, PepsiCo won’t be able to get its products on the grocer’s shelves. The negotiations provide French consumers with a small but valuable piece of power, and President Emmanuel Macron has been trying to use the system to his advantage as he aggressively pushes to get the country’s high food prices down, saying they should reflect the fact that the prices of many raw materials have recently declined. That's not really how people think of traditional price controls, it's just saying that prices must be negotiated once per year. Of course, what the article leaves out, and which is mentioned in the link at https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-bill-moves-food-price-deadline-up-middle-january-2023-09-26 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-bill-moves-food-..., is that only negotiating once per year means that if prices are set high in the beginning of the year, there is not a chance to reset lower until the following year. So consumers get the benefit of higher-stakes negotiating power, but you've got to live with that outcome for a year. I also despise the "blame inflation on corporations just taking more profits" line of thinking, because it's usually made from as a braindead assertion without any follow up. That is, basic economics 101 says that competition should keep corporations from taking undo profits. So if corporations are able to drastically increase their profits without new competition coming in, it means that either (a) there is something about the market that is fundamentally broken, e.g. monopoly pricing power or collusion, or (b) the price increases really are warranted, and companies are worried about price pressures in the future. That is, so often I see the argument being made of "companies are gouging us for profits, we need price controls!" as opposed to "companies are gouging us for profits, what is broken in the system that is allowing this to happen in the first place?"
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >France has set up a food pricing system that will sound foreign to American ears: Consumer goods companies like PepsiCo must negotiate with the country’s grocery stores on prices in the stores during a set period. If they can’t come to a compromise, PepsiCo won’t be able to get its products on the grocer’s shelves. This is absolutely price controls, complete with their inevitable result: The non-availability of the good.

Spoiler: Price controls.

by wmf 3y ago

Spoiler: Price controls.

Which don't work. They just cause shortages. If you don't like the price of your Pepsi, buy Coke. Or buy the store brand. Or do your health a favor and don't buy that garbage food in the first place.

boeingUH60 3y ago
Did you expect something sensible from Vice? A literally bankrupt company giving economic advice..
kube-system 3y ago
It's not that simple. It all depends on the supply elasticity and the implementation of the particular control.
- justrealist 3y ago
  Food is like the #1 example of a highly fungible good where supply responds aggressively to price fluctuation. Incredible amounts of marginal farmland that comes in and out of production based on market prices. (so, to be crystal clear, price caps are a horrible idea).
  - kube-system 3y ago
    Price caps are not the only example of price controls. There are price controls on some foods in the US. There's also farm regulation that manipulates farmland going in and out of production artificially. It already isn't driven solely by the free market.
unethical_ban 3y ago
Do you think sellers inflation affects only luxury goods?
15457345234 3y ago
The issue is that the prices of staples have also been increasing precipitously an there have been clear cases where prices have risen universally across suppliers in a 'why leave money on the table, our competitors have raised prices, let's match them' type of way. Something does need to be done about that type of situation; in a properly working free market the competitor would gleefully accept having 100% of the market and waiting for the high price supplier to go bankrupt or lower their prices. Instead you're seeing what appears to be cartel-like 'we've got your back' from suppliers. This was most recently visible with eggs.

churchill 3y ago

Lol. It's universally agreed on by economists that they don't work and only cause shortages, quality/quantity shrinkflation, and long queues. Relevant: https://cdn.mises.org/Forty%20Centuries%20of%20Wage%20and%20Price%20Controls%20How%20Not%20to%20Fight%20Inflation_2.pdf https://cdn.mises.org/Forty%20Centuries%20of%20Wage%20and%20...

palmfacehn 3y ago
Submissions from Mises dot org are shadowbanned at ycom. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=mises.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=mises.org You can post articles from Vice, Oxfam or even Jacobin Mag. Just don't share the canonical sources debunking socialist canards. Articles from laissez-faire economists eloquently describing the problem of economic calculation aren't valued here. HN prefers the pop-culture journalists at Vice Magazine to rehash the virtues of price controls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edict_on_Maximum_Prices

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago

I don't think it's as simple as that. For example, one of the first items mentioned in the article is how prices are regulated in France, which is really not traditional price controls: > France has set up a food pricing system that will sound foreign to American ears: Consumer goods companies like PepsiCo must negotiate with the country’s grocery stores on prices in the stores during a set period. If they can’t come to a compromise, PepsiCo won’t be able to get its products on the grocer’s shelves. The negotiations provide French consumers with a small but valuable piece of power, and President Emmanuel Macron has been trying to use the system to his advantage as he aggressively pushes to get the country’s high food prices down, saying they should reflect the fact that the prices of many raw materials have recently declined. That's not really how people think of traditional price controls, it's just saying that prices must be negotiated once per year. Of course, what the article leaves out, and which is mentioned in the link at https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-bill-moves-food-price-deadline-up-middle-january-2023-09-26 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/french-bill-moves-food-..., is that only negotiating once per year means that if prices are set high in the beginning of the year, there is not a chance to reset lower until the following year. So consumers get the benefit of higher-stakes negotiating power, but you've got to live with that outcome for a year. I also despise the "blame inflation on corporations just taking more profits" line of thinking, because it's usually made from as a braindead assertion without any follow up. That is, basic economics 101 says that competition should keep corporations from taking undo profits. So if corporations are able to drastically increase their profits without new competition coming in, it means that either (a) there is something about the market that is fundamentally broken, e.g. monopoly pricing power or collusion, or (b) the price increases really are warranted, and companies are worried about price pressures in the future. That is, so often I see the argument being made of "companies are gouging us for profits, we need price controls!" as opposed to "companies are gouging us for profits, what is broken in the system that is allowing this to happen in the first place?"

TMWNN 3y ago
>France has set up a food pricing system that will sound foreign to American ears: Consumer goods companies like PepsiCo must negotiate with the country’s grocery stores on prices in the stores during a set period. If they can’t come to a compromise, PepsiCo won’t be able to get its products on the grocer’s shelves. This is absolutely price controls, complete with their inevitable result: The non-availability of the good.