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Comment by an_opabinia | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know. Did any of it matter? It was bad when people started hoarding gas. Just a few unfathomably stupid people - as always in this country. If idiots didn’t hoard gas, nothing would really have gone wrong.

The preppers are the other side of the same coin. The only thing they seem to never run out of is toilet paper. Who the fuck cares? Pentesters have the same energy. They tell you about what software not to use (anything in their automated suite), followed by a bunch of meaningless bullshit. It is a form of anti preparation, it would not have helped Colonial at all.

You talk about crippling, and in the biggest audition for crippling society in the world, time after time it’s the Everyman being an idiot - or a Prepper being too smart for their own good - that is responsible for all the bad.

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You know what's way more effective at stopping gas hoarding so it's available for someone who really wants/needs it? Doubling the price per gallon. Anti-price gouging laws caused the shortage, just like with toilet paper and PPE last year.

A price increase that effectively stops people from hoarding gas would be equally as effective at stopping people who need gas from affording it.

Addressing legitimate problems of hardship can be dealt with from the other end, by channeling resources to those people. In the mean time, higher prices mean that supply isn't interrupted, and for the vast majority of people that means that you don't fill up your car and your wife's car and your lawnmower and a 55gal drum, because it's not worth it. You just skip a few trips and let your gas tank get below half a tank. And if you were wrong about thinking you could hold out, you can still buy gas because it's not sitting in your neighbor's new gas cans in his garage.

We shouldn't have widespread shortages for the sake of theoretical people whose existences are structured around 5 gallon commutes and razor thin margins tied with no lines of credit to float a week of double gas expenses.

By “theoretical people” I think you’re referring to a very sizable portion of the population.

The people who would be hurt by such an increase, absent already-in-place assistance, constitute the vast majority of people. And, unfortunately, nobody is helped by "can be dealt with" -- the policies to prevent their pain, and to prevent disadvantaged folks from being disproportionately impacted by such an increase, need to be in place before the increase.

The reason, which is likely apparent to both of us and everyone reading this, is that such assistance would likely never be put in place, and the only help ordinary folks will have in the event of such an increase is wishful thinking.

> The people who would be hurt by such an increase, absent already-in-place assistance, constitute the vast majority of people.

and so you suggest hurting the vast majority of people even more?

That's right, your suggested approach of keeping artificially-low-prices-that-allow-hoarding leads to zero gas at the pumps, and zero gas at the pumps hurts the vast majority of people very directly and very effectively.

Allowing prices to float higher in a shortage solves the allocation problem for scarce resources by ensuring that people think twice about how they use it, while keeping it available. Ignoring that the resource is scarce not only doesn't solve anything, it makes the problem worse.

>and so you suggest hurting the vast majority of people even more?

1. More people are hurt by price gouging of products with inelastic demand than hurt by limiting the price increase.

2. A completely floating gas price disproportionately affects disadvantaged folks who have no alternative, even when there are no outages.

I mean, I totally agree with OP, there's a straightforward solution: set up a government program that insulates people from the effects of a floating price proportionately to how disadvantaged they are, and then, after that, let the gas price float. That way we get your idea without hurting anyone! Win-win.

What crazypants world do you live in where the vast majority of people have all that excess, but the poor are in the minority?

You can't buy gas that isn't there. Anti-gouging laws simply result in no gas available.

And rationing can address that problem. These complex issues are never so simple.

Then you get a black market... it's almost a cobra effect.

Sure. I'd guess it still adds enough friction to help result in a better distribution of goods in the end. The time, effort, and (legal) risk you are willing to take to acquire something should correlate decently with how much you really need those goods.

Rationing makes simple things complex. For example, rationing assumes that everyone has exactly the same need. Trying to fix that is hopelessly complicated.

I don't see how that's an argument against anti-price gouging laws though. It's not like price gouging solves that problem. Fundamentally a shortage is just never going to give perfect results.

Even simplistic rationing is at least relatively fair and can ensure at least a base level of availability. For the major necessities this can be pretty reasonably accounted for to ensure nobody suffers from some extreme deprivation.

It also lets you at least put some somewhat predictable cap on how fast resources are going out. Allowing price gouging doesn't let you predict much of anything, and I'm not sure it even slows the outflow given the uncertainty of these situations.

How high prices work is:

1. only those who really need it buy it

2. others are encouraged to increase supply

For example, before anti-gouging laws, when a hurricane interrupted the gas supply, people from a state over would immediately fill jerry cans with gas and drive into the disaster zone, selling gas out of the back of their pickups.

Anti-gouging laws put a stop to that. Now nobody gets gas until FEMA gets around to it.

I've talked to people who lived through WW2 gas rationing. It was a mess of mis-allocation. People who didn't need their ration turned into criminals selling it on the black market. People who needed it turned into criminals buying it on the black market. It was pure political theater.

This is not the whole story, by any means.

Those who buy it are those who can afford it. They also (think) they need it, for some reason. That can include the intention to legally resell it. Buying suddenly comes with even more time pressure. Buying now becomes both a hedge and speculation, with zero legal risks.

Sure, people bringing in supplies on their own sounds good. It can even be good. But how much does it actually bring in? Does it come with other problems, like additional stress on infrastructure? If this really is such a great thing, I don't see how it should be wholly incompatible with anti-price gouging laws. If you want to specifically incentivize private transport of goods from out of the area, you don't have to allow them to be sold for any price, nor do you have to allow it for goods already in the area.

