Russ Roberts’s EconTalk is a wonderful thing, I have been listening to it on and off for a few years now. One of the great things about it is that despite being a libertarian, Roberts is always happy to expose himself to new ideas and challenge his assumptions.
I have recently taken to listening to some of the earlier episodes and found myself listening to what happens when you have price gouging laws – or “anti-supply” laws as I prefer to call them.
His interviewee, Mike Munger, explained how there was a hurricane in Raleigh, North Carolina. The roads were blocked, there was no electricity and there was a shortage of ice.
Ice may not sound that important but it is. Not only does it help to preserve food but it also helps to preserve some medicines like, for instance, the insulin needed by diabetics.
Some “yahoos” – Munger’s term – saw an opportunity to make money. They got themselves a truck, loaded it with ice and some chainsaws and proceeded to drive towards the centre of Raleigh. If they found the road in front of them blocked they chopped up the fallen trees and carried on.
When they got to the centre of town they started selling the ice. Usually, ice sold for $2 a bag. They were selling it for $12. Very soon a queue appeared. Then the police arrived. Citing price-gouging laws they arrested the men and impounded the truck.
And here’s the kicker: as the truck was towed away the people in the queue applauded the police.
So, here we have an example where the gap between cause – the price gouging laws – and effect – the lack of supply – is instantaneous. And yet people still support the law.
Words fail me.
Agreed Patrick.
It reminds me of Ayn Rand’s example (in “Atlas Shrugged”) of a group of people being killed in a train accident.
Rand goes into the beliefs of some of the people killed and shows how their collectivist beliefs led to the policies that led to their own deaths.
This is falsely interpreted (by the left) as Rand wanting these people (fictional people in this example – thought experiment) to die, but she did not want people to die.
Rand (like so many others) was trying to WARN people – but most people are too brainwashed to see the warning.
Like the people clapping as the police tow away the truck containing the live saving ice.
People get ice – they drive to the disaster hit town, cutting up trees (and so on) blocking their way.
And this is how they are treated.
The message is very plain.
DO NOT BOTHER.
The population (with their support for “anti gouching laws” and so on) get the government they asked for.
They support the policies that will lead to their own death.
Question: What happened to the ice? If the police had towed the truck away without unloading the unsold ice this story would be even more perfect.
Presumably the ice then melted in the police impound lot.
Correct.
“Presumably the ice then melted in the police impound lot.” Not likely.
Two bags were tagged as evidence and went into the squad room refrigerator.
Two more bags went into the squad room refrigerator (There would have been more but the refrigerator now had no more room).
The remaining bags went home with officers as they went off shift.
And to all the people who applauded, hopefully their food rotted and their medicines went bad.
Looks like human beings are not profit maximizing machines, as economic science predicts. Whose fault is it?
Dear Mr Crozier
Plainly the good folk of Raleigh didn’t take too kindly to their roads being cleared either.
DP
The stupid, it runs so deep.
Here in Michigan, I heard two stories on our local NPR affiliate the other day.
One, about an outage at a BP refinery in northern Indiana which is causing a crimp in the supply of gasoline to southern Michigan. The price of regular unleaded has gone up about 50¢ in a week as a result, And sure enough, the economically-iliterate are lobbying the hell out of the state AG, demanding that he ‘do something’ about this ‘gouging’.
Two, there is a pipeline running under the Straits of Mackinac which carries finished petroleum products to the UP of Michigan and adjacent parts of Canada. Because this pipeline is owned and operated by a company which had a pipeline failure a few years and 500 miles away, the same economic illiterates are demanding that the state close the pipeline immediately. I wonder why they hate the Yoopers so much that they want to increase the price they pay for gasoline and heating oil to Hawaii levels?
You can see the stupid everywhere you look. From restaurant wages in Seattle to Free college for Everyone!, every day there’s a new example every day of how people can be bludgeoned over the head by the basic rules of economics, yet they pop right back up like one of those Russian dolls and demand some more of the same. Money for Nothing, and their Chicks for Free.
I’m quite sure Richard Quigley is right, and a lot of that ice ended up in the coolers of the police, firemen and their favored friends. You have to hope that some old-time shift commander told them to haul it on over to the hospital or the senior center, but I doubt it.
llater,
llamas
It’s better that there be no ice, than that ice cost “too much”, is the revealed preference.
Nevermind that letting people bring in ice and sell it without being arrested would lead to … competition and more ice and lower prices still.
