Wednesday, August 20, 2008

She took a laxative

the shit is flowing.

By request: grab bag #2:

Anti-"gouging" laws

Another incredibly stupid idea. Actual gougers get punished by the market, because no one buys their goods, and the neighbors remember. These laws are more frequently deployed against vendors who are selling goods that have suddenly become scarce, like gasoline generators after a hurricane. This discourages conservation. Moreover, the spiking prices generally attract new supply to the area, which is a good thing. People in a disaster area who can't get their hands on generators are no doubt comforted by the fact that at least they didn't pay too much for the privilege of sitting in the dark without refrigeration.
Wow. Just, wow. She's truly an idiot. Don't make it illegal to price gouge in the face of a natural disaster or punish people for doing so, because you're interfering with THE MARKET, you heretic. Sure, people might go without basic necessities, but soon more people will be there trying to take advantage of them, and if folk don't want to pay those ridiculous prices they can hope to survive until they come down.

By request: grab bag #3:
I have a very low opinion of politicians as people. People who run for office are, well, the kind of people who crave power and fame more than almost anything else. These are not my favorite kinds of people. Now, I do think there are some extra-specially awful politicians (no, I name no names). But I don't think McCain is one of them. I disapprove of the man as a politician, but I'm not going to not vote for him merely because I think he cheats. My interlocutor argued that this shows that McCain thinks the rules apply to everyone but him. I would say that such a belief seems to be a prerequisite for running for office. Check, say, Al Gore's position on a) vouchers and b) sending his own children to private school.
Lemme guess, Gore sent his children to private school and took advantage of potential tax breaks for doing so, but doesn't want to scrap the entire American public school system in favor of giving kids cash handouts and hoping for the best. What a hypocrite.

Megan will never make it on tv. She's even stupider when she's off the cuff. Even Tucker Carlson would laugh at some of this crap.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is she serious about that anti-gouging crap? What about the case of captive consumers that don't have any other options but overpriced goods? What about pooling? What about products that don't have viable competition? What a way to massively over-simplify a complicated issue. Then again, "over-simplified" is pretty much an apt description of "libertarian" in general.

ignatov said...

"People who run for office are, well, the kind of people who crave power and fame more than almost anything else."

As opposed to the humble people who just spend all day blathering on the internet.

spencer said...

cp, hers is a standard economist argument. I first heard it in my second semester of grad school (first semester was all math), and it struck me as moronic even then. But then again, I have lived in Florida for about 20 years, so maybe I have a different perspective from Megan - i.e., I have experience with what she's talking about, and she has her precious glibertarian theory.

Idiot.

Ellis Weiner said...

This gouging idiocy offers more proof--as if any were needed--that libertarians reside in a completely imaginary world. It's actually kind of aesthetically impressive, if morally repellent.

What do they say when reality fails to conform to their theories? "You're not doing it right!"?

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