ArthurWilborn
New Member
Summary: Increasing prices prevents the first few people who come from hoarding, insuring that the limited supply available is distributed to more people.
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ArthurWilborn said:Summary: Increasing prices prevents the first few people who come from hoarding, insuring that the limited supply available is distributed to more people.
ArthurWilborn said:Summary: Increasing prices prevents the first few people who come from hoarding, insuring that the limited supply available is distributed to more people.
Nashy19 said:Doesn't really work when shops have a limit on how much you can buy.
CommonEnlightenment said:1. The stores could assign a reasonable limit on what is purchased. Automated check outs could to this.
2. People could have a reasonable number of non perishable items already stocked at home.
3. How does price gouging save lives when you are talking about hotel rooms? I just don't see a good argument for that.
Or it could ensure that those who don't need to stay so close keep driving away from the area to less costly accommodation.ArthurWilborn said:CommonEnlightenment said:1. The stores could assign a reasonable limit on what is purchased. Automated check outs could to this.
2. People could have a reasonable number of non perishable items already stocked at home.
3. How does price gouging save lives when you are talking about hotel rooms? I just don't see a good argument for that.
Limits would be a bit tough to administer as they're pretty easy to circumvent, but that's also a possibility for the quick-thinking and civic-minded store owner. Two I agree on.
With hotel rooms it's not so much about "lives" but there is still the aspect of limited supply. More expensive hotel rooms would help insure greater density of usage (eg a family using one room instead of two) and thus insure that more were available.
CommonEnlightenment said:Perhaps it's too much to ask individuals to use civic minded thinking during a crisis.
Nashy19 said:CommonEnlightenment said:Perhaps it's too much to ask individuals to use civic minded thinking during a crisis.
I think it would be easier, during a crisis people are usually willing to work together. It's not really anything new either, it's the normal thing to do, at least in some places.
Lallapalalable said:The article updated saying that, for one day (8/28), the stores will price match local supermarkets as a gesture of good will.
The main point was that people are being evacuated (mandatory for many, and last count I saw said ~1mil.), and getting h2o is a priority for many people. Having a large company not accommodate for the situation, while not entirely unethical, just shows that they arent committed to the communities they serve (which is a staple core value for many businesses).
The very least they could have done from the get-go would be to sell it for no profit (even though we all know bottled water is the bread and butter of Best Buy's income).
Lallapalalable said:I understand that corporations act based on the decisions of select individuals, but perhaps the manager could have made a few phone calls to check that that is expressly what HQ wants them to do.
)O( Hytegia )O( said:>.>
This is all stemming from chronic ignorance of capitalism.
Here's how a corporation works - it issues wares for branches to sell. The main hub of the corporation says "this is so-and-so dollars." And, guess what? It's that amount of currency. Uniformly.
The branches then get payed based upon how many units they effectively "move" from the store into the hands of customers, which is a percent of the profit.
If Best Buy had walked out and started giving out water for dirt-cheap, without the corporation's permission, they risked a large head-rolling.
Why? Because that's how the contract works.
The reason they could even lower the price on the 28th was because Corporate said "This is giving us bad press - toss them a fucking bone for a day."
ImprobableJoe said:Yeah, and while it is sort of crappy, it is also unfair for people to blame the guy making $9.13 an hour in Year #15 at Best Buy for not making a creative and potentially career-ending decision to mark down prices without corporate permission. "Manager" at a big box store isn't like "manager" of a project at a big tech firm.
So, you're just going to ignore everything people have posted, and go back to your original nonsense. If that store doesn't sell in bulk, the manager CANNOT magically create a bar-code scan that gives the bulk discount you want to pretend exists. :facepalm:kenandkids said:Wait... so Both Joe and Hytegia are defending the manager by saying that it isn't like he could take responsibility and just lower prices on his own...
yet he did just that by raising them on his own! So far as I've heard on the matter, corporate did not give the go ahead to raise prices in this manner. The manager saw an opening and took it. I'd personally wonder if he even intended to forward the profits on to the company, handwritten signs during a very small timeframe and all...
ImprobableJoe said:Did you ever see a bulk package of food where the individual packages were marked "not for resale"? That means that the bulk package can't be broken up and sold individually at a higher price, By the same token, if individual servings are shipped in a bulk case, that doesn't mean the case itself is marked for sale. I don't know how else to explain it, and you're coming off as intentionally obtuse at this point.
Thomas Doubting said:It clearly is a bulk price though, hand written, it doesn't leave the best impression.. especially in the middle of a crisis.