September 4, 2024 • 15 mins
Jack heard a good joke, leading to a conversation.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I want an argument. I want an argument. It's one
more thing I'm strong andy.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Before we get to that, which I know what that's about.
I'm going to retell a joke I heard yesterday, probably
in a poor way, but do you know the comedian
Ron White? Love him. Yeah, he's a very funny guy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I can't picture him, but I know I've seen his stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I just got fedted on some algorithm on YouTube or
something the other day and it gets sucked me and
I watched it. Anyway, he was talking about why are
sunglasses so expensive, which is a decent question. He's talking
about going into sunglass Hut and he said, I saw
a pair of sunglasses that I liked, didn't love, just liked,
and asked the guy how much they are now? He
(00:46):
said three hundred and nine dollars, which is yeah, fairly
common it sunglass hut.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
The joke part was that I thought, so it was
so funny? Was he said so? So? I I said
three hundred nine dollars. So I said to the guy,
you know, calmly and respectfully, how do you sleep at night?
You little prick? But anyway, it is a decent question
about Well, his main thing is why does a pair
(01:14):
of sunglasses cost more than the thirty two inch HD television.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well, I see, you can't get a good bicycle for that,
but you can get a bicycle for that.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You can get a pretty good bicycle for that, Yeah,
because I have for my kids. Yeah, and you can
get a really good TV.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Anytime I've owned a pair of expensive sunglasses, I lose
them or I break them.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Mind you, I have a pair that I got at
a gas station like five years ago, still perfectly intact. Yeah,
that's a weird thing that just happens to everybody. Yeah,
my cheapest, crappiest pair I've had for I don't know
how many years that I spend eight dollars on. I
can't I can't lose them, I can't break them, apparently,
but the good ones are harder to hold on.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, there has got to be somewhere big Sunglasses holding
their meat alongside the Builderberg Group or something and price fixing.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
It's got to be something like that. And then and
the guy said the rest of the story was because
he said, why I just bought a big I just
bought a thirty two inch HD television four K for
the same price, And the guy said at the sunglass, Well,
this filters out one hundred percent of the UV rays
(02:26):
and Ron White's line, I won't get all the words right,
but it's pretty good, he said. This takes in signals
from outer fucking space and turns them into sound in pictures.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Right right. And you know what's crazy is you got
your three hundred dollars sunglasses, then you got your fifteen
dollars convenience store sunglasses worth the eighty dollars sunglass.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Right in between. That's the good question, or now, or
even one hundred and twenty five because sunglasses, And whenever
I get expensive pair of sunglasses, I have one now
that I'm like, I treat like gold, and I don't.
I don't take them out of the house on special occasions.
I really like them, but they are hold hard to
hold onto, a not break. And that feeling of breaking
or losing a pair of your expensive sunglasses is just
(03:12):
so damaging to the psyche.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, oh yeah, Oddly enough, I have not lost nor
had sunglasses broken in many years since my eyes went funky.
I had lasac in for about a dozen years. I
could see like an eagle. It was great. But then
because it's the human body, and it's the body parts
that you get worn out. And now I'm back to
being half blind, and I've not lost or broken anything
because I need them to see, so they're always on
(03:34):
my face, which is part of it.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But I did better pre kid of keeping track of
sunglasses and treating them all.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That's true, That is absolutely true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You
have a living creature that you're one hundred percent responsible
for that can distract you from your sunglasses, no matter
how expensive. So it was mocking myself in the idea
that I want an argument. I want an argument because
I actually, if I had more time and energy, I
(04:01):
would make it my life's work to pick out maybe five,
maybe even three economic fallacies that people five. And we'll
talk about this more on the radio show in the
days to come. But like rent control, the government says
your rent can't go up more than three percent a year.
