She can home school or choose to go to a private school.
Sure, IF her parents allow it. But unless conditions outside of her control allow for other options, she really is "legally compelled to be at this particular school".
She has a choice and that choice is to be educated elsewhere.
Really? Every student at an American public school can simply choose to go elsewhere, without even parental consent?
I can shoot down your statement with "not legally required to be on public property since her parents can allow HER to receive a private education", in other words, they have other options that doesn't necessitate HER wearing a badge.
The people with options (her parents) are not the same as the person who is being forced to participate and whose rights we are discussing ("HER"). Or are you suggesting that she has the right to make her parents home-school her? To be a bit hyperbolic: Is a slave not held captive because their master could free them?
She's already given up her right to self determination..
She "gave them up", as in willingly abdicated? I don't think so. We just don't recognize some aspects of it in this context.
[you] don't seem to care too much about that.
I do, I just don't have a good alternative.
It's not reasonable they can tell her where to be AND what to do when she is there?
Without limit? You can't be serious - "Suzy, do this sheet of algebra, have sex with Kevin, and then cut your left arm off. OK?" Sure, all the same thing.
Minors don't have the same legal rights as adults. It's why we have a separate term for them.
Yes, adults and minors have different rights. And somehow that leads directly to the conclusion that minors have no rights (at least in this case)?
And someone please explain what expectation of privacy a child should have on public property.
Er... you meant "what kind of privacy-negating activity can a child be forced to do when she's on public property that she's legally require to be on", right? This isn't someone choosing to go to a park and then complaining that she's in the background of someone else's photo. This is someone legally compelled to go somewhere, and then you suggesting that because she's there (as required!) that she's given up a right.
What is she going to do when she graduates and she has to swipe a badge to get into work or her work PC requires her login?
She's going to be legally required to work for a corporation? Next you'll tell me that there are no small businesses or farms left nor any chance to start one, no stay-at-home spouses, no trust-fund babies,...
You are referring to things that have higher radiative energy (microwaves, for example) than the things they are heating.
But they are the same kind photons given off by cooler objects. If "Warmer objects cannot, and do not absorb lower-energy radiation from cooler objects." then a larger, concentrated dose of those same photons shouldn't be absorbed either. If I stand under the night sky, either my hot coffee can absorb the CMB energy that hits it, or the microwave in my kitchen couldn't hove gotten it hot in the first place.
So let's be blunt about it, shall we? Energy moves from higher levels to lower levels.
As a whole, energy does tend to disperse. But is that true for every single particle interaction? Of course not. The second law is a statistical result of large numbers of interactions going both ways. This has to be true because temperature itself is a matter of statistics. How would the molecules in a hot body that happen to have below average energy for an instant know they're not to absorb energy from a cooler objects' temporarily above average energy particles?
If you can disprove that, I will gladly buck for your Nobel Prize.
I don't think they give Nobel prizes for duplicating previous work - see Ludwig Boltzmann, etc.
Warmer objects cannot, and do not absorb lower-energy radiation from cooler objects.
Sure they do. If they didn't then equally hot objects in a vacuum would cool at the same rate regardless of their surroundings, and of course they cool at a rate proportional to the difference in temperature. Also, infrared lasers couldn't heat things to the point that they give off visible light. Microwaves wouldn't be able to heat things.
Please go back up this thread and read the articles to which I linked: "Yes, Virginia" and "No, Virginia".
You're referencing an online argument by a very stubborn person?
anti-science... People who believe it's man-made , but there's nothing we can do about it.
I'm not sure that's "anti-science" - if they think it's impossible for political, economic or social reasons, then they might just be cynical. Or even worse, realistic!
The *ONLY* way you can get a 100% match with a false positive with a legitimate DNA test is if the subject has an identical sibling.
Too bad they don't do a 100% test. I've never heard of any law enforcement organization even trying to do complete genome sequencing, and I'm not sure if that would do any good since any real-world sample of evidence is going to have at least some kind of contamination.
I've repeatedly explained that I'm trying to make a distinction that is different than what you call normalcy/deviation. The entirety of your counterargument is that despite my protests, and with nothing but your own assumptions to support the idea, that I am not making a distinction that is different.
