Tag Archives: Voluntary Exchange

My Property, My Price, by Laurence M. Vance

Posted on May 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

In a free market there is no such thing as price “gauging,” just transactions undertaken pursuant to voluntary agreement between the parties on price and all the other terms of the transaction. From Laurence M. Vance at lewrockwell.com:

In the midst of an old article about the personalities on the American Pickers television show, I noted this particular sentence for future reference: “One of the criticisms of American Pickers is that they basically rip people off by buying things real cheap so they can sell them for a huge profit.” Buying things cheap and selling them for a huge profit—isn’t that the goal of every American business? If that is not the goal of a business, then why is it in business?

People are applauded by the “sharks” on the show Shark Tank when they say that something costs them x to make and they sell it for y. “Wow, that’s a great margin,” I have heard it said many times.

There are many books and articles that have been written about “retail arbitrage”; that is, purchasing a product from a local retail outlet for a low price and then selling it for a higher price on Amazon, eBay, or Craigslist.

So why does there exist the ridiculous non-crime of price gouging? And why is it a federal offense?

In Puerto Rico, the U.S. Attorney’s Office just charged Tonatiuh Antonio Leal-Matos with “two counts of violating the Defense Production Act (50 U.S.C. § 4512) in relation to price gouging personal protective equipment (“PPE”), face masks and disinfecting wipes, during the COVID-19 national public health emergency.”

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Economy, Governments, Morality, Propaganda

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How to Create Conflict, by Walter E. Williams

Posted on June 12, 2019 | Leave a comment

Governments create win-lose situations; markets create win-win situations. From Walter E. Williams at lewrockwell.com:

We are living in a time of increasing domestic tension. Some of it stems from the presidency of Donald Trump. Another part of it is various advocacy groups on both sides of the political spectrum demanding one cause or another. But nearly totally ignored is how growing government control over our lives, along with the betrayal of constitutional principles, contributes the most to domestic tension. Let’s look at a few examples.

Think about primary and secondary schooling. I think that every parent has the right to decide whether his child will recite a morning prayer in school. Similarly, every parent has the right to decide that his child will not recite a morning prayer. The same can be said about the Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, sex education and other hot-button issues in education. These become contentious issues because schools are owned by the government.

In the case of prayers, there will either be prayers or no prayers in school. It’s a political decision whether prayers will be permitted or not, and parent groups with strong preferences will organize to fight one another. A win for one parent means a loss for another parent. The losing parent will be forced to either concede or muster up private school tuition while continuing to pay taxes for a school for which he has no use. Such a conflict would not arise if education were not government-produced but only government-financed, say through education vouchers. Parents with different preferences could have their wishes fulfilled by enrolling their child in a private school of their choice. Instead of being enemies, parents with different preferences could be friends.

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Posted in Business, Economy, Government

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They Were Ordered to Shoot… by Bill Bonner

Posted on June 21, 2018 | Leave a comment

Does “Just following orders” excuse criminality? From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

“Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” is a line from Jesus of Nazareth.

Typically clever, and almost evasive, it left open the mischievous question – “What is Caesar’s?” – for roughly 2,000 years.

Moral philosophers had been bedeviled for even longer: If you want to do the right thing, can you just obey the authorities… or do you have to figure it out for yourself?

Finally, last week, like Moses coming down from Mount Sinai, legal and biblical scholar, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions – who previously distinguished himself by sponsoring a bill to name September 2016 as “National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month” – handed down the answer.

More on that shortly. But first…

Dry Spell

The Dow was down again yesterday… but only slightly. That makes it the seventh straight day of losses for the index, the worst losing streak in over a year [more in today’s Market Insight].

Where it will go from here, no one knows. But there are good reasons to think that the “top is in.” If so, we’re in for a long dry spell.

If we’re right, U.S. stocks will “underperform” for many years. Readers are advised not to expect to get rich in the stock market, unless they are very lucky or well-advised. Las Vegas is likely to be more rewarding than Wall Street.

We’ll leave it to the technicians and cycle-watchers to make their own case. Here at the Diary, we focus on fundamentals.

Obviously, U.S. finances are worsening. Government deficits are increasing, just as the Fed is putting up interest rates. This is bound to lead to trouble.

But the bigger, or more insidious, problem is Caesar himself; he seems to want more and more things rendered unto him. And our observation is that the more Caesar gets, the less is left for everyone else.

To continue reading: They Were Ordered to Shoot…

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Posted in Crime, Governments, History, Law, Military, Morality, Philosophy, Politics, War

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