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Comment by lr4444lr | Hacker News Reader

Can someone ELI5 me the difference between price gouging, and a high priced supply/demand curve equilibrium point?

The headline says "price gouging", but I can't find the term in the body of the article.

The claim actually assessed seems to be "record-breaking increases in the price of eggs [are caused] by price collusion among the nation’s top egg producers."

Collusion and price gouging are pretty different concepts as far as I know. It's somewhat hard to apply the 'price gouging' concept here -- a central example of price gouging would be to charge high prices for fuel or accommodations after a hurricane. It's easy to see the appeal of the concept (people are in a lurch and have few options to trade off with, making it very painful) in the natural disaster example, but that isn't the usual case with eggs.

On the other hand, not allowing very high prices for fuel in the aftermath of a hurricane is a good way to make sure nobody ever stockpiles fuel especially to be available after a hurricane.

You're like 99% of the way there. This is the behavior you want. The alternative is panic shortages from people afraid prices are about to skyrocket.

>You're like 99% of the way there. This is the behavior you want. The alternative is panic shortages from people afraid prices are about to skyrocket.

Forcing prices to be low has the opposite problem: since the cost of stocking up is low, everybody does so. If you're at the grocery store and there's a hurricane approaching, why wouldn't you stock up on some non-perishable foods? After all, worst case scenario you pay a bit more than you would have (assuming you only buy stuff on sale), and you can consume them over time, so the net cost to you is very low. Of course, if every shopper stocks up for 2 weeks worth of perishables, the shelves will be empty within an hour.

Just like hate speech can be any thought that I disagree with, price gouging is when anyone other than me or my friends increases their price.

I know this might be taking the bait but please find some actual academic sources on hate speech. You're letting the very people who want to dismiss policies that limit hate speech because it's just wrongthink define it as wrongthink.

You can hold and express the most offensive vile opinions on any subject you can imagine without it being hate speech. Don't let the very worst of people convince you that their hate speech is the same you holding or expressing minority or counterculture opinions on controversial topics. It's just a tactic to get normal people to defend them becasuse "they're coming for you too."

>I know this might be taking the bait but please find some actual academic sources on hate speech.

What do you propose should be the legal definition of hate speech then? And why do we need it as a separate category compared to existing laws (eg. existing laws against threats)?

Any of these work for you? And because hate speech isn't a direct threat of violence.

The UN: Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

Canada: Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace. Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group. Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust

Germany: Whoever, in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origin, against sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population, or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them or violates the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming one of the aforementioned groups, sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population.

Russia: Actions aimed at the incitement of hatred or enmity, as well as abasement of dignity of a person or a group of persons on the basis of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, attitude to religion, as well as affiliation to any social group, if these acts have been committed in public or with the use of mass media.

South Africa: No person may publish, propagate, advocate or communicate words based on one or more of the prohibited grounds, against any person, that could reasonably be construed to demonstrate a clear intention to be hurtful, be harmful or to incite harm, promote or propagate hatred.

Sweden: Anyone who, in a statement or in another message that is disseminated, threatens or expresses disrespect for a people group or another such group of persons with allusion to race, skin colour, national or ethnic origin, creed, sexual orientation or gender-transgender identity or expression

[1] https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/...

[2] https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/c-46/section-319.ht...

[3] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_st...

[4] https://www.imolin.org/doc/amlid/Russian_Federation_Criminal...

[5] http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/acts/2000-004.pdf

[6] https://lagen.nu/1962:700#K16P8S1

> Any of these work for you? And because hate speech isn't a direct threat of violence.

The problem I see with all of them is that they either allow prosecution of hurt feelings[1], or cover acts that are already covered by existing criminal legislation.

[1] being slightly facetious here

Going through the first few:

>The UN: Any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.

In typical UN fashion, all of their pronouncements are filled with vague platitudes that, depending on how you look at it, are either routinely ignored by the signatories, or leave so much room for interpretation that it's possible to drive a truck through such a loophole.

What counts as "hatred"/"hostility"? Is it as simple as "[insert ethnicity here] are bad"? Going back to your previous claim of "You can hold and express the most offensive vile opinions on any subject you can imagine without it being hate speech", can you provide an illustrative example of "most offensive vile opinions" that would be allowed under that definition, and what would make it not allowed?

>Canada: Every one who, by communicating statements in any public place, incites hatred against any identifiable group where such incitement is likely to lead to a breach of the peace.