I see the entirety of action/deviation:inaction/normalcy as the exact same. I simply do not see them as separate points.
Exactly! An analogy: you divide people into tall and short, which is a perfectly good way to categorize and might be valid for, say, amusement part rides. But since the topic is legal responsibility, I think age is more appropriate. Of course when you replace 'age' with 'height' (because you think they're not just related, but identical) then my argument becomes absurd.
But if you are in the business or are selling a coat and that someone has otherwise the ability to meet your requirements, in that case, not selling is action/deviation.
I agree that previous actions set up a pattern of behavior, and sometimes only changes in behavior are important, so normalcy and deviation are a good division for some purposes. But for other purposes (whether my inventory is different, or the ownership of things has changed, or I've agreed to something) we probably should use a different division which we might call action (or activity, or 'doing something'). And when we're dealing with that division, history is irrelevant.
If you are selling coats and refuse to sell to someone for whatever reason, it is about the same as stealing the coat.
I could go on about how this is a gross misrepresentation of estoppel, or an attitude of entitlement, but I'll try my standard liberal counterargument - take out the money and see how well the argument works: Imagine if the last time someone broke up with you that you had gone to court and demanded that they keep having sex with you (or keep buying you nice dinners, or keep helping with that term paper), arguing that they were 'depriving you' of something that they 'owed' to you so long as you kept up your half of the relationship 'bargain'.
You'd never even think of doing something so horrid, would you? And even if you did, you wouldn't expect any first-world court to buy that argument. But why does swapping 'gas' for 'sex' suddenly make the argument valid? The only differences are that one is a personal relationship and one is business, and that one is life-and-death and the other isn't. The first leads down the well-worn path of 'money is so different that is justifies anything', the other leads me to asking for evidence before I support sending people to prison.
You've done a decent job of presenting the basics, and I do understand the argument you're making. On the other hand, you have no clue about my argument, because you systematically misinterpret what I've written, and that's why you haven't been able to attack it properly.
I believe that action/inaction is the proper dividing line, and you believe that it should be normalcy/deviation. Those are two perfectly reasonable point of view, and we could have a good discussion about it. But you simply refuse to acknowledge that I'm even making that particular argument, and instead assume I'm saying something completely different.
If you really want to keep doing this, please just answer one question: Is refusing to sell your coat to someone morally different from stealing their coat?
Keeping your profits as normal is not doing anything
Breathing normally is not doing anything? Not just metaphorically, not just "nothing unusual", but literally nothing at all, even though you have to keep doing it?
But as I pointed out before, the language is irrelevant - swap "action/inaction" with "exchange/not exchange" or "type A activities/type B activities" if you like. No wordplay will get you escape the fact that refusing to sell your coat to someone is morally quite different from stealing their coat, no matter how similar the result is for the other person, or what situational factors lead to your decision, including price.
So then you were just talking shit when you said
I can't begin to understand your level of obtuseness. We live in a free society, legality is presumed. This means the supporters of a law prohibiting something (not those in favor of repealing a law) have the obligation to present a case for that prohibition, including evidence of the likely difference that law makes or will make. What the law is currently, what other people believe, and what authorities support are all irrelevant to a discussion of what the law should be.
Keeping your profits as normal is not doing anything, raising them to take advantage of the victims of an emergency so you can preserve hoarding is doing something.
If I take a drink, or breathe, or sell something, those are actions. If I don't take a drink, or don't breathe, or don't sell, then I've chosen not to take an action. I know the English language muddles this up a bit, but when an alcoholic "stops drinking", that's not actually an action. It may involve making a choice, it may involve willpower, but "not pouring a drink" is not an "action" the way I've been using the word (and the way the legal system uses the word in this context). By this usage "keeping profits normal" is continuing to act - you're going to keep selling something, right? And "hoarding" what they already own is not acting, it's essentially the same situation you'd have if they'd left the area before the storm.
