I'm reasonably sure having hospitals run out of it because it was hoarded by preppers is not a desirable outcome.
As can inflating the price (high taxes) for non-doctors who are purchasing preemptively. If you are sick, go to a doctor and get it at the normal price. If you are a prepper, pay extra, buy less.
Looking at potential death puts gray market buyers in a weak negotiating position.
Basically instead of people choosing where it goes a government agency/hospital system chooses where it goes. After the CDC testing debacle, hopefully people understand that giving control to the government isn't a clear cut win. It is good if people have some control over their own destiny.
If you are relying on the hospital's goodwill and I'm willing to throw down $100k in bribes; I suspect I will mysteriously get myself an ICU bed. It would be better if that money went to the hospital where they can buy more beds than to corrupt administrators. Much like I can get toilet paper if I'm willing to pay $200 a roll; and it would be better if that was going to the manufacturer rather than drug dealers as is currently the case in Australia.
If I buy a test kit, mask, antiviral cocktail, ICU bed for myself, despite being unlikely to need it, and there's a shortage of these resources, I've lessened the sum effectiveness and response.
Personally? I assume the average person is an idiot, where nuanced topics that elicit emotional responses are concerned.
I'd choose experts doing their best to allocate effectively any day of the week.
The fact that experts are not perfect in no way bears on their nonetheless being better than the average person.
I find it darkly ironic that in the US their centralised control of the medical system has royally screwed up the ability of people to access test kits and that is likely to become a rallying point for people who want more centralised control of the medical system.
If you do buy those things then you can share them with your neighbors. Someone is bound to want that stuff - a few more community sponsored ICU beds, masks, test kits and antiviral cocktails would be just what most countries need.
Why?
You're comparing apples and oranges.
Perfect isn't a reasonable criteria. More effective than the average person is.
The options aren't "experts hold all the power" or "paniced hoarders have all the power". At the moment, the US has set the dial to experts holding all the power and badly flubbed the response; the obvious solution is a mix of expert- and non-expert- control so that when the experts inevitably muck up it isn't the end of the game.
If people want to allocate a massive % of societies resources to masks, ICU beds and COVID-19 tests they should be able to. At present, they aren't allowed to and the government doesn't seem to be reacting very quickly.
This is classic economics; centralised control and price control where vendors are scared of being dinged for 'price gouging' have immediately resulted in massive shortages. If the government encouraged prices to rise until supplies were only just running out and gave the medical system enough money to buy what they needed in that environment then the situation would resolve much more quickly.
The people making face masks, ventilators, ICU beds and similar should be rolling in so much money from panic buyers that it makes sense to hold emergency reserves for the next crisis. That isn't what is happening, so instead we won't have resources for this crisis or the next one. So called 'panic buying' leads to a very healthy economic response after a month or two; which is where we happen to be vs COVID-19. If we'd had more panic buying earlier we'd be in a better spot now, and rapidly moving to a better spot in a month or two. If we allowed people to allocate resources to testing and hospitals despite the opinions of centralised agencies we'd also be a better spot. People like Bill Gates can fight malaria but they can't fight the CDC.
> government doesn't seem to be reacting very quickly
> If the government encouraged prices to rise until supplies were only just running out and gave the medical system enough money to buy what they needed in that environment then the situation would resolve much more quickly
> So called 'panic buying' leads to a very healthy economic response after a month or two
Your argument would be stronger if you dropped the opinionated hyperbole.
If the government transferred funds through the market, vs direct purchases, then we'd be at the mercy of whatever the masses decided they wanted to buy.
As of a few days ago, this would have meant that millions of dollars went to toilet paper manufacturers.
You seem to be of the opinion that a free market knows best in crisis situations. I feel otherwise. Doubt I'm going to be able to change your mind.
Not actually true, hyperbole doesn't change the quality of the evidence or the strength of the argument.
> As of a few days ago, this would have meant that millions of dollars went to toilet paper manufacturers.
Nothing wrong with that. If people feel a desperate need to buy overpriced toilet paper then the toilet paper manufacturers and distributors should be encouraged to take advantage of that. If a roll cost $30 that would stop people buying trolleys of the stuff all at once. Instead, shops in Australia have held prices steady and run out of toilet paper; leaving me peeved I have to say. The situation is pretty much strictly worse than if the free market was encouraged in times of crisis.
> You seem to be of the opinion that a free market knows best in crisis situations.
No, not at all. But suppressing free market forces in a crisis is one of the worst possible responses because it delays the corrective action by suppliers. Prices should be shooting up and down, and governments should be giving hospitals emergency funding so they can buy what they need. That'll provide the best signals of what is needed in a crisis. I bet the free market understood the need for test kits a lot more than the CDC did in America; there would have been hospitals crying out to test people.