What does "breach of the peace" mean? This could mean anywhere between "hurt feelings" and "imminent lawless action". I'm sure that canada already has legislation that prohibits the latter, hate speech or not. So what's the difference here? Is it merely an aggravating factor? Are there things you can say that only become illegal if it's against an "identifiable group"?

>Germany: Whoever, in a manner suited to causing a disturbance of the public peace incites hatred against a national, racial, religious group or a group defined by their ethnic origin, against sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population, or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them or violates the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning or defaming one of the aforementioned groups, sections of the population or individuals on account of their belonging to one of the aforementioned groups or sections of the population.

Same as above

None of these allow prosecution of hurt feelings, how the target of the hate speech feels or reacts to it doesn't matter at all. In fact in all these cases there doesn't have to be a victim present. The word incitement in the Canadian definition is inciting the aggressors to violence, not the targets. It's not like how it's used in "fighting words" laws.

>In fact in all these cases there doesn't have to be a victim present. The word incitement in the Canadian definition is inciting the aggressors to violence, not the targets.

From this description, I'm struggling to see the difference between "hate speech" laws and laws against inciting crime (eg. imminent lawless action standard in US law). Is your claim that the standards for the two should be the same?

There is none. Price gouging accusations have always been for political purposes.

sir, I would like to sell you a website

Is he wrong? "Price gouging" doesn't appear out of nowhere. It's always in response to some sort of demand/supply shock. As microeconomic theory would predict, prices would go up even without the requisite increase in input costs. "Price gouging" laws and accusations of such are political attempts at stopping this behavior from happening.

When the price point is outside said supply demand curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_gouging

That definition doesn't seem to be what your link says the term means, from my skimming.

If a hotel fills all their rooms for the night or a gas station runs out of fuel, we can be sure that wasn't the case, right?

Price gouging is often seen as immoral because it involves high prices without a justifiable reason. It is often considered in absence of welfare analysis, even if the middle class can afford the price increase, it can still be considered price gouging. In a competitive market, prices are based on what the market can bear, not on moral considerations. In such markets, prices must remain low to remain in business. However, high prices without justifiable reasons could be indication of monopolistic behavior from too much consolidation, and should be called out and investigated.

I'm a bit late to this thread but this is the difference: In price gouging you're influencing the elasticity of the product by telling your consumers (explicitly or implicitly) that they should be ready to pay more because input costs have increased. You're moving the equilibrium itself to a higher price by exploiting consumer misunderstanding.

I don't even think anyone can ELI50 on that one. Like the others said, it's always a political determination. So, I could ELIcynic and say that price gouging is high prices that affect politically connected groups.

Remember when the Fed had to breakout the emergency measures to save bankers from having to very periodically, very temporarily, pay .00273% interest instead of .00236% interest [1] on overnight loans? It's who you know.

But if I were to steelman, it would be something like, "taking advantage of a higher equilibrium price when it's known that there is no longer easy entry into the market", which would cover e.g. its usage in disaster scenarios.

[1] Total interest, not annualized rate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21000023

You're misquoting your own comment .00273% vs .0236% That extra zero makes a difference.

Not really. This is a case where both numbers are so small that even the 10x difference between them shouldn’t matter, considering the narrow, limited scope, which was the point of the original comment.

Sorry for the sloppiness though.

Easy or not, taking the terms of your italics arguendo as having no vagueness, all that "price gouging" changes is who receives the goods: the people able and willing to pay more vs. the people who got in line first, bringing market transparency to where before there was just the lucky few before the shortage, and everyone else after.

I'm sure there are lots of legal definitions, but generally price gouging is the practice of bumping up prices in an emergency situation or any other case where the consumer is desperate and helpless to do anything but to just pay you what you ask.

Price gouging is opportunistic, price hikes due to supply/demand CAN be organic, but supply/demand effects can also be opportunistic in nature (organically ((human nature))

Historically speaking similar supply disruptions have caused smaller price spikes, so this exceptional price spike must have exceptional causes.

>Historically speaking similar supply disruptions have caused smaller price spikes

Can I get a source for this? If we look at the charts for margins (as %)[1, we see that current levels correspond roughly with the levels seen during the 2015 avian flu.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CALM/cal-maine-foo...

Others in this thread claim 2015 had much higher losses on the supply side. Therefore one would expect higher prices in 2015 than the current event if supply and demand is the only driver.

The latter isn't real because most people don't interact with markets, the former is how prices actually rise.

There is none in the eyes of a socialist

When you think it's about a supply and demand curve, you give your lunch money to the bully and thank the bully for their service, when you think it's price gouging, the bully has to inform you that your lunch money is actually theirs.

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