[overton]

The argument starts that people who need gas more are going to buy it in the shortage (suggesting efficient distribution), and then acknowledges that it's just as likely wealthier people or price gougers who don't need it.

In actual shortages where there's a strong political motivation to efficiently distribute goods (e.g. wartime), we switch to central planning (i.e. rations) because we know that's what works, denying price gougers their tax and making sure poor people who need stuff can get it.

[inglor_cz]

"efficiently"

This is the weasel word.

In war, especially a war of national survival, one can argue that winning the war is the important cause and all others are of secondary importance. So you can actually use the word "efficient" about distribution of goods without first discussing the ends of said distribution. The main end is simply to win, or at least not to lose catastrophically.

In peacetime, there isn't a single primary objective, but a multitude of smaller, competing ones. Once you start speaking of "efficient distribution of goods", you imply existence of a ladder of importance on which these objectives are sorted.

An example: is it more efficient if Peter and Paul have one car each or if Peter has two cars and Paul has none? Well, it depends what they do with them, no? What if Paul is legally blind and cannot drive? (But radicals might still argue that Peter having two cars is a big no-no because it increases inequality.)

[overton]

Sue me, I have whatever concept of efficiency that means that people eating and having housing and having a habitable environment is more important than NFT's or space tourism or car collections. That's my ladder of importance. So weasely!

[inglor_cz]

That ladder of importance isn't as simple as you present it.

Having housing of which quality? What floor size per person? In what location? You can buy an entire empty house in depopulated Italian villages for 1 euro, which isn't a prohibitive cost for anyone, but there seem to be few takers [1].

Is space tourism necessary for promotion of space research in general? What about the money it brings into various coffers? Maybe it contributes to having habitable environment in the future.

As for eating, Coca-Cola and McDonalds are ready to drown the entire world in cheap sugary fast food. That probably isn't what you had in mind - this kind of eating will kill people slowly. Is it possible to feed 8 billion people just with organic food? Probably not either. Etc.

[1] https://www.idealista.it/en/news/tags/1-euro-homes-italy/

[marcosdumay]

The pricing mechanism is very good at ensuring people prepare for resource shortage (with storage or whatever) and avoid the worst part of it at all.

There are still a few shortages one simply can't prepare for, but dismissing the entire mechanism due to a few very large scale emergencies that wold break any kind of normalcy isn't constructive.

[roenxi]

> In actual shortages where there's a strong political motivation to efficiently distribute goods (e.g. wartime), we switch to central planning (i.e. rations)

That is glossing over the fact that wartime is miserable for the average consumer. Extreme central planning leads to horrible outcomes.

Central planning in wartime has two motivations: 1. It allows tactical objectives to be met very quickly, at unreasonable cost. 2. Free markets are at heart anti-war, because war destroys capital and suppresses trade/investment, both bad outcomes for traders. So there needs to be a mechanism to suppress the markets and force it to make economically bad decisions.

Wartime central planning has nothing to do with getting poor people what they need. It is more likely poor people will be purposefully starved drafting able bodied farmers into soldiers then making sure they have lots of food.

[overton]

Heck, even private businesses often do a kind of ad-hoc rationing for essential goods when there's a rush on them, because they know that the kind of arbitrage free-for-all described in the article has extremely poor social outcomes in a crisis.

[kqr]

I might be in a more conspiratorial mood than usual, but isn't centralised rationing more about ensuring the government can take its cut before anyone else has a chance to place a bid?

[kaashif]

> In actual shortages where there's a strong political motivation to efficiently distribute goods (e.g. wartime), we switch to central planning (i.e. rations) because we know that's what works,

There's a big difference between war and peace. Markets allow individuals, who do not necessarily have winning a war as their number one objective, to pursue their own objectives with their own demands, as communicated by prices.

In war, there is a political motivation to override individual objectives and force everyone to serve the needs of the war effort above all, even if they don't particularly want to.

Central planning isn't used in war because it's the most efficient way for every individual to achieve their own objectives, it's the opposite - central planning is the most efficient way to erase individual objectives in favor of a single overriding objective: winning the war.

This isn't an argument in favor of price gouging, my point is that full-on central planning isn't a means to general prosperity, and that's not even why everyone centrally plans during war. Central planning is about control and the erasure of individual freedom. Sometimes that's needed in a war. Inefficiently pursuing one objective (the war) is more effective at winning a war than efficiently pursuing a whole range of objectives, most of which have nothing to do with war.

The old socialist arguments about central planning being more efficient even during peacetime have been dead and buried for decades.

[gruez]

>and making sure poor people who need stuff can get it.

...but not before the politically well-connected people get their dibs.

[skybrian]

Alternatively, the government makes advance purchase agreements because it’s that important, and this has nothing to do with denying manufacturers their profits. (Covid vaccines.)