Price Gouging, Wetlands, and The Insanity of Thomas Sowell (aka Right Wing Nutjob) Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 posted originally to The Brouhaha http://www.brouhaha.blog-city.com I'm an avid reader of Thomas Sowell. I think it's because, deep down, I'm really a raging masochist. For those of you who don't know Sowell, he's a columnist, an author, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and a right-wing nut-job. Not necessarily in that order. A column by Sowell appeared in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette entitled "'Price Gouging' in Florida." Knowing Sowell's love for laissez-faire policies, I figured he'd be sticking it to those whining consumers who didn't like the fact that people were jacking up prices in the wake of Hurricanes Ivan, Frances, and Charlie. He didn't disappoint. Sowell says that "'price gouging' is one of those emotionally powerful but economically meaningless expressions that most economists pay no attention to, because it seems too confused to bother with." Too confused to bother with? The same might be said for most of what Mr. Sowell writes, but that's beside the point. Sowell goes on to point out that price controls short-circuit the beloved "supply and demand" system that capitalism is built on. He's got a point. Price controls DO short-circuit supply and demand. But in the face of emergencies, price controls keep unscrupulous business owners from trying to stick it to the population. Sowell's example is a hotel that normally charged $40 dollars a room upping their prices to $109 a night. He thinks this is great, because "at higher prices, a family that might have rented one room for the parents and another for the children will now double up in just one room because of the "exorbitant" prices. That leaves another room for someone else." He goes on to say that higher prices might make someone whose home was "damaged, but not destroyed" stay home so that there would be more rooms for someone "whose home was damaged worse or destroyed." Admirable sentiments. But what about that person whose home was destroyed who could afford a $40 dollar hotel room but not a $109 hotel room? It's the typical right-wing response -- it's ok for prices to go up even though wages didn't. I mean, did the hotel up the pay for its staff accordingly with their room price hikes? Doubtful. This is strictly raising prices to raise profit margins -- taking advantage of people in a situation beyond their control. And our family that could afford a $40 hotel room but not a $109 one? Let's give them the typical right-wing response: "Let them eat cake" or in other words "Fuck off." Sowell ends by saying that "price controls will not cause new supplies to be rushed in nearly as fast as higher prices will." I'm not sure what the price of something has to do with the speed of the truck that brings it, but I do know that around where I live, if a store jacks its prices up during an emergency -- people remember that after the emergency is over. There are several gas stations in my area that are no longer in business because they price-gouged after 9/11. The lesson here is: be careful about making short term profits -- because you might have to live on them long-term when we quit shopping at your price-gouging establishment. Sowell wrote another column a few weeks ago about the way liberals have changed the language. My favorite example was his saying that liberals have turned "swamps," which in his opinion are dirty, stinky places full of snakes, into "wetlands," which are useless habitats that dummy liberals want to preserve. Sowell doesn't realize (or doesn't want his readers to realize more likely), that these "swamps" are nature's filtration system. Why do the swamps sometimes smell bad, Mr. Sowell? Because all the pollution (natural or man-made) from up stream is draining into the wetlands to be processed and cleaned away by good ol' Mother Nature. He might not find a use for them (I think he wants to pave the swamps and build strip malls), but the environment which gives us oxygen, food, and water certainly has a use for these wetlands. Sowell is a typical right-winger. The type that thinks trees have no value unless they're cut into planks and boards. The type that thinks rivers only have a use when they're used to turn hydro-electric turbines. The kind who ignores the science of global warming but supports the teaching of creationism. The kind who thinks that life begins at conception, but doesn't support helping the mothers of those children who are born under-privileged. Hell, Sowell wouldn't even want to say "under-privileged." He'd probably just say "stupid, lazy, and good for nothing." Link