Isn’t this a case of altruistic punishment on the part of those applauding? There may well have been a perception that $12 was an “unfair” price… there’s enough evidence isn’t there that people are quite prepared to act contrary to their own interests when they believe they have been cheated.
Not that I support having a law to prevent gouging. But I definitely can see why people would queue up for overpriced ice, then also be glad to see those selling it suffer… more about human nature than economics or rationality…
Sigivald wrote:
‘It’s better that there be no ice, than that ice cost “too much”, is the revealed preference.’
WADR, I think it goes much deeper than that. I think it’s a lot more like ‘Why should that SOB be able to buy ice when I can’t afford to? I’ll happily go without ice (I can’t afford it anyway) if it means he has to go without as well.’ It’s dressed up as fairness, but it’s just equal parts envy and malice, dressed up to go to meeting.
As I heard at first-hand in my dealings with evacuees from Hurricane Katrina, the veneer of civilization and tolerance is very thin sometimes, and civilization breaks down very quickly indeed. The Lord of the Flies makes us shudder precisely because we know that when the chips are down, things can get that way very quickly.
llater,
llamas
My son is a Type I diabetic, and I would pay $1,000 for the ice we would need to ensure his survival. I am positive that none of the people applauding were waiting to supply their loved ones’ medical needs; most probably queued up because they thought they were getting something “free” – and thereby imperiled the ones in real need. Bastards…I’m sure they captured the whole incident on their Obamaphones, though.
Self-interest is evil – everyone knows that!
Steve, I can buy that. When the shoe is pinching your own foot….
Although thought patterns can be mighty hard to change. “I shouldn’t have X even though I need it very much, because somebody out there undoubtedly needs it more than I do” really does exist in some people’s heads. Probably in most of our heads, even mine. (Maybe.) The question is, how great must a person’s own need be, as perceived by him and judged by him, in order for this idea to break down?
Also, I think that most of us do have some basic notion of “a fair share,” which is one of the factors determining what we’re willing to take and at what price. I am a hoarder for sure, but I am also well-trained not to take the last of the dish without asking first if anyone else wants it. And along the same lines, one does not make a pig of oneself in public (in any sense). It simply Is Not Done.
(As a matter of fact, IIRC it was not even done in A.S. I forget the details, sorry.)
“To walk by that poor devil who fell through the ice and is drowning in the middle of the lake would be murder. I must try to save him.”
They do exist. I’d have a hard time living with myself if, in a case like that, I walked on by…and I’m about the last person who could do any good by trying, except by a fluke.
Here is a question. In one of her books, Laura Ingalls Wilder (of The Little House on the Prairie) tells a story* about her future husband, Almanzo Wilder.
At the time he was a young man of 18 or 19, if I remember. They were living in a town in S. Dakota, which was served by a railroad and trains bringing in supplies including food on a regular basis, perhaps weekly? I forget.
The winter of 1880-1881 was horrible for that town. The temperatures dropped through the floor and there were ongoing blizzards, to the point that the trains could not get through. Finally there was no food left.
It was known, or believed, that two brothers living about 20 miles (IIRC) from the town did have some stores of flour “hoarded,” enough at least to see them through the winter; enough and to spare, perhaps, if they tightened their belts. In any case, people were desperate and in serious danger of starving.
Despite the nearly constant blizzards, the young Almanzo and a friend of his set out to the brothers’ house to see if they could get some of the flour. They did manage to get there. The men were unwilling to part with their flour, which was, after all, theirs. (Whether the product of their own farming or purchased, I don’t know.) One way or another, Almanzo & pal got the flour. I wish I could recall offhand whether they actually tore into the walls where it was hidden themselves, or just threatened/shamed the men into giving it up, or even bargained for it–although if it were the latter, I’d think I’d have remembered. I know that as an anti-socialist, I found it ethically questionable at the time I read the story. Sometime in my late 30’s or early 40’s, I suppose. (I like decent children’s books.)
Miraculously they made it back to De Smet, with enough flour to keep the people going for at least a little while. They took it to the local general store.
The storekeeper wanted to sell it at a higher price than usual. But Almanzo told him that that would not be right, and one way or another persuaded him not to do so but rather to sell at the usual price.
Discuss, if interested.
. . .
*I’m not quite sure whether she told this story in her Little House book The Long Winter or in her biography of her husband, the title of which I forget.
