“There is no ‘Lesbianism Bomb’, Tom. She left you because you stood her up too many times.”
common misconception is that i want to be a girl but thats wrong
i want to be a shapeshifter capable of shedding one form and moving onto another at will, a perfect entity with total mastery over my physical and spiritual form
(… and also a girl)
Putting in disaster gouging laws is not really the virtuous thing, because
This policy is more of a looking good than doing good thing. It lets the politicians get away without actually doing anything, spending any money, or successfully bringing more water into the zone. (It also costs resources to keep all these laws on the books.)
Having supply depots already nearby as part of a multi-layered civil defense system capable of responding to a broad range of emergencies is the actual virtuous policy, the tough one that we can’t actually have because reasons.
I know @collapsedsquid suggested that having supply depots would be defeated because tax breaks for the wealthy, but that isn’t the only factor.
Any money spent on civil defense depots with stockpiled water filters would also have to contend with complaints that it was depriving resources from any other groups - for instance, from education, healthcare, etc. It might even get accused of being racist for being connected to some distant probability-calculated need rather than the immediate needs of the local community. (Tho that last one can be reduced somewhat by giving the ¾ shelflife MREs over to homeless shelters.)
there are already cops who are protecting from vague looters rather than pulling dudes out of flooded houses, does that mean we need to abolish private property?
It isn’t going to actually increase the amount of drinkable water entering the zone
it will prevent the thing where people with spare cash go to a supermarket, buy out the entire stock of water, and then resell it at much higher prices after the disaster.
Well, looting non-essential items will harm people afterwards, and there are reports of some people shooting. Though if I could allow people to loot water bottles from abandoned houses without all sorts of secondary consequences, I would.
What I’m thinking is that we won’t get a law that’s written intelligently, but one that also prohibits guys from buying out all the waters in a store in a neighboring county, putting it all in a pick-up truck, and driving it in to the disaster area to sell. And we should want someone to do that, even if it gets sold for $10 a bottle, since it increases the available water.
Venezuela, which is pretty messed up right now, keeps trying to legislate prices on things like bread, and it isn’t helping there.
Putting in disaster gouging laws is not really the virtuous thing, because
This policy is more of a looking good than doing good thing. It lets the politicians get away without actually doing anything, spending any money, or successfully bringing more water into the zone. (It also costs resources to keep all these laws on the books.)
Having supply depots already nearby as part of a multi-layered civil defense system capable of responding to a broad range of emergencies is the actual virtuous policy, the tough one that we can’t actually have because reasons.
I know @collapsedsquid suggested that having supply depots would be defeated because tax breaks for the wealthy, but that isn’t the only factor.
Any money spent on civil defense depots with stockpiled water filters would also have to contend with complaints that it was depriving resources from any other groups - for instance, from education, healthcare, etc. It might even get accused of being racist for being connected to some distant probability-calculated need rather than the immediate needs of the local community. (Tho that last one can be reduced somewhat by giving the ¾ shelflife MREs over to homeless shelters.)
I once got into a long after-class argument with my econ professor about anti-gouging laws during disasters, and he genuinely told me that a superior option would be to drop massive amounts of cash over affected areas via helicopter (a literal helicopter drop) so that everyone could collect it and have the ability to purchase goods at their market value. I tried to point out that the lack of competition caused by a severe supply shock eliminates any upper constraint on prices, so a helicopter drop could just lead to local hyperinflation that would rapidly wipe out the money’s value, but he cut me off before I could get to it.
Pretty sure he had a PhD.
Okay, but that spike is only temporary, depending on just how difficult it is to get out there and just how regularly the government does this. If there is suddenly $200,000 laying around for buying water, then someone will get a boat or a truck and bring water.
No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
No but see that’s not real anarcho-capitalism, just like every time corporations do something bad that’s not real capitalism. As ancaps have never ever told us within drug law and gun law discourse, people always obey vague ephemeral principles like the NAP, except during all of human history. And this is definitely different to every time a tankie claims that nothing was real communism.
I mean technically, once the state either debases the currency by printing it or seizes the currency so that they can helidrop it into disaster zones, I think you’ve already left anarcho-capitalism.