(04:23):
That sounds like a really good idea until somebody explains
to you why it's a terrible idea. And it's very
easy to understand why it's a terrible idea, but people
need to be helped to get there.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
God, I was watching a zoom call yesterday with Republican
strategists and Democratic strategists, and they were discussing the whole
pricing and the host brought up the idea of well,
all the economists agree, even the left leaning economists say
price fixing doesn't work, and even the Republicans said, yeah,
but it polls really well, polls really well. You ask
somebody on the street, how would you like it if
(04:55):
the government says you can't charge more than X four x,
and almost everybody's gonna say, oh, that'd be fantastic. M yeah,
nice depressing.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
And I've mentioned this so many times, but there's a
book called The Myth of the Rational Voter that goes
a little overboard on the argument a little bit, but
they point out that there are a number of things
like rent controls, price fixing, gouging, which we're about to
talk about, that poll anti gouging laws, I should say,
poll extremely well. But if you explain to people why
(05:27):
they're wrong, they get it really quickly. And it took
Tim Sanderfer to explain to me why have anti anti
gouging laws are such a terrible idea, And it was
immediately clear to me that he was right. And I've
I've been spreading the gospel ever since. And I was
chatting with a couple of friends of mine the other
(05:48):
night over a bourbon which which weirdly turned into three bourbons,
and just just intoxication.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Were how that happens. Huh yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, it was so odd because we all agreed that
well anyway, but we were talking about I can't remember
how it came out, but came up, but price gouging
came up, and I unleashed my screen about how it's
a good thing. And one friend of mine, who's quite
a bright guy, he's he successfully was a high up
guy in the money part of a business that ran
(06:24):
his own business for a while, but all this stuff
had never occurred to him exactly, and I convinced him
completely the gouging, price gouging is a good thing. And
read a great piece in the National Review about this,
and they go into how a bunch of states have
anti gouging laws, and California has all sorts of price
fixing in all sorts of you know, industries and rents
(06:48):
and you name it, and it just drives the price
and the supply of things in exactly the wrong direction.
But they went into a twenty eleven paper from the
Cato Institute from written by Michael Gibberson, who cited a
case from nineteen ninety six when four men selling ice
in the wake of Hurricane fran had been arrested in Raleigh,
(07:09):
North Carolina, for charging a price much higher than the
buck seventy five per bag standard before the storm, and
as another guy writing for a different publication explained, quote,
North Carolina's anti gouging law prohibited markups that were unreasonably
excessive under the circumstances. I mean, God, you don't need
to be like Montesquieu or James Adams to understand that.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Wait a minute, define every term there.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, unreasonably excessive under the circumstances, but that had been
widely interpreted to limit price increases to around five percent
or less. Wow. And the four gougers then they put
out in the National Review, We're going to go ahead
and use that term for simplicity's sake, so everybody knows
who we're talking about. We don't mean it. But the
four gougers lived in a part of the state where
(08:00):
the electricity was working. This is post hurricane the other
wake of hurricanes they had ice.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
They had power and they had ice. They loaded up
two trucks with ice and drove to Raleigh, where clearly
the electricity was not on. Something they would not have
done for a five percent markup. What they reportedly wanted
and got until the police intervened was twelve bucks a bag.
And as Monger this journalist points out, had there been
(08:29):
no anti gouging law, there would have been much more competition.
The twelve dollars ice price would have melted away.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, they would have brought another truckload as soon as
they could, or other people would have heard, and they'd
have brought their truckloads. And then guess what would happen.
Guess what would happen If you started bringing more and
more truckloads at twelve dollars.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
A bag, the price would go down, and that ice
would have been like a buck fifty bag. Never mind
the bucks seventy five it was before the hurricane. Because
there would have been such an over supply of ice,
people would be like, well, I don't need ice, will
give you a buck and a half for it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Plus and there's not a pity and plus and this
can't be left out. People would have ice. People who
really wanted ice would have ice.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, right, exactly, And well you might point out, well
or rich people would have ice. Doesn't matter on the
supply side, doesn't matter who was buying it and for
what reason. Maybe they're building ice sculptures of a little
boy peeing Champagne. It's immaterial the supply during a hurricane,
hurri it's after the hurricane.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It's time to drink up, Michael. That really seems decaded,
doesn't it. I mean, in the middle of a hurricane,
and you got the big ice sculpture of a little
boy being champagne.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, Well, that's my lifestyle, right, entitled to live the lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
It's use well, but all products work this way though.
The rich people, the people who can afford it, would
buy it first, but then there would be more coming.
The price would go down. That works that way for everything.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
In fact, you could make the argument that because and
don't forget this end of the supply question, if you say,
all right, no gouging, you got to keep it at
a buck seventy five to a buck ninety five, it
would be a lottery of poor people or average people,
I should say, and a few would win that lottery.
