Metrowest Woman Price Gouging And Delivering Toilet Paper On Facebook Yard Sale Pages Shows How Ratchet Human Nature Is At Its Core

I love your work and have as much disdain for ratchets as you do… but this is a good thing. This is some enterprising speculation and provides a very useful social function. This is free market capitalist activity and you, surprisingly and sadly, are on some real liberal socialist type thinking here. Allow me to correct it:

It is no different from, say, a commodities trader who expects a supply shock to the wheat market in the coming months and who buys wheat now while it is plentiful and then holds it off the market until the shock hits to sell when it is more scarce thus fetching a higher price and more profits for him … and also thereby shifting supply from where it is less urgently demanded to where it is more urgently demanded which puts downward pressure on the price when it is needed most. People have more and cheaper wheat than during the wheat shortage than they otherwise would because of the (profit making) speculator.

This is how free markets make best use of scarce resources. price gouging like this is made illegal all the time and further exacerbates the shortages. If the government allows the price of something to rise to reflect actual supply and demand conditions in crisis situations, it unleashes the full power of free market capitalism and provides glaring incentives to every profit-seeking entrepreneur to be like “omg, look at the price of TP… all i have to do if find a way to get TP to people at a lower price than the next guy and I can become rich!!”. This puts downward pressure on the price and increases supply.

if the government makes price gouging illegal, then no one has an incentive to bust their ass to get TP to people who need it.

Our ratchet in question here is performing that much needed social function like the wheat speculator is in the example above.

I’m 60 years old.
A ratchet is a tool in my toolbox.
I’ve never even heard the word used in the context that it’s being used here, but I’m gleaning that it means something along the lines of “hiking up the price”, or “one who hikes up the price ” of something.

So, here’s a girl who through whatever means, got her hands on a bunch of TP and wants to sell it for a small profit.

Now, if she were buying it for $3.99 for a package of 4 rolls at Wal Mart (is that the price that we’ve agreed is probably the real price that she paid for the stuff?), and selling it for $4.99 a package, then I don’t even understand where the idea that she’s “gouging” comes in.
At those rates, she would actually be performing a community service, in my opinion.
Look, if Wal Mart is selling it for $3.99, then any number of mom and pop corner grocery stores across the country would ALSO be selling that very same 4-pack for $4.99 OR MORE. No one’s accusing THEM of doing something untoward.
I have to believe that if any of us needs TP bad enough, then there we’ll be at the mom and pop store, paying $4.99 for it. So, how is it suddenly some big ripoff scam when some girl-turned-entrepeneur decides to go to Wal Mart and buy a hundred packages of the stuff, and then turn around and make 1 BUCK on every package? That’s a hundred bucks over what she paid for the lot, and all the time and phone calls and running around that she might have to do to deal with it.
Hardly a windfall bonanza that I’m going to get my balls in an uproar over…….
If the girl were TRULY GOUGING, and trying to triple the price that she paid to something like $12 or more, THEN I would look upon what she’s doing as a selfish endeavor to “gouge” and rip people off. It’s the matter of whether or not she’s actually doing that (unfairly ripping people off) that’s at stake here.

So, what are the facts in the case that’s being made by her accusors that show that she’s actually gouging or unfairly ratcheting”, or ripping people off and should therefore garner all the disdain–again??…………..