If you use a looser definition, even dead people are taking lots of actions - skipping work, standing up dates, being delinquent with their bills, letting the lawn get overgrown, neglecting their pets, dodging taxes and jury duty, and their dieting like you wouldn't believe! But even if you don't like the language, I think it's clear that a dead person being rude by ignoring you is a different kind of action that the same corpse attacking you and trying to eat your brain.
Why don't you prove it did happen to support your assertions?
Because in a free society everything is presumed to be legal. If we're going to disrupt lives even more and spend money on courts and prisons because of a law you suggest, you're the one who has to make the case.
I'm not sure what your point is. I said thing you do and you list how things someone does not do. You are proving my point but then seem to get confused- at least you confused me on your attempt.
You might want to read them again. All of the things on the left are actions that cause harm and are often illegal, while the ones on the right are not actions and are almost never illegal, and that includes the subject at hand - "not selling at a low price". I really don't know how to make the distinction more explicit.
The justification for this should be clear from the first example - "Slaughtering children is different than not donating your bottom dollar to charity." If not acting to save someone can in all cases be considered a crime, then we are all guilty. That's why outside of a certain limited set of situations (parents and their children, guards and their prisoners, doctors and their patients, in some areas calling 911 for an ambulance or reporting violent crimes) refraining from acting is almost never a crime, even if it seems heartless. You expect the possibility of legal problems if you steal a candy bar from a major business, even if the loss is trivial to them, but do you expect jail time for not giving a homeless man your coat, even if it kills him? I don't think so.
by locking the resources out of the reach of certain people... you are essentially causing someone to be harmed
Are gas station owners who lock up their shops before fleeing a disaster even more evil? If someone is harmed when they can't afford $15 gas aren't they harmed just as much by not being able to purchase it at any price?
To date, no one has demonstrated that anyone has went without or will run out.... But with gouging, we know for certain someone would be priced out.
You're willing to make those assumptions, but I want supporting evidence (since I want a solid case to be made before declaring something to be criminal).
If someone dies because of something you did, the law says its on you.
Slaughtering children is different than not donating your bottom dollar to charity.
Taking a man's coat is different than not selling them one.
Assaulting someone is different than not stopping an assault.
Driving drunk is different than not forcing someone into AA.
Firing a gun is different than not taking the gun away.
Stealing gas is different than not selling at a low price.
--Do you have solid evidence that gouging not only kills people, but that it kills more people than your plan?
I don't need evidence of that. You take the blame when it is done on your behalf by gouging and locking the necessary resources out.
You seem to think that, given the choice between preventing one murder and saving two people from accidental death, that we should favor preventing the murder because someone will "have blood on their hands". I believe that we should attempt to prevent as many deaths as possible, regardless of the circumstances of those deaths or our feelings toward the people involved. Until one of us changes the other's mind I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.
When FEMA is operating and the government is cooperating, low prices will not result in shortages, it will result in resupplies eventually and everyone will live.
If resupply is imminent, how much damage will a very brief spike in prices do, especially since most places won't raise prices in order to keep customer good will?
If you inflate the prices for profit, you are picking and choosing who lives and who dies
And if you leave prices the same and run out because of that, you are picking and choosing who lives and who dies, just based on time rather than money.
If people die because of greed and an attempt to exploit the victims of a situation for absurd profit, it is another.
Agreed! Do you have solid evidence that gouging not only kills people, but that it kills more people than your plan?
Actually, arresting and prosecuting people who gouge others is something that can be done about it.
Sure. We can also reduce pollution by banning cars.
we expect heads to roll when a company poisons the ground water or illegally dumps toxic waste in your back yard.
Did you just compare not selling something at a price that you like to poisoning someone? What about people who don't want to sell at all?
"Ah, the authoritarian mindset..". You see, it's everyone's mindset.
But is that a good thing? And can you fix that problem by banning it?:)
You've done a halfway decent job defending the immorality of gouging and have taken a stab at a legal justification, but that has nothing to do with the argument I'm making. I'm suggesting that gouging bad, but banning it may be worse. No argument you make about the evils of gouging will change my mind, because I already agree with it. To persuade me that a ban would be justified, you have to show how the alternative is likely to be better, using an economic argument first to detail the consequences, (good and bad, intended and unintended), and only after we agree on that can we discuss morality.