(10:18):
And then there'd be no more effing ice. There would
be no more ice. Or the rich people who think
I got all sort some money, I'll pay twelve bucks
a bag. Those rich people have triggered an avalanche of
ice to come to not a few randomly selected poor
people who happened to show up when the ice showed
(10:39):
up at a dollar seventy five, but it would furnish
the needs of everyone who wanted ice until that price
was back down to the pre hurricane line.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
You know, the emotional flaw in this argument, not the
economic flaw, because there is no economic flaw, but the
emotional flaw in the argument is there's a lot of
people whose human nature leads them to I'd rather nobody
has ice, then some people have ice. That is correct,
which is an unfortunate part of human nature.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's like a flaw in the programming.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So I'm going to read this part just because I
think it spells it out so beautifully and can help
solidify the concept in everybody's heads, because I think this
is important. In short, anti gouging laws will mean that
fewer individuals outside of the affected areas will risk their
time and money bringing ice electric generators or other goods
into storm ravaged areas if they risk arrest, then fines
for charging quote unquote unconscionable prices. As the other guy
(11:31):
points out, the effect of anti gouging laws on the
supply of one good can hit the supply of another.
A truck bringing in food really should get some of
the available gas. But if a price gouging limit on
gas means that truck can't get gas, then it can't
bring in food either, And price gouging limit on limits
on foods means the trucks can't afford the gas.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Also would have effects on the future. So when a
hurricane is headed toward New Orleans, anybody who's like on
the edge of where the hurricane would hit is going
to think, Okay, hurricanes supposed to go this weekend, Let's
make sure we got all the plywood ready to go
in the trucks, and we'll show up the next day
and we'll get to charge twice as much as usually charge.
(12:14):
And so you'd have a flood of material go in
and the price would level out at whatever price is
still profitable for people to show up with ice or
chainsaws or plywood or whatever. It is, but no more.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Up until the point that it's not profitable anymore. And
at that point nobody needs any more plywood. It's a
beautiful system. Wait, there's a little more. Anti gouging laws
limit the price rises that discourage the hoarding that makes
shortages worse. The more expensive of good, the more expensive
it is to hoard. Cochrane argues that higher prices also
send a signal that would be hoarders that there is
(12:50):
no need to hoard, say, toilet paper as quote, there
always will be some in the store later. Not everyone
would get that message, but if enough did, it would
help reduce the risk that emptying shell trigger a panic.
Hoarding is infectious, and anti gouging laws could also discourage
stores from holding larger inventories of products that might come
in handy in the event of an emergency. For instance,
(13:11):
inventory is a great source of supply. If you run
a home depot in Florida, how many four x eight
sheets supply would do you keep around? Well, if you're
allowed to sell them for one hundred bucks each when
the next hurricane is coming a lot, you're going to
keep a lot around if you must charge only the
regular price until the shelves empty out, then not so
much inventory is expensive. Sure, price gouging is wonderful for
(13:35):
all the reasons that letting supply and supply equals demand
is wonderful. When there is a limited supply, then a
sharply higher price directs those who supply to those who
really need it. It's day two after the hurricane. Who
really needs gas? That's pretty good, and it's somewhat counterintuitive,
and again I think it would do you know, the
(13:57):
United States as a republic so much good if more
people understood the way economies and businesses really worked, because
there is so much of government policy that's pitched to
us that's not only not a great idea, it's a
crappy idea, and it's really expensive to implement. Just the
(14:18):
function of government is really really expensive. So the less
they do, the better we're off.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I'm picturing a cherub whatever a cherub is, naked, little
cherub I made ice, peeing out the champagne.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, you know, uh, that's a distinction.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Rich people like cherubs for some reason.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Especially those that piss champagne. Because you know, now that
you pointed out I was picturing a cherub in my
decadentn ice sculpture idea. If it was just like an
average kid stopping come the way home from school to
grab it here and the bushes peeing out champagne, Yeah,
that that would be off putting. It's almost got to
be a cherub.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Is this a is this crystal coming out of this
little fat kids penis?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Or what?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Is this? Tastes pretty good?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Why this is smooth? You know?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
If this wasn't bad enough. During Hurricane Ike, Joe bought
all the plywood in the area and built what past
presidents and stuck him in his yard just because he could,
just because he could. His lifestyle, lifestyle, Well, I guess
that's it.
