[vmception]

When an emergency lasts a few weeks in a limited area you can curb a market, and indeed this is what legislatures across the country and world had rationally prepared their jurisdictions to do

When an emergency is endless with all hope for resolution being a complete lie due to not having a plan, needing to placate the population longer and not having data to create a plan all while the scope of the emergency is expanding, a market has to continue functioning as normal with its primary feature being to signal to people - yes, even middlemen - that their ability to source and/or create supply is worth their time and energy as opposed to doing literally anything else

Thats what happened

Some jurisdictions created novel more holistic solutions by shielding the consumers from price shocks by the government absorbing/subsidizing the price over a floor. It was foolish of representatives to try to use their existing tools of short term price controls as if a storm just hit a small area of their state, as this just caused confusion and made the market more opaque.

[mola]

But the scarcity was hand made, "entrepreneurs" would buy all stock to create scarcity in order to gouge prices.

This is what free markets enable, in times of pandemic this is unacceptable.

[nickpp]

Other entrepreneurs would see the gouged prices and will do the impossible to find and add new stock on the market.

That is what the free markets enable, and that is why they are even more important during pandemics and other crises.

[La1n]

> do the impossible to find and add new stock on the market.

Sure, but that does take time, during which hospital stuff and immunocompromised people don't have masks.

[vmception]

It's an ecosystem, a market, there is no one single actor to point to.

People couldn't sit on stock for very long because other people were flooding the market as fast as they could.

There was simply scarcity and that's it. State's had their procurement and price enforcement procedures all wrong while they sat idly for the Federal Government to procure for them, it never happened and that is what cost the most time.

The better version of events was that states assumed this level of autonomy at the very beginning and ramped up their own domestic production back in January. They created credits for this kind of production in the private sector, while also subsidizing a retail cost above a certain price, creating a ceiling for consumers. None of this happened and this affected the medical workers and immunocompromised greater than any entrepreneur hoarder could.

[imtringued]

Yes but if you do the "obvious" thing of adding a maximum price then not only did you fail to accomplish anything (messing with prices doesn't create more masks out of thin air), you even declared the problem solved so nobody else can attempt a solution!

[vmception]

We live in a market based economy, when the issue spans the continent and world there is no utility in trying to disrupt that market. It is a distraction and misallocation of public resources to attempt to do so.

The "hoarders" were taking just as big of a risk as the people that took the risk to create and sell.

You are missing the point that the necessary stock did not exist. Pointing the finger at people hoarding supplies merely deflects the incompetence to a phantom boogeyman.

[musicale]

> It was foolish of representatives to try to use their existing tools of short term price controls as if a storm just hit a small area of their state, as this just caused confusion and made the market more opaque.

I'm still unconvinced that price gouging during an emergency is beneficial overall.

Regardless, it was already illegal in California.

[vmception]

Actually it wasn’t, all PPE could be sourced and sold at prices that matched their scarcity and utility, which is my point about why this belief in price gouging restrictions just caused confusion. There is a way they couldnt, it was very hard to do that.

The legal reality was more nuanced than the governor, legislature and DA ever imagined because prior emergencies were never larger than an isolated area. This market distortion covered the entire state indefinitely and crossed state lines, their power was much more limited than they imagined.

They thought the federal government was going to solve this for the states and were wrong and this cost the states months, especially California due to its size and population, which is still realigning and adjusting to self-autonomy and procurement while being ahead of many other states.