Julie, seems like a perfect description of the “village mentality” – which is why most of us prefer to live in cities!
This is one of my favorite examples of economic stupidity. The entire idea of “price gouging” is stupid – the price of goods varies as conditions change. If you’re willing to buy a bag of ice for $12, then that’s a fair price.
So, in that village, nobody had bothered to store up for the future, and they picked on those who had. I remember a Muppet Show skit, with Sam the American Eagle reading a moralistic tale about smart ants saving for the future, whilst a grasshopper lived just for the day. When winter came, the ants hadn’t saved enough, and froze, whilst the grasshopper drove his sportscar to Florida. Then the eagle looked startled, stopped reading, and stormed off to complain to someone.
NickG, that’s flatly untrue. These people were pioneers, used to trying to farm in a very unsuitable and unfriendly environment, accustomed to being self-reliant and self-responsible, and also of course to helping each other when cooperation would benefit each in his own view; and you better believe they were thrifty and hardworking, and had plenty enough common sense to store up against times of shortages.
The winter in question was one of those 50- or hundred-year events. In The Long Winter Mrs. Wilder tells about how the members of her own family spent nearly every waking hour twisting lengths of hay together to make something structurally sound enough to burn for a little bit of heat. It was not the sort of thing that happened every other year, or every five or ten years.
To make judgments like that on people in such conditions is the height of arrogance.
We have our Infrastructure to make our lives cushy and soft. Who, other than practicing Mormons and a few “nutty survivalists,” has enough provender–including drinking water and medicine–to see him through a really serious grid failure, the results of a serious EMP, or a war?
. . .
“The Village Mentality.” The village mentality was that they helped each other as best they could, which was little enough given that you took your life in your hands if you so much as went outside during one of those blizzards, since the snowfall was so fast that you would get lost in the whiteout, two yards from the house.
The village mentality was that young Mr. Wilder took the flour to the storekeeper to sell, and still at a profit, although he himself could have simply doled it out for free. Come to think of it, possibly they even paid the brothers for it the following summer–I can’t remember about that, if she told us, but Paying Back was part of the culture in those days, so I’ll bet they did, or did something else to try to make restitution.
The Village Mentality was such that the storekeeper was able to sell the flour and make his profit even though he had no part in the decision or in taking the tremendous risk and doing the work involved in getting the flour to make it available to the public. He had done precisely nothing to earn a higher profit than usual on the flour. In fact, he’d done nothing to earn ANY profit on the flour.
The more I think of it, this is a situation where the facts on the ground really did present a moral dilemma. You will note that the boys did not take ALL the men’s flour. They tried to leave enough for the owners to get by on, and to take enough so that the village wouldn’t starve.
This sort of situation has been covered by quite a few people over the years. Miss R. herself wrote that a starving man may take a tomato from someone’s garden without permission, provided that he comes by the next day to own up to what he did and make arrangements to pay for it with work or by other means, if not in money; and that he accept the owner’s punishment should the latter wish to give it.
It’s another form of Natalie’s “Thinking Aloud on a Mountainside,” if I remember the title correctly. In which several of us came to the same conclusion: do the wrong thing, get the stranger to help our friend or loved one who would otherwise die on the mountainside, but understand that our act was unjust, and that if the stranger wants to exact retribution that is his right.
Juile, that was exactly what I was hoping to hear for the end of that story by Mrs. R. – do you happen to remember her relating anything like that at all?
There is a writeup of the Great Blizzard of 1880-1881 in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. It gives a good, if brief, description of what the situation in De Smet (pop. 80) was that winter. Persons who fault the inhabitants for shortsightedness at that time and in that place would do well to read it.
According to the writeup, the storekeeper had paid for the wheat. That is surely not the way I remember it, but it’s possible I remember wrong.
The article also says the shopkeeper, out of “greed,” tried price-gouging.
http://www.startribune.com/the-long-hungry-winter-of-laura-ingalls-wilder/244068281/
Note this also, from a brief column in the Rapid City (S.D.) Journal:
Oh–Who’s Barbara Boustead?
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/meteorologist-says-ingalls-wilder-got-little-house-winter-right/article_e0b1d868-d682-11e0-848a-001cc4c03286.html
Alisa, do you mean the Laura Ingalls Wilder story? If so, I don’t remember. Sigh…a right hole I’ve dug for myself. I suppose now I’ve got to hunt up the dratted book, which must be around here somewhere, and see just how she does tell it.