I want an argument. I want an argument. It's one
more thing I'm strong andy.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Before we get to that, which I know what that's about.
I'm going to retell a joke I heard yesterday, probably
in a poor way, but do you know the comedian
Ron White? Love him. Yeah, he's a very funny guy.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
I can't picture him, but I know I've seen his stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I just got fedted on some algorithm on YouTube or
something the other day and it gets sucked me and
I watched it. Anyway, he was talking about why are
sunglasses so expensive, which is a decent question. He's talking
about going into sunglass Hut and he said, I saw
a pair of sunglasses that I liked, didn't love, just liked,
and asked the guy how much they are now? He
(00:46):
said three hundred and nine dollars, which is yeah, fairly
common it sunglass hut.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
The joke part was that I thought, so it was
so funny? Was he said so? So? I I said
three hundred nine dollars. So I said to the guy,
you know, calmly and respectfully, how do you sleep at night?
You little prick? But anyway, it is a decent question
about Well, his main thing is why does a pair
(01:14):
of sunglasses cost more than the thirty two inch HD television.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Well, I see, you can't get a good bicycle for that,
but you can get a bicycle for that.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
You can get a pretty good bicycle for that, Yeah,
because I have for my kids. Yeah, and you can
get a really good TV.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Anytime I've owned a pair of expensive sunglasses, I lose
them or I break them.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Mind you, I have a pair that I got at
a gas station like five years ago, still perfectly intact. Yeah,
that's a weird thing that just happens to everybody. Yeah,
my cheapest, crappiest pair I've had for I don't know
how many years that I spend eight dollars on. I
can't I can't lose them, I can't break them, apparently,
but the good ones are harder to hold on.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Yeah, there has got to be somewhere big Sunglasses holding
their meat alongside the Builderberg Group or something and price fixing.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
It's got to be something like that. And then and
the guy said the rest of the story was because
he said, why I just bought a big I just
bought a thirty two inch HD television four K for
the same price, And the guy said at the sunglass, Well,
this filters out one hundred percent of the UV rays
(02:26):
and Ron White's line, I won't get all the words right,
but it's pretty good, he said. This takes in signals
from outer fucking space and turns them into sound in pictures.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Right right. And you know what's crazy is you got
your three hundred dollars sunglasses, then you got your fifteen
dollars convenience store sunglasses worth the eighty dollars sunglass.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Right in between. That's the good question, or now, or
even one hundred and twenty five because sunglasses, And whenever
I get expensive pair of sunglasses, I have one now
that I'm like, I treat like gold, and I don't.
I don't take them out of the house on special occasions.
I really like them, but they are hold hard to
hold onto, a not break. And that feeling of breaking
or losing a pair of your expensive sunglasses is just
(03:12):
so damaging to the psyche.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, oh yeah, Oddly enough, I have not lost nor
had sunglasses broken in many years since my eyes went funky.
I had lasac in for about a dozen years. I
could see like an eagle. It was great. But then
because it's the human body, and it's the body parts
that you get worn out. And now I'm back to
being half blind, and I've not lost or broken anything
because I need them to see, so they're always on
(03:34):
my face, which is part of it.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
But I did better pre kid of keeping track of
sunglasses and treating them all.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
That's true, That is absolutely true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You
have a living creature that you're one hundred percent responsible
for that can distract you from your sunglasses, no matter
how expensive. So it was mocking myself in the idea
that I want an argument. I want an argument because
I actually, if I had more time and energy, I
(04:01):
would make it my life's work to pick out maybe five,
maybe even three economic fallacies that people five. And we'll
talk about this more on the radio show in the
days to come. But like rent control, the government says
your rent can't go up more than three percent a year.
