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From: Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Three Body Problem
Date: 22 Aug 2024 11:40:31 GMT
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On 2024-08-21, Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
> Chris Buckley  <alan@sabir.com> wrote:
>>Please give citations to the studies that prove price gouging has been
>>done in supermarkets or that it is responsible for inflation of
>>grocery prices. Lots of accusations, lots of fuzzy thinking and waving
>>of hands, but nothing that is at all conclusive or even somewhat
>>convincing. Profits went up very slightly, but that's what happens you
>>give people hundreds of billions of dollars, directly and indirectly;
>>they buy more groceries!
>
> I don't think the price gouging is happening in supermarkets so much as
> in food providers that cater to lower income people in areas without
> supermarkets.  (Which is another example here of how competition is a 
> good thing for markets.)

Again,if there was good money to be made from selling food to poorer
urban folks, the supermarkets would be doing so. Groceries is one of
the most competitive areas out there. I have never heard of an urban
area that deliberately kept supermarkets out to keep prices non-competitive.

I think that you are using a much looser definition of price gouging
(akin to excess profits) than anybody else in this discussion,
including Harris, and I've been trying to argue from your
definition here. As a legal term, price gouging is defined as temporarily
selling something for more than market value due to some external
circumstance like catastrophe. Unfortunately, the price of food in
poor urban areas is at market value for that market.

Chris