If you think a drug kills 1 person and saves 10, while I think it kills 10 and saves 1, telling me that death is bad is pointless. Showing me some drug trials would be much more useful.
It's the principle of making the customer pay for this after the fact. If the game requires authenticators to use its features, it should come in the box.
I'm billing Ford for my gas, oil changes, and regular maintainance. I'm also suing because the advertisements showed an attractive woman in the car, and mine didn't come with one - I had to buy one separately from some "RussianBride" company. What a rip-off!
Is that morally desirable, yes. Is is possible, I would disagree. I think that we will either have a higher price, or it will become unavailable.
From my perspective this is like one of those Intro to Ethics questions where you have a situation in which you must choose who will live and who will die, and your answer is "none". That's a perfectly good answer, but only if you can find a flaw in the assumptions made about the situation. You aren't going to eliminate all disasters or change human nature, and I don't think you can wish away the rule that "caps on prices generally lead to shortages" no matter how justified your moral outrage.
You cannot look at it any other way because you cannot get around that fact.
I can see it a different way because I continue to think carefully after accepting that fact. You see something that you don't like, and assume that a ban is appropriate. I see the same thing and don't like it, but also accept that there may not be much anyone can do about it that won't make things even worse.
Yep, spoken just like the democrats and republicans all across the country.... Face it, it is the world we live in and you really have no reason to be upset just because you just now realized it.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. Was this meant for someone else?
This is not some mental exercise in supply and demand economics.
Supply and demand doesn't go away when you don't like the results, just like gravity and physical attractiveness.
There were physical breaks in the supply line. Trickle down economics doesn't overcome a tree blocking the road.
This has nothing to do with "trickle down", this is basic supply and demand. At $3.50/gal it's worth sending a truck out, at $10 a gallon it's worth it to send a crew out to clear streets, a better truck to take the back roads, pay people to find alternate routes, drive longer distances to avoid trouble spots,... and from the other end people use it more carefully.
What you describe, the extra cost of delivering supplies is NOT price gouging.
So YOU get to judge everything - we can charge for extra miles but not overtime, extra workers but not to pay for the winch because we "already had it"? Why don't we let the customers decide what counts as gouging?
Many, many people helped out just to be noble. These people are really the best of society. They should be honored, emulated.... It's shameful that you think profit should be the motivating factor behind disaster recovery.
But why not use both, e.g. charity for the worst off and normal econ for the rest? That's what we do everywhere else, most make their own eating decisions based on their budget and the truly bad off get food stamps. I let me neighbor borrow my car because she can't afford one, but demanding that GM or Ford only sell cars that we both can afford would be absurd. That kind of thinking leads to millionaires getting Social Security checks.
You should be ashamed.
You think that using both empathy and reason in tandem to solve problems is shameful?
Thanks, but that is rather high praise for such little insight. This is pretty basic projection: she strongly believes in converting people, so she assumes the same thing of you, even if you say otherwise.
One possibility is that if you're going undermine his church instruction afterward, her best bet is to keep you from knowing about it, which includes teaching her grandson to keep his religion from his parents.
On the other hand, it could be that she's afraid that you'll eventually think 'enough is enough, no more of this nonsense', and the two of you (or you and your son) will have a conflict, and she wants to avoid that.
Unfortunately, she sees this as a war with no neutral position. As long as it seems harmless your best bet might be to just laugh it off.
No, this is a normal search for evidence. They have reason to believe that a specific crime was committed, and this information is pertinent to their investigation.
Next up, the government collects all emails sent by anyone in the search for evidence of crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, that's a common argument. Except that Steve Jobs was saying exactly the opposite of that.
She can home school or choose to go to a private school.
Sure, IF her parents allow it. But unless conditions outside of her control allow for other options, she really is "legally compelled to be at this particular school".
She has a choice and that choice is to be educated elsewhere.
Really? Every student at an American public school can simply choose to go elsewhere, without even parental consent?
I can shoot down your statement with "not legally required to be on public property since her parents can allow HER to receive a private education", in other words, they have other options that doesn't necessitate HER wearing a badge.
