[quotemstr]

> High prices will redirect scarce resources to those who have the means and desire to pay for them.

That's true. Don't you think it's also true that those who need a good more have a greater desire to pay for that good? I understand that not everyone has the same ability to pay, but we can't crucify the market on the cross of equity. History shows that when you try to allocate goods based on feelings (some random official's idea of "need") and not prices (which reflect true preferences), you create shortages, black markets, and misery. Command economies just don't work.

There are ways of addressing monetary inequality (e.g., a stipend) in an emergency that don't break the fundamental resource allocation function of the market.

[numbsafari]

It is both immoral and incorrect to measure need based on who has the most liquidity.

[arcticbull]

Or as we call it 'the US healthcare system'

[someguydave]

I’m assuming this is sarcasm. Can you propose an alternative method of measuring need?

[numbsafari]

It's not sarcasm at all.

Does one person with a million dollars in excess liquidity to spend on water represent a greater "need" than one million people with no liquidity to spare?

Would it be moral for that person to buy more than they need, solely to inflate prices? Would the resulting spot price in the market be in any way a meaningful gauge of the actual need?

Market prices are only one gauge, and they are pretty faulty, easily manipulated one at that.

Next up, you'll probably tell me that story points are a solid basis for predicting delivery times and making decisions about resource allocation.

[fatbird]

The field of moral philosophy has extensive literature on exactly this subject. The NYTimes has an 'ask an ethicist' column. Every hospital has an ethics board with prepared guidelines on patient triage in times of crisis.

That the accepted answer to this question has become "who has the most money?" is a victory for... well, the people with the most money, so I guess we can call this a sterling example of the effects of income inequality. The vast majority not only don't have the majority of the money; they don't even have the moral standing of "legitimate" need.

[someguydave]

The only alternative to “highest bidder wins” is “third party decides”. If people need charity, seeking that charity should be a private matter, not one enforced out the barrel of a gun by uninformed third parties.

[fatbird]

Except the whole point of human governance is to delegate that enforcement to a third party that is a just and neutral arbiter. Unless you want to revert to a state of nature and anarchy without laws or money, you're going to have that third party, and if you have it, then you have other options than "highest bidder", which is itself a value choice enforced on other, non-consenting citizens at the the point of a gun.

[quotemstr]

Too much delegation to a third party is called a command economy and history is full of examples of that approach not working, examples going all the way back to the palace economies of the ancient Minoans. The problem is that no third party has enough information or the right incentives to decide fully who should produce what when --- the problem is called "the calculation problem" and has a huge literature. Decentralizing resource allocation decisions using pricing is the only approach that's been shown to work.

[saghm]

> I understand that not everyone has the same ability to pay, but we can't crucify the market on the cross of equity

It's mildly astonishing to me that someone would attempt to make an argument in favor of not regulating absurd prices by comparing the alternative to gruesome public execution. Even ignoring the hyperbole, it isn't a very compelling argument; yes, we all agree that destroying the economy is bad, but the whole discussion is about whether enacting these regulations would _actually_ harm the economy more than it helps, so just asserting that it would with an exaggerated metaphor doesn't really add anything useful.

[dahart]

What’s the economic difference between a stipend to consumers and a price cap on suppliers? It sounds like you just suggested regulation as an alternative to regulation...