The CoronaSphere Lounge Episode 14: Hoarding

The masks are a “much needed resource” as Bill identifies – as such, why did this person have the foresight to purchase them and the ‘experts’ in healthcare did not?

I think part of the problem is Bill’s looking at the situation as a static one. If someone buys all the food in a store, in a free market, two things would happen:
1) The price of the food left in the store would rise. Eventually, it would rise to a point where even the richest of people would have trouble paying for all of it.
2) The increase in the price would signal producers that there’s an incredible unsatisfied demand at that store. They would ship more food to that store, in hopes of capturing some of the money that person wants to spend on food. The result would be that it’s impossible to buy all the food in that store, because there’s more coming in.

Laws against “price gouging” have the effect of destroying the signal that tells people that (a) they need to economize on their purchases (and use) of an item, and (b) that producers need to produce more of that item.

One of the rules of economics is that price ceilings produce shortages. It works every time it’s tried.

Proverbs 11:23 The desire of the righteous ends only in good;
the expectation of the wicked in wrath.
24 One man gives freely, yet grows all the richer;
another withholds what he should give, and only suffers want.
25 A liberal man will be enriched,
and one who waters will himself be watered.
26 The people curse him who holds back grain,
but a blessing is on the head of him who sells it.”

This guy profiteers during a time of dire need. It goes beyond free market. There was scarcity and he withheld what was needed. If one or two people die, who cares because he’ll have made a huge profit. People can wipe themselves with their hands of there is nothing else, they won’t be dying from it.

He’s free to do what he wants, and free to receive a curse for it.

Yes Bill.. it’s wrong, but you either believe in free market/capitalism or you don’t.
It is that simple.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

It’s self-evident to me that hoarding falls under the umbrella of one’s unalienable right of the “pursuit of happiness.” Fortunately for Bill, the government’s usurpation powers of eminent domain in the Fifth Amendment trumps this man’s rights: “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” War profiteering can be risky business if you don’t have inroads into government.

You may well describe the person that bought the masks for the purpose of selling them at a (gross) profit as immoral. But I am loathe to have any government decide what is moral. Be assured that if and when Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and some socialist to be named later that comes to sit in the oval office have their way, they would enforce their own views of morality, just as the ChiComs enforce their own version of morality, and we will be outraged and ready to take up arms. We try to avoid that in this country by having the rule of law. It was not illegal to buy the masks, and take the risk that they could not be sold at a profit, and I don’t think the government should punish someone for making that decision. We will emerge from this eventually, and persons that engaged in “war profiteering” should be shunned (or worse) by polite society at that time – but not by the government.

Right, I have to hang on to the belief that this will sort itself out much like the guy who bought up all the hand sanitizer and ended up having to donate it because no one would deal with them.

If we had not taken the bite out of shame the community would take care of this on a social level. This would probably have prevented the kind of opportunism in the first place. Much like the left tries to make anyone violating their moral standards an outcast I would expect this kind of behavior would result in shunning from most decent people

All who claim that, at some point, it is OK to take the property of others are nothing but thugs, gangsters, and a mob out of control. You simply want what they have and are unwilling to pay for it. This is exactly what any thief or back ally thug would do. You are not morally different.

It is not a violation of your rights for me not to save you from yourself, your lack of foresight, preparation, and hard work. YOU did that to yourself and deserve every bit of suffering it gives you. To save you or not is MY choice and my choice alone.

The individual is paramount. Anything else is slavery. It is the heroic individual that makes the choice. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. Spock The needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many. James T Kirk Both are heroic because it was their choice to make rather than have it forced upon them.

Couple more thoughts here Bill. Trump has stated we will need 300 million masks. 83,000 is 0.02% of that total. Do you think it’s worth marring the Constitution to seize what amounts to be a tiny fraction of the needed amount? Would you personally with your hands be willing to put a gun in this man’s face and seize his property for 2 hundredths of one percent of what you need? Now we have Cuomo talking about seizing the resources of private hospitals for public use and saying “sue us”, how do you feel about that?

A law is an abstract thought, built upon a philosophy, molded by a moral structure. It is introduced by immoral, philosophically perverse power brokers that disdain thought from or within anyone other than their political strategists.
From its beginnings a law is fractured by the imperfections of mankind and his bureaucracies. At best, a great law is a warning and condemnation. At worst, it is the constant master of a state ward.
Christianity examines this in the question of the Law versus grace. Even the perfect law does not remediate man. It merely condemns him when he is not moral enough to live according to its precepts.
A humane law is called weak. A tedious law is called untenable. The Constitution looks more amazing every day.

Minor Point-
With all due respect, the militia (Citizens) owns firearms for a great many reasons. One of those is to respond to threats against life and grave bodily injury.
As a member of the second amendment’s implied militia of all able bodied men, perhaps your bullets DO mean life to others.

