Posted by Johnnymac 1:19 PM
I am not going to write a long bitchy post on this subject, but let me just say that having lived through this, I am sick of hearing about "price gouging" from politicians and media types who don't know shit about economics or what the true function of prices are in a free market. The price of something is not just some arbitrary number that a business owner puts on a sticker on a carton of milk, and if you think it is, you are just plain ignorant.

In fact, to get really academic here, you may think that the "price" of gasoline is still around $4.00 a gallon, right?

Wrong.

Your time is worth something, too, so all the law did was actually make the price less transparent - and muddle the economy even more - by changing a monetary cost into a non-monetary one. You're still paying the same "price" for that gallon of gasoline, but now the supplier isn't getting rewarded for his effort to get you gasoline and he has less incentive to get more gasoline into the area. In essence, the law that is meant to "protect" consumers has just made things worse because now the value of your time in line is being wasted and is a deadweight loss on society.

Way to go Big Government!

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