When stuff people need desperately is really cheap to make, yet costs a great deal of money, I don't like to call it Supply and Demand. That is just sophistry.
I prefer the term "gouging". Profiteering is illegal and immoral, even if we choose to tolerate it for commodities which are in high demand but are essentially luxury items, like Super Bowl tickets.
Yes, prices do tend to go up as the Supply/Demand ratio diminishes, no one denies that. But deliberate, planned, engineered predatory pricing, market manipulation and the deliberate suppression of competition in order to maximize profits should not be dignified with a term that suggests it is simply the result of some abstract law of nature, or the result of some obscure socioeconomic mathematical inevitability, or even an unfortunate but unavoidable quirk of human nature. It is a crime, just as voter suppression and gerrymandering are not constitutional, or legal, or traditional, or legislative, or the result of democratic processes or administrative inertia. They are a crime.
In either case, it is wrong, and it is always the result of one group of people deliberately abusing another. And it usually has its origins in the same crowd.
Current Events » in reply to Sigh
It's a question of nomenclature.
The whole thread (36 posts)
- McCarthy sold his soul to become Speaker
- You seeing this shit?!
- Our House
- The GOP could hire an outside consultant to arbitrate their squabble.
- Trump blames McConnell and his wife for the chaos in the House
- The bourgeoisie always underestimates the fascists.
- He had a soul?