I am totally against the government taking anything you rightfully own. Just because someone was vigilant and had the foresight to legally purchase something that now, other people want, does not mean the government has the right to come in and take it. Or even forcefully buy it. This is a slippery slope. Are they going to come in and take your food because they deem it to too much for you? Precedence is now set. Communistic countries take what they want from others. We cannot be like that.

There is no market without life.

There is no life without markets, individual rights, and totally voluntary association. You may stay functionally alive for a while but when the mob decides to take your life, your life isn’t worth burnt toast.

In that case, if you have what the masses merely want, they will take it. I say damn the masses who want and are not willing to trade for it. If my value to them is only what they can take from me by force, the masses have absolutely no value to me. Even if I could save all of their lives by just lifting a finger, I wouldn’t do it.

Voluntary trade to mutual benefit is another matter. If what I have is so valuable to them, let them PAY for it by respecting my rights and compensating me to my satisfaction. Otherwise, to HELL with them!

Bill you are so wrong about this on so many points I can’t list them all.

At what point is it right to sacrifice others simply because you NEED what they have? There is no point. The use of force to TAKE what is not yours simply because you want to, is nothing but theft. It is the initiation of force against another that is totally and completely wrong.

It is totally irrelevant that others need it. If it is his by right, they have no right to it PERIOD! If the claim of EMERGENCY by the so called authorities is just reason to violate the rights of others, there is no such thing as rights. The concept of justice, freedom, and liberty has been canceled along with the foundation of civilization. THIS is what you are advocating. IT IS WRONG under any circumstances!

What if I spent a major portion of my life voluntarily inventing a technology that could be used to save huge number of lives? Is an emergency sufficient reason to TAKE MY LIFE’S WORK against my will right? No it isn’t. This is in fact what I have done. I will burn the technology before I will allow it to be taken by force! If it weren’t for me, it would not exist. I should be compensated for it at MY PRICE by MY voluntary choice or be left alone.

Invent your own damn technology and give it away but don’t take mine. I made it happen by expending my life making it happen. I don’t owe a millisecond of my life to mankind simply because they need it. Why do you think it is right to take over 30 years of my life’s work without so much as a by your leave? You won’t get it by force even if it means the end of human life on earth! Mankind can go to hell for all I care.

You sound like John Galt, and that’s a HUGE compliment from me

I take it as a compliment. Thanks.

Is the amount of profit being made our basis for distinguishing acceptable from wrong in this case? I know Bill asserted that it isn’t about the amount, but if the guy was selling the masks at cost, or at say a modest 5-10% markup, I’m pretty sure he’d be left alone and probably nobody would take issue with what he’s doing. (We’d just call him a retailer.) A 700% markup seems clearly reprehensible to me, yet the idea of the state being able to swoop in and take someone’s property by force still makes me uneasy. As usual, the question that raises seems to be, “Who decides?” The threshold of acceptability evidently lies somewhere between 0% and 700%, but who do we allow the authority to make that judgment and say what is “too much”? I’m trying really hard not to be a dogmatic purist about this, and I have no admiration what this guy is doing, but I can’t help but want to find an underlying principle that should guide us in making such judgments, and that can also help to preserve liberty and sanctity of rights that is too easily lost.

A good question, and a hard one. If we start, for the sake of argument, with 10% and go up 1% at a time I’m not at all sure I know at what point I’d say ‘enough’, if indeed I would. Yet, presented with 700% my gut has no difficulty knowing.

Also, the fact of the confiscation of legally acquired private property is very hard to swallow, like a lot of what’s happening at the moment. The spectacle of police in Derbyshire using drones to film people walking their dogs in the countryside was especially distressing.

I think we need to look at not just the figures, but the effect. Mr 700% was not just making a tidy profit by buying up stuff people want, but effectively denying resources that could save lives, not in theory at some future date in certain circumstances, but now, in the circumstances we are in. If he had asked for an amount that would have meant he did well out of it and the masks could be purchased in good time and put to use, fine, but he did not.

Quite how that that is made into some equation I have no idea.

I’m not at all sure either, and find myself in much the same line of thought. That our governor here in NJ has just asserted the right and intention to engage in the same kind of confiscation brings the question closer to home. I guess I would at least like to know that some attempt was made to persuade this fellow, appeal to his humanity, and reach an agreeable solution through voluntary means before the state resorted to just taking his stuff. Though on reflection I admit that might be a pointless thing to ask if the threat of force is known to be waiting in the wings should the state not get what it wants. This has definitely given me something to think about. I’m glad to see crucial medical supplies getting to where they are needed, but I’m not comfortable with how it was done in this case.

Troy makes a good point. Personally I think the concept of an offer before confiscation is a good one and I’d have thought even Mr 700% and his like would rather get some profit than none. It would be interesting to know if anything remotely like this was done. It is noticeable that some police here have been only too happy to use their new toys, both physical and legal.

