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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

While I don't disagree with your analysis, I think it misses something important.

There are people - living, breathing people - who are experiencing trauma and danger and who are starving and thirsty.

We could choose to spend our own money on gasoline to drive down and distribute water. We do not need to seek compensation for everything we do. We can choose to lose money to help people who are in need. And I think charging $99 for a crate of clean water is adding insult to injury to people who have lost their livelihood.

The calculus of your argument is correct but it lacks empathy.

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Raising prices economizes scarce resources. It ensures that one family doesn't buy all the water in the store for themselves, and that there is more for others. If it's an emergency then the high price is worth it. If the price is too high to be bought, the seller can't sell anything. The price finds an equilibrium which is useful, not harmful. If you want to help, send the victims money afterwards.

>If the price is too high to be bought, the seller can't sell anything.

This is the trick in your sentence. We're talking about aggregate demand and aggregate supply but at the individual level there is certainly the possibility that the price is too high for someone to buy.

Here's the problem, economic utility cannot be a moral guide in this situation, look at this example:

(1) Water is normal price but with a limit per customer or lottery.

(2) Water is very expensive and the richest person or people in town buy a lot and hoard it.

#2 generates a lot more economic utility, but we can all agree that it's not an optimal situation here.

It also ensures that poor people can't afford it. For many, even normal prices can be difficult to afford.

The people who will donate their time, gas and energy to supply water to those who need it will not vanish if we allow prices to fluctuate freely. But we do lose the resources of those who are not willing, or cannot afford, to donate their time and energy for free.

Empathy would be better directed toward donating money to the needy so they can purchase the things they need at the higher market prices. Price fixing may feel empathetic, but if it actually makes the scarcity problems worse, it's not.

> We could choose to spend our own money on gasoline to drive down and distribute water. We do not need to seek compensation for everything we do. We can choose to lose money to help people who are in need.

And many people do choose to do that and they may still do so. But I don't think there should be a prohibition on someone that does not have the luxury to help the needy at a great personal expense

The more I read what people today say (or worse: think) the more I worry that Atlas Shrugged is no longer fiction...

You almost directly quoted just now the excuse used by the looters in the book.

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