As it should be, without restrictions. Basically First Sale doctrine. If I buy something, I own it and should be able to sell it at market price.
Society's tolerance for parasites who do that kind of thing has a breaking point and when the people being negatively impacted get fed up enough to take action I'll have no sympathy for anyone who seeks to make others miserable just so that they can profit off of their suffering.
During the pandemic the price of toilet paper should have been increased by an order of magnitude at the store level. This would prevent hoarding and it would make sure people who desperately wanted it could get it. Additionally, it would have incentivized producers and sellers to fill demand.
Price controls are the equivalent of rations. They don’t solve anything because they remove all of the incentives.
I fail to see how making toilet paper cost hundreds or thousands of dollars per roll would ensure that everyone who needed it would be able to get it, since many of those who desperately wanted to wipe their ass were unable to work and going into record amounts of debt just to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads.
Producers and sellers were already fully incentivized to sell their goods, as they always have been. They know people want their product and will pay them enough that they can turn a profit. There's no reason to turn toilet paper into an luxury item which only the wealthiest people can afford leaving the majority priced out.
Price controls and rations have their place. Like all tools, the key to is make sure that they are used correctly.
Also, you’re incorrect about producers having the right incentives. They are incentivized by money, not a higher calling to wipe ass.
Price controls have no place at all other than appealing to people’s emotions. They cannot fix or hide supply problems. They can just shift the price signal to lucky intermediaries (scalpers) rather than to suppliers.
You said: "the price of toilet paper should have been increased by an order of magnitude at the store level. This would prevent hoarding". How high do you think the price per roll would have to be to ensure that no one (not even rich people or a small group of rich people working together) could afford to buy up a pallet of toilet paper to try to resell at a higher price? It'd have to be pretty damn expensive. Expensive enough to price out most people since a millionaire can afford to pay so much more than someone making below minimum wage
> Also, you’re incorrect about producers having the right incentives. They are incentivized by money, not a higher calling to wipe ass.
Read my comment again, I never said anything about a "higher calling". I explicitly said that their incentive was profit.
Instead, IRL, anyone who could find them were buying up several massive packages because it was only the normal ≈$20 for 20 rolls situation, so “heck, buy 60, 80, maybe 100 rolls! Who knows when I’ll get this lucky as to find it again?” Meaning suddenly everyone was buying and warehousing way more TP than they needed in 6 months. Not adjusting prices literally caused the shortage.
It’s amazing what tech bros making 6 figures will say from their ivory towers.
Were you alive and shopping for toilet paper during covid? The wealthy could already purchase it whenever from scalpers (a.k.a Amazon resellers). Normal people had to drive from store to store hoping their ration came in and they timed it right.
The hyperbolic interpretation of price controls is, “the poors don’t deserve toilet paper at all unless they win a lottery”.
Of course profit maximization is not the only (or even primary) goal, that's what makes this such a hard problem. If it were, ticket sales would be trivially solved - just auction each seat to the highest bider, close biding near the concert date and prevent any transfers. Of course that's a terrible idea.
I wonder how much of this could be alleviated by selling a certain percentage of tickets at the box office only? I worked in operations for a pretty large concert venue several years ago, and the Jonas Brothers were going to play there (this was at their peak). I remember a good chunk of tickets were only sold at the box office and there was a limit per person (maybe 5 or 6)? I know it's annoying to drive somewhere and wait in line for hours, but I'm sure there are folks out there that would prefer to do that instead of paying a 500% markup on the original ticket price.
The artists have simply decided to sell $1000 tickets instead of $200 tickets that get scalped for $1000
The scalpers then create a secondary market where there is a supply and demand situation like you talk about.