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From: Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Three Body Problem
Date: 22 Aug 2024 13:50:01 GMT
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On 2024-08-21, Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
> On 20 Aug 2024 15:05:59 GMT, Chris Buckley <alan@sabir.com> wrote:
>
>>On 2024-08-19, Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>
><snip-a-bit>
>
>>> The claim was that she proposed "freezing food prices and making
>>> grocery stores report any changes in their prices".
>>>
>>> Your quote simply doesn't back that up in any way.
>>>
>>> But keep on trying. Who can say what Kamala may have said, say, 15
>>> years ago in a private conversation now being outed by someone from
>>> memory with no backup at all. Or some source of similar likely
>>> validity.
>>
>>Yes, freezing prices is a slight exageration of putting price controls
>>on, but only slight.  The mechanisms for enforcing them are the same: how
>>do you envision them as different?  
>
> It is a PTTP, pure and simple.
>
> I don't "envision" either as likely any time soon.
>
> Price /controls/ imply rationing. As during WWII. You control the
> prices because otherwise scarcity will cause them to rise.

You are using your own private definitions again. Price control is
a general economic term that includes things like price gouging laws,
price freezing, rent control, minimum wages. None of these imply
rationing, which is a logistics term. Both rationing and price controls
can be used to solve the same problem, but if anything, it is rationing
that implies price controls.

> Price /gouging/ is handled by putting people in prison. It is a crime.
> Or should be. The problem, of course, is telling when it is happening
> -- and who is doing it.
>
>>> This is actually an /excellent/ first policy -- going directly at the
>>> malefactors.
>>
>>What malefactors???
>
> That's my point: the people actually doing the price gouging should be
> identified before solutions are proposed.
>>>However, I would suggest she have someone actually
>>> /study/ the situation to see if the problem she is trying to solve
>>> actually exists -- that is, that the higher grocery prices actually
>>> /are/ price-gouging and not legitimate economic behavior.
>>>
>>> There is no point in solving a problem that does not exist.
>>
>>I agree with all of this. I would have no objection (other than a
>>mild waste of time and money) if she had proposed an urgent study of grocery
>>prices and whether "price gouging" is happening. But she didn't.
>>
>>She said that the problem exists and that it is very urgent for the
>>federal government to have rules and regulations right now to stop them.
>>That it is so clear cut that she will have rules in place within 100 days.
>
> Only if the laws exist already. Some have indicated that new laws
> might be needed. That could take a while to sort out. Particularly if
> the Republicans control either or both Houses of Congress.

That wasn't part of her claim.  She will have new clear rules  within
100 days if elected.

>>Why do *you* believe that it is an excellent policy to have the
>>federal government involved in regulating grocery prices?
>
> I said it was an excellent /first/ policy. I did not say it was
> excellent as such. It is a good place to start. She can make some fine
> declarations from the Oval Office on the topic. Whether it actually
> goes anywhere who can say? This is politics, after all. Did the Wall
> get build with Mexico paying? Don't think so. 

What a patronising view of Harris. It's a first policy so of course
it isn't expected to be of a high quality. She will learn to play with
the adults later on.  

>>> Note: I buy a lot of store brands, and some of those, at least, have
>>> dropped back down, at least a bit. Those concerned about grocery store
>>> reporting should keep two things in mind:
>>> 1) If the stores always mark up the items they sell by the same
>>> amount, then /they/ aren't gouging.
>>> 2) If restricted to larger stores, or chains, then the report would
>>> probably be done by a computer anyway. We need not picture 100 new
>>> employees just to keep track of prices.
>>
>>It's done by a computer, it's simple? Tell that the federal government -
>>how many multi-billion dollar computer programs have they abandoned over
>>the years?
>
> Do you really believe that a major corporation is somehow unable to
> tell exactly where every penny received from something it sold goes
> to? Cost of item, cost of overhead, cost of wages, profit, and any
> others? Not the CEO, perhaps, but some weenie three or four levels
> down in Accounting surely can. 
> If they can't, then /they can't tell which lines/products make the
> most money for them/ and how can they make intelligent business
> decisions if they literally don't know what they are doing?

No, they can't. When they sell an item, they do not know what they
paid for it and what the overhead was. They know all the various
prices that they paid for that item category (eg $1 last month, $1.10
the month before) but they don't know which of those costs apply to
this particular item. They know what the expected wastage is of a
produce item, but they don't know whether the shipment for this
particular apple happened to be mostly spoiled because they don't know what
shipment it came from.

When your wholesale cost of eggs suddenly triples, what retail price
do you start charging and when?  Some eggs will probably be sold at an
enormous markup, but that is not price gouging.

How about when everybody else's wholesale cost of eggs triples and they
double their retail prices, but you have a longer-term contract with your
supplier and are still paying the original rate? If you double your
retail price, you are not price gouging according to any legal definition
that I know of. Price gouging is defined as excess profits when selling
above the market rate.

That's a major reason why Harris's proposal is nonsense. Price gouging
is defined in terms of selling above market prices, and grocery
markets are local, not national. The state governments are reasonable
places for price gouging laws; the federal government has no expertise
in local markets. (The federal government absolutely has a place in
price collusion laws, forbidding industries from agreeing to
artificially high prices. But unfortunately for Harris, those laws
already exist.)

>>My supermarket has very low prices on basics ($2.49/gallon for milk),
>>but has a large selection of luxury and prepared items with a much
>>higher markup (I'm sure some of the sushi items are 200% or more).  Are you
>>saying the federal government should have a say in this strategy?
>>
>>Their fruit prices normally vary by as much as a factor of 3 or more
>>throughout the year - it matters if they are getting them from local
>>orchards or Brazil. Are you saying the markup has to be the same
>>throughout the year?
>
> No. But it has to not triple when a pandemic hits unless there is a
> good economic reason for it. And "raking it in while I have the chance
> and devil take the hindmost" is not a good economic reason.

But where do you draw the line? Be precise.

Again, the issue is not the need for price collusion laws, those already
exist.  The emphasis has to be on keeping fair competition in the
marketplace. Most of the conspiracy theories I've seen about grocery
prices imply collusion. But that's a complaint about enforcement of
existing laws.

>
> Which is why the effort, confined to the major corporations, should
> also start with historical research so an idea can be formed of what
> is normal and what is not.

>>Just what is this magical computer keeping track of at the federal level?
>
> What magical computer? I don't think they exist ... in this reality.
>
> Maybe in PTTP-land. In fact, I would think Russia would be a good
> place to look for such a machine. Or China.

You're the one that said all this is simple because it can be done on
a computer! Ridiculous.

Chris