Currently Under Debate

Is legislation for Nevada that would prohibit price gouging.

If you've read the blog, you know this bothers me.

It's Senate Bill 5. If you care enough to suggest to your State Senator that this may be a bad idea, do so. If not, don't.

I'll just say that maybe the price on rental cars went up after flights were grounded after 9/11 because of market forces - namely, that the rental car infrastructure is wholly insufficient to replace the volume of traffic that airplanes previously carried, so suddenly there was a SEVERE shortage. A market response in this case is for the price to go up, proportionally to the increased demand. One of the outcomes of this increased price is that people who don't value renting a car at $700 a day won't, freeing it for someone who will. Suddenly, renting a nice car to try and impress a date (I saw it in a TV commercial...) isn't as important, but getting home to see your family is.

25% is suggested in the article (I think - but I've read about this in several sources) as the cap on how much the price of a good can increase in an emergency. That is a trifling ammount - far too small to cover the swing of prices one could expect in a crisis due only to supply and demand issues (as opposed to the horrible evil nastiness of greedy bad sellers).

It's a horrible idea that will probably become law simply because politicians are quite adept at passing laws that sound good (especially when coupled with words like "Gouging") but end up harming the consumer (in this case, by creating artificial shortages at a time when supplies are most needed).