The people with options (her parents) are not the same as the person who is being forced to participate and whose rights we are discussing ("HER"). Or are you suggesting that she has the right to make her parents home-school her? To be a bit hyperbolic: Is a slave not held captive because their master could free them?
She's already given up her right to self determination..
She "gave them up", as in willingly abdicated? I don't think so. We just don't recognize some aspects of it in this context.
[you] don't seem to care too much about that.
I do, I just don't have a good alternative.
It's not reasonable they can tell her where to be AND what to do when she is there?
Without limit? You can't be serious - "Suzy, do this sheet of algebra, have sex with Kevin, and then cut your left arm off. OK?" Sure, all the same thing.
Minors don't have the same legal rights as adults. It's why we have a separate term for them.
Yes, adults and minors have different rights. And somehow that leads directly to the conclusion that minors have no rights (at least in this case)?
And someone please explain what expectation of privacy a child should have on public property.
Er ... you meant "what kind of privacy-negating activity can a child be forced to do when she's on public property that she's legally require to be on", right? This isn't someone choosing to go to a park and then complaining that she's in the background of someone else's photo. This is someone legally compelled to go somewhere, and then you suggesting that because she's there (as required!) that she's given up a right.
What is she going to do when she graduates and she has to swipe a badge to get into work or her work PC requires her login?
She's going to be legally required to work for a corporation? Next you'll tell me that there are no small businesses or farms left nor any chance to start one, no stay-at-home spouses, no trust-fund babies, ...
You are referring to things that have higher radiative energy (microwaves, for example) than the things they are heating.
But they are the same kind photons given off by cooler objects. If "Warmer objects cannot, and do not absorb lower-energy radiation from cooler objects." then a larger, concentrated dose of those same photons shouldn't be absorbed either. If I stand under the night sky, either my hot coffee can absorb the CMB energy that hits it, or the microwave in my kitchen couldn't hove gotten it hot in the first place.
So let's be blunt about it, shall we? Energy moves from higher levels to lower levels.
As a whole, energy does tend to disperse. But is that true for every single particle interaction? Of course not. The second law is a statistical result of large numbers of interactions going both ways. This has to be true because temperature itself is a matter of statistics. How would the molecules in a hot body that happen to have below average energy for an instant know they're not to absorb energy from a cooler objects' temporarily above average energy particles?
If you can disprove that, I will gladly buck for your Nobel Prize.
I don't think they give Nobel prizes for duplicating previous work - see Ludwig Boltzmann, etc.
Warmer objects cannot, and do not absorb lower-energy radiation from cooler objects.
Sure they do. If they didn't then equally hot objects in a vacuum would cool at the same rate regardless of their surroundings, and of course they cool at a rate proportional to the difference in temperature. Also, infrared lasers couldn't heat things to the point that they give off visible light. Microwaves wouldn't be able to heat things.
Please go back up this thread and read the articles to which I linked: "Yes, Virginia" and "No, Virginia".
You're referencing an online argument by a very stubborn person?
anti-science ... People who believe it's man-made , but there's nothing we can do about it.
I'm not sure that's "anti-science" - if they think it's impossible for political, economic or social reasons, then they might just be cynical. Or even worse, realistic!
You mean all those models that rely on the concept of back-radiation, which is a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? Those models?
"Back-radiation"? Are you saying that Earth doesn't radiate heat? Or that Earth's atmosphere doesn't radiate downward?
Or does this have to do with spreading back hair? *shudder*
The *ONLY* way you can get a 100% match with a false positive with a legitimate DNA test is if the subject has an identical sibling.
Too bad they don't do a 100% test. I've never heard of any law enforcement organization even trying to do complete genome sequencing, and I'm not sure if that would do any good since any real-world sample of evidence is going to have at least some kind of contamination.
Action and deviation is exactly the same.
I've repeatedly explained that I'm trying to make a distinction that is different than what you call normalcy/deviation. The entirety of your counterargument is that despite my protests, and with nothing but your own assumptions to support the idea, that I am not making a distinction that is different.
Best of luck to you.
I see the entirety of action/deviation:inaction/normalcy as the exact same. I simply do not see them as separate points.