I hope that the young men (and actually the whole town!) did try to make it right, if per the book the storekeeper hadn’t sent payment with them. As I said above, I tend to think they probably did, but if Mrs. Wilder doesn’t tell us, then until I get Upstairs (where I’m sure to go, of course) and can consult her, I won’t know.
This aspect of economics can be understood by watching a group of crabs try to escape from a bucket.
Julie, you mean they hadn’t planned for a 50 or 100 year exceptional winter? What short-sightedness! Had they never heard of the year eighteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death? Couldn’t they have tricked the Indians into revealing all the local lore about weather cycles before taking all the best pieces of real estate? That’s what we did here in Australia!
Yes Julie, I meant her – why on earth did I pull Mrs. Rand into it I have no idea. In any case, I probably should read the book myself some time, it sounds interesting.
Alas, Nick, I’m afraid you’ve got it. In those days I suppose their spectacles weren’t as good as ours. And going by Messrs. Mann, Jones, Schmidt, and them, maybe today’s aren’t that great either. 😉
Um, I expect I flew off the handle mistakenly. I apologize. :>(
. . .
Alisa, I found the whole series interesting, especially after the first one, although the books didn’t sing to me the way some others have. (In particular there’s a series by woman from my neck of the woods about a young lady, Jennifer, who lived not far from my Naperville home I think, on a farm–seven acres is a FARM???11!–around 1910 I suppose. I fell in love with those as an 8-year old and love them still. But they’re fiction.)
Anyway, the book in question is on the dark-and-depressing side, but yes, it is interesting, and for an adult it’s not going take years to read.
By the way–in U.S. libertarian circles, as you may know, there are three famous ladies who are supposedly the positive standard-bearers of early-20th-century libertarianism: Isabel Paterson, of course Miss R., and Rose Wilder Lane. Mrs. Lane was Laura Ingalls Wilder’s daughter, and a reporter. She died in her sleep, they say, on the night before she was due to board the plane that would take her to Viet Nam to cover the war there. She was in her 70’s or 80’s, forget which. Heh…she also contributed columns and recipes to Woman’s Day Magazine. Pretty good, too!
Just for completeness, the other Famous Libertarian Lady from America is Joan Kennedy Taylor, but I don’t know much about her.
And I have another question- didn’t that storekeeper get the flour for nothing, so any price could be considered as extortion? Sounds like a whole round of robberies and/or extortions going on there!
Oh, my. I really am going to have to hunt up the darned book. After I clean the garage. :>)
Amen to that.
I live in a village. People have helped me out even though I’m a stupid foreigner who can’t even speak the language. So, less with the broad brush please.
Hmm. A lot depends on context.
Situation One: the ice-men smirk as they sell each bag, annoying people by gloating that they are charging $12 per bag and effectively taking fleeting advantage of the customers’ misfortune (“We’ll rip you off while we can, then vanish!”)
Situation Two: the ice-men announce to the crowd that they incurred heavy costs cutting their way to bring the ice, so they have to charge a high price to cover that, but thereafter they’ll bring down the price to something more manageable (“We want a good relation with you folks!”)
The reactions of the customers naturally will be very different? In other words, what looks like ‘gouging’ as a point in time might look very differently as seen as part of a process. Modern laws responding to shrieks to ‘do something’ from the supposed ‘public’ find this very hard to grasp.
The Atlas Shrugged example above is apposite. The whole point of the train-crash episode is to show that bad attitudes tend to have bad outcomes: http://charlescrawford.biz/2012/10/11/ayn-rand-turd-literature-or-something-else/
‘One of the great things about it is that despite being a libertarian, Roberts is always happy to expose himself to new ideas and challenge his assumptions.’
Surely you mean ‘because’, not ‘despite’?
And so what if it is ‘gouging’? Even if the ice-men had somehow acquired their ice and situation by luck and not hard work, why should they part with it for less than they could?
Anyway, I like the story for two reasons: it shows the invisible hand in motion (ice-men respond to incentives, so helping others as they help themselves), and provides an example of government failure. Two good arguments for limited government.
Anyway, if you price your wares too low, demand will outstrip supply. Which means the people who get the goods are the ones who can run fastest or are lucky enough to be nearby. That doesn’t sound “fair” either.
Let me correct the title for you:
People are ignorant
It is a bizarre and twisted example of the government infantalizing the population.
The solution to price gouging is simple — if you think you are being price gouged, don’t buy it.