(04:23):
That sounds like a really good idea until somebody explains
to you why it's a terrible idea. And it's very
easy to understand why it's a terrible idea, but people
need to be helped to get there.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
God, I was watching a zoom call yesterday with Republican
strategists and Democratic strategists, and they were discussing the whole
pricing and the host brought up the idea of well,
all the economists agree, even the left leaning economists say
price fixing doesn't work, and even the Republicans said, yeah,
but it polls really well, polls really well. You ask
somebody on the street, how would you like it if
(04:55):
the government says you can't charge more than X four x,
and almost everybody's gonna say, oh, that'd be fantastic. M yeah,
nice depressing.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
And I've mentioned this so many times, but there's a
book called The Myth of the Rational Voter that goes
a little overboard on the argument a little bit, but
they point out that there are a number of things
like rent controls, price fixing, gouging, which we're about to
talk about, that poll anti gouging laws, I should say,
poll extremely well. But if you explain to people why
(05:27):
they're wrong, they get it really quickly. And it took
Tim Sanderfer to explain to me why have anti anti
gouging laws are such a terrible idea, And it was
immediately clear to me that he was right. And I've
I've been spreading the gospel ever since. And I was
chatting with a couple of friends of mine the other
(05:48):
night over a bourbon which which weirdly turned into three bourbons,
and just just intoxication.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
Were how that happens. Huh yeah, oh.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, it was so odd because we all agreed that
well anyway, but we were talking about I can't remember
how it came out, but came up, but price gouging
came up, and I unleashed my screen about how it's
a good thing. And one friend of mine, who's quite
a bright guy, he's he successfully was a high up
guy in the money part of a business that ran
(06:24):
his own business for a while, but all this stuff
had never occurred to him exactly, and I convinced him
completely the gouging, price gouging is a good thing. And
read a great piece in the National Review about this,
and they go into how a bunch of states have
anti gouging laws, and California has all sorts of price
fixing in all sorts of you know, industries and rents
(06:48):
and you name it, and it just drives the price
and the supply of things in exactly the wrong direction.
But they went into a twenty eleven paper from the
Cato Institute from written by Michael Gibberson, who cited a
case from nineteen ninety six when four men selling ice
in the wake of Hurricane fran had been arrested in Raleigh,
(07:09):
North Carolina, for charging a price much higher than the
buck seventy five per bag standard before the storm, and
as another guy writing for a different publication explained, quote,
North Carolina's anti gouging law prohibited markups that were unreasonably
excessive under the circumstances. I mean, God, you don't need
to be like Montesquieu or James Adams to understand that.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Wait a minute, define every term there.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, unreasonably excessive under the circumstances, but that had been
widely interpreted to limit price increases to around five percent
or less. Wow. And the four gougers then they put
out in the National Review, We're going to go ahead
and use that term for simplicity's sake, so everybody knows
who we're talking about. We don't mean it. But the
four gougers lived in a part of the state where
(08:00):
the electricity was working. This is post hurricane the other
wake of hurricanes they had ice.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
They had power and they had ice. They loaded up
two trucks with ice and drove to Raleigh, where clearly
the electricity was not on. Something they would not have
done for a five percent markup. What they reportedly wanted
and got until the police intervened was twelve bucks a bag.
And as Monger this journalist points out, had there been
(08:29):
no anti gouging law, there would have been much more competition.
The twelve dollars ice price would have melted away.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, they would have brought another truckload as soon as
they could, or other people would have heard, and they'd
have brought their truckloads. And then guess what would happen.
Guess what would happen If you started bringing more and
more truckloads at twelve dollars.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
A bag, the price would go down, and that ice
would have been like a buck fifty bag. Never mind
the bucks seventy five it was before the hurricane. Because
there would have been such an over supply of ice,
people would be like, well, I don't need ice, will
give you a buck and a half for it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Plus and there's not a pity and plus and this
can't be left out. People would have ice. People who
really wanted ice would have ice.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Yeah, right, exactly, And well you might point out, well
or rich people would have ice. Doesn't matter on the
supply side, doesn't matter who was buying it and for
what reason. Maybe they're building ice sculptures of a little
boy peeing Champagne. It's immaterial the supply during a hurricane,
hurri it's after the hurricane.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
It's time to drink up, Michael. That really seems decaded,
doesn't it. I mean, in the middle of a hurricane,
and you got the big ice sculpture of a little
boy being champagne.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Right, Well, that's my lifestyle, right, entitled to live the lifestyle.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
It's use well, but all products work this way though.
The rich people, the people who can afford it, would
buy it first, but then there would be more coming.
The price would go down. That works that way for everything.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
In fact, you could make the argument that because and
don't forget this end of the supply question, if you say,
all right, no gouging, you got to keep it at
a buck seventy five to a buck ninety five, it
would be a lottery of poor people or average people,
I should say, and a few would win that lottery.