Exactly! An analogy: you divide people into tall and short, which is a perfectly good way to categorize and might be valid for, say, amusement part rides. But since the topic is legal responsibility, I think age is more appropriate. Of course when you replace 'age' with 'height' (because you think they're not just related, but identical) then my argument becomes absurd.
But if you are in the business or are selling a coat and that someone has otherwise the ability to meet your requirements, in that case, not selling is action/deviation.
I agree that previous actions set up a pattern of behavior, and sometimes only changes in behavior are important, so normalcy and deviation are a good division for some purposes. But for other purposes (whether my inventory is different, or the ownership of things has changed, or I've agreed to something) we probably should use a different division which we might call action (or activity, or 'doing something'). And when we're dealing with that division, history is irrelevant.
If you are selling coats and refuse to sell to someone for whatever reason, it is about the same as stealing the coat.
I could go on about how this is a gross misrepresentation of estoppel, or an attitude of entitlement, but I'll try my standard liberal counterargument - take out the money and see how well the argument works: Imagine if the last time someone broke up with you that you had gone to court and demanded that they keep having sex with you (or keep buying you nice dinners, or keep helping with that term paper), arguing that they were 'depriving you' of something that they 'owed' to you so long as you kept up your half of the relationship 'bargain'.
You'd never even think of doing something so horrid, would you? And even if you did, you wouldn't expect any first-world court to buy that argument. But why does swapping 'gas' for 'sex' suddenly make the argument valid? The only differences are that one is a personal relationship and one is business, and that one is life-and-death and the other isn't. The first leads down the well-worn path of 'money is so different that is justifies anything', the other leads me to asking for evidence before I support sending people to prison.
I've made my case extremely well
You've done a decent job of presenting the basics, and I do understand the argument you're making. On the other hand, you have no clue about my argument, because you systematically misinterpret what I've written, and that's why you haven't been able to attack it properly.
I believe that action/inaction is the proper dividing line, and you believe that it should be normalcy/deviation. Those are two perfectly reasonable point of view, and we could have a good discussion about it. But you simply refuse to acknowledge that I'm even making that particular argument, and instead assume I'm saying something completely different.
If you really want to keep doing this, please just answer one question: Is refusing to sell your coat to someone morally different from stealing their coat?
Keeping your profits as normal is not doing anything
Breathing normally is not doing anything? Not just metaphorically, not just "nothing unusual", but literally nothing at all, even though you have to keep doing it?
But as I pointed out before, the language is irrelevant - swap "action/inaction" with "exchange/not exchange" or "type A activities/type B activities" if you like. No wordplay will get you escape the fact that refusing to sell your coat to someone is morally quite different from stealing their coat, no matter how similar the result is for the other person, or what situational factors lead to your decision, including price.
So then you were just talking shit when you said
I can't begin to understand your level of obtuseness. We live in a free society, legality is presumed. This means the supporters of a law prohibiting something (not those in favor of repealing a law) have the obligation to present a case for that prohibition, including evidence of the likely difference that law makes or will make. What the law is currently, what other people believe, and what authorities support are all irrelevant to a discussion of what the law should be.
Keeping your profits as normal is not doing anything, raising them to take advantage of the victims of an emergency so you can preserve hoarding is doing something.
If I take a drink, or breathe, or sell something, those are actions. If I don't take a drink, or don't breathe, or don't sell, then I've chosen not to take an action. I know the English language muddles this up a bit, but when an alcoholic "stops drinking", that's not actually an action. It may involve making a choice, it may involve willpower, but "not pouring a drink" is not an "action" the way I've been using the word (and the way the legal system uses the word in this context). By this usage "keeping profits normal" is continuing to act - you're going to keep selling something, right? And "hoarding" what they already own is not acting, it's essentially the same situation you'd have if they'd left the area before the storm.
If you use a looser definition, even dead people are taking lots of actions - skipping work, standing up dates, being delinquent with their bills, letting the lawn get overgrown, neglecting their pets, dodging taxes and jury duty, and their dieting like you wouldn't believe! But even if you don't like the language, I think it's clear that a dead person being rude by ignoring you is a different kind of action that the same corpse attacking you and trying to eat your brain.