I once got into a long after-class argument with my econ professor about anti-gouging laws during disasters, and he genuinely told me that a superior option would be to drop massive amounts of cash over affected areas via helicopter (a literal helicopter drop) so that everyone could collect it and have the ability to purchase goods at their market value. I tried to point out that the lack of competition caused by a severe supply shock eliminates any upper constraint on prices, so a helicopter drop could just lead to local hyperinflation that would rapidly wipe out the money’s value, but he cut me off before I could get to it.
Pretty sure he had a PhD.
Okay, but that spike is only temporary, depending on just how difficult it is to get out there and just how regularly the government does this. If there is suddenly $200,000 laying around for buying water, then someone will get a boat or a truck and bring water.
No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
“Temporary” still matters, a lot, when we’re talking about access to water in a disaster zone.
They might hold out for it, though, and if it became a common practice then dudes would line up with trucks full of waters along the storm boundary, excitedly waiting to go, driving down the price due to the expectation that the seller would make less money later for anyone that could afford to wait a little longer.
It just ignores that one dude with a gun can get all the money for himself, which is a frequent thing we see with economic thought ignoring the realities of force even while implicit force is, though useful, the basis by which property can even exist.
the sj hiding in my brain: uh why are you reading a book where the two main characters are boys, written by a man, i really think that you’re reinforcing harmful and incredibly oppressive structures-
me: could you just, fuck off, and let me read my adventure novel about archery and fantasy rangers in peace, without commentary, for ONCE
you: haunted by the ghosts of your past who sing in chorus in your mind ever onward, seeking to bind you in chains of your own making
me: busy writing something arguably even more problematic than archers, fantasy rangers, or even gay archery-focused fantasy rangers
I once got into a long after-class argument with my econ professor about anti-gouging laws during disasters, and he genuinely told me that a superior option would be to drop massive amounts of cash over affected areas via helicopter (a literal helicopter drop) so that everyone could collect it and have the ability to purchase goods at their market value. I tried to point out that the lack of competition caused by a severe supply shock eliminates any upper constraint on prices, so a helicopter drop could just lead to local hyperinflation that would rapidly wipe out the money’s value, but he cut me off before I could get to it.
Pretty sure he had a PhD.
Okay, but that spike is only temporary, depending on just how difficult it is to get out there and just how regularly the government does this. If there is suddenly $200,000 laying around for buying water, then someone will get a boat or a truck and bring water.
No, what you really have to worry about is that some guy with a gun will just take it all to himself.
Anonymous asked:
Thx, but isn’t that a fanfic site?
So technically, couldn’t only fanfics of Whiteout, rather than Whiteout itself, get posted there?
They’re both characterized by a situation of sudden (and unpredicted) scarcity because of a breakdown in the usual supply chain that provides a good, and the price of that newly scarce good increasing dramatically.
One is where someone who already has a stock of the newly scarce good increases the price and reaps a windfall profit from the event. The other is where someone acts to increase the supply of the newly scarce good, and charges a price commensurate with the extraordinary measures required to do so (ordinary measures, by definition, no longer being adequate to provide a supply).
There are good reasons why we might want to treat these two cases differently, and yet I see very few people, on either side of the debate, willing to make the distinction.
what I wanted to say but couldn’t be bothered
Easy to suggest, very tricky to solve as a matter of policy.
The government could just state that it’s willing to pay some inflated price to anyone able and willing to get desired goods into a disaster area (and then take over distribution once they’ve reached the area). That would pretty easily separate the two functions (increasing supply vs final distribution).
Alternately, the government could just do such a good job with disaster relief directly that there wouldn’t be a huge shortfall in supply for necessities, and price-gouging would be more of a nuisance than a crisis.
Of course, either of these presupposes a level of shit-togetherness-having that the US government has not demonstrated during any recent disasters…
Schemes like the first one have the verification problem, you have to verify that the goods are both being delivered and being sold at appropriate prices.
Problem with the second one is just that disaster preparation is a waste of taxpayer money that could be going to tax cuts for the rich.
I believe that the second can be unlocked with a new ideology and a new design of government.