I understand and share Bill’s mixed feelings on the issue of the guy with the stockpile of masks. In pure philosophical terms, yup, but reality no. We should not fall into the purist trap that should be the sole domain of leftists.

It reminds me of an exchange at a Libertarian Alliance conference in London back during the early days of the breakup of Yugoslavia. A rather drawn looking young man from the Committee for Free Croatia had given a moving speech on the situation, describing tanks going through villages, battles tearing his country apart, and his hopes for a free and peaceful Croatia. He then took questions. The first was from one of the more absolutist libertarians who asked if the Croatian proto-government had free trade with the Serbs. The young chap gave him the blankest of stares and answered “Yes, in bullets.”

Bill is quite correct, there are limits. We should always be vigilant to the use of emergencies to extend the power and scope of the State, but this should not lead us to ignore our moral instincts and we should not be shy about this.

Quite apart from moral considerations there are real world political reasons. If we on the Right decide to die in a ditch defending the right people like this guy at a highly charged time like this, we’ll lose a huge amount of credibility.

I hope one of the possible good things to come out of this, will to be for people, going forward, to be prepared for the proverbial rainy day. It takes very little to buy a few extra cans, a few extra rolls of toilet paper, a few extra bags of rice, to set aside for such a time as this.

I have a friend who was incensed, because her ex would not take her to the grocery store. She was out of food, and her car was being fixed (one day without her car!) This was way before the China virus, and she didn’t even have supplies set aside for

one day

! I couldn’t believe it! (She also didn’t call me. I would have taken her to the market.) I implored her to go out and stock up a little. She didn’t, and was caught with her pants down for the current situation. So I took her shopping. First time out she bought hardly anything, and said it was because, “You (meaning me) looked like you were in a hurry.” For the record, I was not in a hurry. A week later I took her to BJ’s with me. She bought a bunch of cleaning supplies, but not very much food. So at least she’s taking herself to the store now, but she told me, “I can’t seem to fill my refrigerator the way you do.” I’m through giving advice. Mindset, not money, is her problem.

I have a solution for the mask hoarder. It is an emergency, so I think the government perhaps should be able to commandeer the masks. They could pay him what he paid, plus maybe a ten or twenty percent mark up – NOT seven hundred! After all, it could be argued, that if he hadn’t bought big before this hit, there wouldn’t be those 80,000 masks to commandeer. (They should also leave him a few masks for his own use, if he wants them, because they

are

his property.) But an idea I like better is to give him a promissory note for those masks. When the virus is under control and there is no longer a shortage of supplies, the government will purchase and return them to him. Of course, they won’t be worth the gazzillion dollars they were during the panic, but that would be the price for hoarding and gouging, and may discourage such future behavior.

The free market solves it itself. Yes scalpers were a problem early on, but purchasing limits were enacted and manufacturing continues. I think the government cracking down on it presents a bigger danger than the scalping itself. And this is coming from a guy with forty N95s, not thousands. (The right to self-defense includes defense from viruses.) What happens when the government targets someone who was smart enough to stock up a month’s worth of food? Divide that by thirty people who were too stupid to prepare, and you only have 1 days worth of food. Does the government have the right to take away that individual’s supplies he relies on for survival? I’d say he has the right to defend it by any means necessary. This is why government intervention is a bigger threat. Cut your losses from early scalpers, manufacturing will continue, and stores will use mutually-agreed upon free trade to enact purchasing limits. And in terms of buying up a whole supermarket, that would take so long to load into carts that the manager would be notified and enact purchasing limits long before the buyer would even be able to put a dent in the supplies. Plus, there are lots of things which are morally reprehensible but legal despite most of us having a very strong aversion to it. Does the government start cracking down on adultery now?

Actually, I just thought of a really great idea that would solve a lot of societal problems: Government enforced monogamy for life! (Including enforced waiting until marriage.) The constitution was only intended for a moral and virtuous people after all. And I’m not even being flip about this, I think it would genuinely be a good idea and make society much better.

We already have laws against polygamy, though I don’t know how long that will last unless this situation ( think I’m through calling it a crisis, unless the government decides to go Draconian,) gives the country a big K shift, and we return to a more Christian morality.

Though I think you are speaking more of “’til death do us part.” What the government could and should do, is get rid of this ruinous no fault divorce.

Some things are just for God to deal with. You can’t outlaw mean, and you can’t outlaw stupid.

* I wanted to delete a comment I made twice. This will only let me edit, not delete. May be my computer as it has been acting squirrely.

Luke, you better make a perfect choice the first time! No mistakes allowed!

That’s why you take the time to get to know the person before getting married, obviously.

I think we were pretty close to that until the introduction of no-fault divorce in the 70’s.

Virtue of lack therof, is the reason people step up or get abusive. Bill, your being virtuous yourself is why you have difficulties with this. No society can work without the majority being virtuous.

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