Why don't you prove it did happen to support your assertions?
Because in a free society everything is presumed to be legal. If we're going to disrupt lives even more and spend money on courts and prisons because of a law you suggest, you're the one who has to make the case.
I'm not sure what your point is. I said thing you do and you list how things someone does not do. You are proving my point but then seem to get confused- at least you confused me on your attempt.
You might want to read them again. All of the things on the left are actions that cause harm and are often illegal, while the ones on the right are not actions and are almost never illegal, and that includes the subject at hand - "not selling at a low price". I really don't know how to make the distinction more explicit.
The justification for this should be clear from the first example - "Slaughtering children is different than not donating your bottom dollar to charity." If not acting to save someone can in all cases be considered a crime, then we are all guilty. That's why outside of a certain limited set of situations (parents and their children, guards and their prisoners, doctors and their patients, in some areas calling 911 for an ambulance or reporting violent crimes) refraining from acting is almost never a crime, even if it seems heartless. You expect the possibility of legal problems if you steal a candy bar from a major business, even if the loss is trivial to them, but do you expect jail time for not giving a homeless man your coat, even if it kills him? I don't think so.
by locking the resources out of the reach of certain people ... you are essentially causing someone to be harmed
Are gas station owners who lock up their shops before fleeing a disaster even more evil? If someone is harmed when they can't afford $15 gas aren't they harmed just as much by not being able to purchase it at any price?
To date, no one has demonstrated that anyone has went without or will run out. ... But with gouging, we know for certain someone would be priced out.
You're willing to make those assumptions, but I want supporting evidence (since I want a solid case to be made before declaring something to be criminal).
If someone dies because of something you did, the law says its on you.
Slaughtering children is different than not donating your bottom dollar to charity.
Taking a man's coat is different than not selling them one.
Assaulting someone is different than not stopping an assault.
Driving drunk is different than not forcing someone into AA.
Firing a gun is different than not taking the gun away.
Stealing gas is different than not selling at a low price.
--Do you have solid evidence that gouging not only kills people, but that it kills more people than your plan?
I don't need evidence of that. You take the blame when it is done on your behalf by gouging and locking the necessary resources out.
You seem to think that, given the choice between preventing one murder and saving two people from accidental death, that we should favor preventing the murder because someone will "have blood on their hands". I believe that we should attempt to prevent as many deaths as possible, regardless of the circumstances of those deaths or our feelings toward the people involved. Until one of us changes the other's mind I think we're going to have to agree to disagree.
When FEMA is operating and the government is cooperating, low prices will not result in shortages, it will result in resupplies eventually and everyone will live.
If resupply is imminent, how much damage will a very brief spike in prices do, especially since most places won't raise prices in order to keep customer good will?
If you inflate the prices for profit, you are picking and choosing who lives and who dies
And if you leave prices the same and run out because of that, you are picking and choosing who lives and who dies, just based on time rather than money.
If people die because of greed and an attempt to exploit the victims of a situation for absurd profit, it is another.
Agreed! Do you have solid evidence that gouging not only kills people, but that it kills more people than your plan?
Actually, arresting and prosecuting people who gouge others is something that can be done about it.
Sure. We can also reduce pollution by banning cars.
we expect heads to roll when a company poisons the ground water or illegally dumps toxic waste in your back yard.
Did you just compare not selling something at a price that you like to poisoning someone? What about people who don't want to sell at all?
"Ah, the authoritarian mindset..". You see, it's everyone's mindset. :)
But is that a good thing? And can you fix that problem by banning it?
You've done a halfway decent job defending the immorality of gouging and have taken a stab at a legal justification, but that has nothing to do with the argument I'm making. I'm suggesting that gouging bad, but banning it may be worse. No argument you make about the evils of gouging will change my mind, because I already agree with it. To persuade me that a ban would be justified, you have to show how the alternative is likely to be better, using an economic argument first to detail the consequences, (good and bad, intended and unintended), and only after we agree on that can we discuss morality.