As for the black market, I'm not sure that's a bug. It makes it harder, and adds some risk, to acquiring more. If you actually need it enough, you'll do it. There some be some correlation between actual need and willingness to participate in the black market. With proper use of the discretion available to law enforcement, maybe this even enhances how well the goods end up distributed. That's a big "with" but still.

> As for the black market, I'm not sure that's a bug.

Rationing implies a black market must be illegal. Besides, it enriches random people who don't need gas, at the expense of the people who went to the effort to supply it.

If that isn't a topsy-turvy unjust, inefficient and inequitable way to run an economy, I don't know what is.

Rationing suffers from the delusion that bureaucratic rules can distinguish who needs something and who doesn't, and denial of the existence of normal human motivations.

What price do you suppose is high enough to effectively stop hoarding?

Keep raising the price until the traffic to your gas station is at sustainable levels.

> A price increase that effectively stops people from hoarding gas would be equally as effective at stopping people who need gas from affording it.

no, your statement is false.

Hoarding cheap gas results in zero gas at the pump, and that is MORE effective at stopping people who need it than high prices do.

That's right, market pricing solves allocation problems that your misguided approach creates.

Price of gold and silver is at its peak and people are buying it more than ever convinced it will somehow become extinct. The people who have money to hoard gas are also the people who have the money to hoard gas at double the price. These are not individuals with any knowledge of economics - theyre not doing it for trade, they're doing it out of belief.

We have to wait and see if future results justify current actions, when the action is preparation for some future event. It is only in hindsight that we can truly point out if someone's risk/reward calculation for the future was flawed.

I'm not buying gold, but the odd thing is that Russian and Chinese central banks are. I would assume those people know a thing or two about economics. I'm curious to see what the future holds.

Why would Russia and China central banks buy gold?

They’re already the #3 and #1 producing countries world-wide.

Because their central banks are concerned about stability of international currencies [1]. A central bank is in a good position to use gold, whereas most individuals aren't.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-russian-and-chinese-ce...

> The people who have money to hoard gas are also the people who have the money to hoard gas at double the price.

But then the outcome would not have changed, the people who hoard will be worse off, the people who produce a valuable commodity will be better off and there is incentive for people to contingency plan and have gas reserves for when things get tight.

That is a strict improvement. Plus, you're probably being overly pessimistic - people will stop hoarding once the price gets high enough. The shelves would not be bare.

> These are not individuals with any knowledge of economics - theyre not doing it for trade, they're doing it out of belief.

The people with knowledge of economics don't have much of an advantage though, do they? When has an official body ever been banging the drum before a major crisis issuing panicked warnings? Every crisis it turns out all the people held up as experts had grossly misread the situation.

People with knowledge of economics often get bowled under by people with a knowledge of politics or of statistics when it comes to trading.

> Price of gold and silver is at its peak and people are buying it more than ever

no, you've got it exactly backward. People buying it more than ever is driving the price up, and the feedback of higher prices is actually slowing down their purchasing not only by changing their minds, but also because their purchasing budget is spread more thinly.

"The people who have money to hoard gas", in the current environment, is as worthwhile a qualifier as "the people who have shoes to hoard gas". They're both necessary for going out to get gas, but neither is limiting in any important way. The people hoarding gas had a particular combination of gas containers, lawnmowers, and free time. I want the gas stations hoarding the gas and then trying to figure out what price will make them the most money by pricing high enough to just barely sell out by the end of a shortage.

Last year when all the grocery stores were running out of staples, I was unluckily traveling for work where there are no grocery stores. Upon returning, I conveniently found that my neighborhood co-op still had eggs because, while almost all eggs had been sold out, no one wanted to hoard $7.50/dz eggs, meaning I had the opportunity to get eggs if I really wanted them. I was able to buy eggs and did so, adjusting my habits accordingly to operate on fewer (but not zero) eggs. Everyone else who had visited that store had the same opportunity, and they also had the chance to compare their own desire for eggs against others' desires to recognize that they could do with fewer, as could I. At the end of the day, having reduced amounts of something I want is way less impactful than having none.

The only problem here is if gas stations talk to each other to set a price, but that is collusion, and is illegal independent of gouging laws.

I disagree that a higher price will dissuade hoarders from hoarding; you've just validated their notion that gas is getting more valuable and more scarce. See: deflation.

I doubt companies care about anything besides profit and that they could care less about gas hoarders. Also, this was just a little taste of havoc that could be done to the economy and society. I'm hoping they lost enough money to knock some sense into them to practice better security and hopefully it makes others think twice about practicing sloppy security. I'm also guessing in the wake of this that ransom attacks will increase in frequency, ransom demands will increase in value, and insurance premiums will increase as well and insurance providers may be forced to do better due diligence about policies that they sell to large corporations to ensure that they don't practice sloppy security. I'm hoping there is some tipping point where it makes financial sense for these large corporations to practice better security. Right now, they gamble that they won't be attacked and so don't invest in security and for the most part they have been rewarded.

>If idiots didn’t hoard gas, nothing would really have gone wrong.

Maybe. But, I tend to lay the blame with the foreign criminals/adversaries who attacked us rather than a panicky handful of my fellow country people.

Not sure why some here are blaming the victims while giving the criminals a pass, and even thanking them as if unsolicited, live pentesting on critical infrastructure with a side order of extortion is a good thing.

>I don’t know. Did any of it matter

I bet a lot of companies, including Colonial, are investing more in security, including hiring more people for security.

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