(10:18):
And then there'd be no more effing ice. There would
be no more ice. Or the rich people who think
I got all sort some money, I'll pay twelve bucks
a bag. Those rich people have triggered an avalanche of
ice to come to not a few randomly selected poor
people who happened to show up when the ice showed
(10:39):
up at a dollar seventy five, but it would furnish
the needs of everyone who wanted ice until that price
was back down to the pre hurricane line.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
You know, the emotional flaw in this argument, not the
economic flaw, because there is no economic flaw, but the
emotional flaw in the argument is there's a lot of
people whose human nature leads them to I'd rather nobody
has ice, then some people have ice. That is correct,
which is an unfortunate part of human nature.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's like a flaw in the programming.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah it is.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
So I'm going to read this part just because I
think it spells it out so beautifully and can help
solidify the concept in everybody's heads, because I think this
is important. In short, anti gouging laws will mean that
fewer individuals outside of the affected areas will risk their
time and money bringing ice electric generators or other goods
into storm ravaged areas if they risk arrest, then fines
for charging quote unquote unconscionable prices. As the other guy
(11:31):
points out, the effect of anti gouging laws on the
supply of one good can hit the supply of another.
A truck bringing in food really should get some of
the available gas. But if a price gouging limit on
gas means that truck can't get gas, then it can't
bring in food either, And price gouging limit on limits
on foods means the trucks can't afford the gas.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Also would have effects on the future. So when a
hurricane is headed toward New Orleans, anybody who's like on
the edge of where the hurricane would hit is going
to think, Okay, hurricanes supposed to go this weekend, Let's
make sure we got all the plywood ready to go
in the trucks, and we'll show up the next day
and we'll get to charge twice as much as usually charge.
(12:14):
And so you'd have a flood of material go in
and the price would level out at whatever price is
still profitable for people to show up with ice or
chainsaws or plywood or whatever. It is, but no more.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Up until the point that it's not profitable anymore. And
at that point nobody needs any more plywood. It's a
beautiful system. Wait, there's a little more. Anti gouging laws
limit the price rises that discourage the hoarding that makes
shortages worse. The more expensive of good, the more expensive
it is to hoard. Cochrane argues that higher prices also
send a signal that would be hoarders that there is
(12:50):
no need to hoard, say, toilet paper as quote, there
always will be some in the store later. Not everyone
would get that message, but if enough did, it would
help reduce the risk that emptying shell trigger a panic.
Hoarding is infectious, and anti gouging laws could also discourage
stores from holding larger inventories of products that might come
in handy in the event of an emergency. For instance,
(13:11):
inventory is a great source of supply. If you run
a home depot in Florida, how many four x eight
sheets supply would do you keep around? Well, if you're
allowed to sell them for one hundred bucks each when
the next hurricane is coming a lot, you're going to
keep a lot around if you must charge only the
regular price until the shelves empty out, then not so
much inventory is expensive. Sure, price gouging is wonderful for
(13:35):
all the reasons that letting supply and supply equals demand
is wonderful. When there is a limited supply, then a
sharply higher price directs those who supply to those who
really need it. It's day two after the hurricane. Who
really needs gas? That's pretty good, and it's somewhat counterintuitive,
and again I think it would do you know, the
(13:57):
United States as a republic so much good if more
people understood the way economies and businesses really worked, because
there is so much of government policy that's pitched to
us that's not only not a great idea, it's a
crappy idea, and it's really expensive to implement. Just the
(14:18):
function of government is really really expensive. So the less
they do, the better we're off.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
I'm picturing a cherub whatever a cherub is, naked, little
cherub I made ice, peeing out the champagne.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, you know, uh, that's a distinction.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Rich people like cherubs for some reason.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Especially those that piss champagne. Because you know, now that
you pointed out I was picturing a cherub in my
decadentn ice sculpture idea. If it was just like an
average kid stopping come the way home from school to
grab it here and the bushes peeing out champagne, Yeah,
that that would be off putting. It's almost got to
be a cherub.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Is this a is this crystal coming out of this
little fat kids penis?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Or what?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Is this? Tastes pretty good?
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Why this is smooth? You know?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
If this wasn't bad enough. During Hurricane Ike, Joe bought
all the plywood in the area and built what past
presidents and stuck him in his yard just because he could,
just because he could. His lifestyle, lifestyle, Well, I guess
that's it.
Hosts And Creators
Jack Armstrong
Joe Getty
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