If you think a drug kills 1 person and saves 10, while I think it kills 10 and saves 1, telling me that death is bad is pointless. Showing me some drug trials would be much more useful.
It's the principle of making the customer pay for this after the fact. If the game requires authenticators to use its features, it should come in the box.
I'm billing Ford for my gas, oil changes, and regular maintainance. I'm also suing because the advertisements showed an attractive woman in the car, and mine didn't come with one - I had to buy one separately from some "RussianBride" company. What a rip-off!
should be available at 1/5th the price
Is that morally desirable, yes. Is is possible, I would disagree. I think that we will either have a higher price, or it will become unavailable.
From my perspective this is like one of those Intro to Ethics questions where you have a situation in which you must choose who will live and who will die, and your answer is "none". That's a perfectly good answer, but only if you can find a flaw in the assumptions made about the situation. You aren't going to eliminate all disasters or change human nature, and I don't think you can wish away the rule that "caps on prices generally lead to shortages" no matter how justified your moral outrage.
You cannot look at it any other way because you cannot get around that fact.
I can see it a different way because I continue to think carefully after accepting that fact. You see something that you don't like, and assume that a ban is appropriate. I see the same thing and don't like it, but also accept that there may not be much anyone can do about it that won't make things even worse.
Yep, spoken just like the democrats and republicans all across the country. ... Face it, it is the world we live in and you really have no reason to be upset just because you just now realized it.
I have no idea what you're talking about here. Was this meant for someone else?
This is not some mental exercise in supply and demand economics.
Supply and demand doesn't go away when you don't like the results, just like gravity and physical attractiveness.
There were physical breaks in the supply line. Trickle down economics doesn't overcome a tree blocking the road.
This has nothing to do with "trickle down", this is basic supply and demand. At $3.50/gal it's worth sending a truck out, at $10 a gallon it's worth it to send a crew out to clear streets, a better truck to take the back roads, pay people to find alternate routes, drive longer distances to avoid trouble spots, ... and from the other end people use it more carefully.
What you describe, the extra cost of delivering supplies is NOT price gouging.
So YOU get to judge everything - we can charge for extra miles but not overtime, extra workers but not to pay for the winch because we "already had it"? Why don't we let the customers decide what counts as gouging?
Many, many people helped out just to be noble. These people are really the best of society. They should be honored, emulated. ... It's shameful that you think profit should be the motivating factor behind disaster recovery.
But why not use both, e.g. charity for the worst off and normal econ for the rest? That's what we do everywhere else, most make their own eating decisions based on their budget and the truly bad off get food stamps. I let me neighbor borrow my car because she can't afford one, but demanding that GM or Ford only sell cars that we both can afford would be absurd. That kind of thinking leads to millionaires getting Social Security checks.
You should be ashamed.
You think that using both empathy and reason in tandem to solve problems is shameful?
That is why they think they can charge $15 more- because people are in dire need.
No, they think they can charge that much because people are still buying it at that price.
But why should they expect retailers to do something? Because no one has a right to open shop in any city.
Ah, the authoritarian mindset...
Thanks, but that is rather high praise for such little insight. This is pretty basic projection: she strongly believes in converting people, so she assumes the same thing of you, even if you say otherwise.
One possibility is that if you're going undermine his church instruction afterward, her best bet is to keep you from knowing about it, which includes teaching her grandson to keep his religion from his parents.
On the other hand, it could be that she's afraid that you'll eventually think 'enough is enough, no more of this nonsense', and the two of you (or you and your son) will have a conflict, and she wants to avoid that.
Unfortunately, she sees this as a war with no neutral position. As long as it seems harmless your best bet might be to just laugh it off.
Next up, the government collects all emails sent by anyone in the search for evidence of jury members discussing this case.
No. Next they can subpena your email if they have a reasonable suspicion that they contain evidence of a crime.
Just like they can with your home, mail, fingerprints, DNA and bank accounts.
This is known as a fishing expedition...
No, this is a normal search for evidence. They have reason to believe that a specific crime was committed, and this information is pertinent to their investigation.
Next up, the government collects all emails sent by anyone in the search for evidence of crimes.
Not really the same thing.