Price gouging is an unalloyed blessing when it is private and entrepreneurial in nature.
If you define price gouging to mean “taking advantage of adversity and grossly restricted supply to fulfill people’s needs at prices much higher than would be expected without those restrictions” then the medical industry is a perfect example of out of control price gouging that is caused by the way the government interferes with the market. There are many examples that I could cite where medical prices are ten or one hundred times higher than you would expect were it not for all those manipulations, rent seeking and control produced by the government in America’s so call free market healthcare system. For example, a vet performing an operation on a large dog (with the same body size and complexity as a small human) will typically charge 1% of what the equivalent procedure would cost on a human even though they are doing basically the same thing.
I remember reading a news article, which I have subsequently lost (if anyone has a link I’d appreciate it) about a hospital in New Orleans during Katrina. They bought seven container loads of supplies to prepare for the hurricane. When the hurricane hit FEMA confiscated it all for redistribution. I am sure that is very encouraging for people to suitably prepare for disasters in the future.
@ Fraser Orr – second that.
Bogart the Doberman has a classic ACL tear in his left knee.
So anyone can verify what I say, he is being treated at Oakland Veterinary Referral on Old Telegraph in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan – a tony neighborhood, as anyone who knows it will attest. This is one ritzy facility, it has a full X-ray suite, a CAT scanner (see what I did there?) and does nuclear medicine on cats and dogs, FGS.
Initial consult, including MRI, all labs, all day in the facility and a 30-minute face-to-face with the surgeon – $900.
Surgery – full TPLO with inserts, all surgical services and fees, all medications, and a night in a hospital I’d sleep in – Not To Exceed $2850.
Same surgery on a human at a comparable facility – between $30 and $40K.
So the 1% figure doesn’t quite hold up, but 10% is certainly a good round number.
Bogart’s surgeon drives a Porsche every bit as nice as his human-surgery counterpart. I’ll wager that his fee for the surgery – what actually goes in his check at the end of the month – is not so very different than what the human surgeon gets. The rest of the difference is all the 101 things that get peanut-buttered onto the bill, from the EMR mandate to the diversity-training sessions, and all more-or-less mandated by government fiat.
There’s another thing – the next time I get myself a really good laceration, screw the Urgent Care, I’m going to my vet.
a) she’ll see me in 15 minutes
b) she’ll give me really good drugs to make it stop hurting
c) she’ll sew me up with a really fine needle and lots and lots of little tiny stitches, so that the scar is minimal and healing is quick.
d) she’ll take cash, maybe a couple hundred $$
If I go to my local MegaMedical Urgent Care
a) I’ll sit around bleeding for 3 hours
b) they’ll give me pain medication with an eye-dropper
c) they’ll staple me together with a staple gun and the wound will look like they were closing a cadaver after autopsy
d) I’ll have to pay many hundreds of $$ out-of-pocket, over and above the extortionate insurance premiums I already pay.
And, of course,
e) they’ll screw up the billing and it will take 6 letters, 23 phone calls and 3 months to straighten it out.
If I were younger, and smarter, I’d put together a medical Uber app and drive a stake through the heart of the US healthcare system. And, of course, the AMA and the Feds would get together and move H&E to shut me down.
llater,
llamas
One thing that has struck about many of the lefties I know is that while they are exactly the sort of people who would whine and moan about the the ice costing $12 a bag in that sort of scenario, and demand anti-gouging laws, when they get a chance to sell something that’s in demand they’ll jack up the price as much as they can, and feel no guilt about doing so.
Lesson? Don’t be in Raleigh, the next time they have a hurricane.
Charles–good writeup. I left a comment at your site.
llamas, you folks up there around UM have it pretty sweet! My Lucy is supposed to visit the U of Wisc., Madison, next week for a rhinoscopy and initial 1/2-hour consultation and I’m told the charge will be at least $ 1400. Up to $ 2,000 if they decide she needs an MRI.
I have been thinking of Selling Her Body to pay for this, but alas, part of the problem is that there’s less body there than there should be.
(It started out as a sinus infection, I think, but the pathologist now says it’s either a parasite or, less likely, cancer. On the other hand she’s been getting a stronger antibiotic and I think she’s improving. We shall see.)
If anything goes wrong with me, I’ll ask Perry for your address. Your vet sounds pretty good. :>)
Also, Charles, your comment above makes an excellent point. A lot does depend upon presentation. Humans, as we are fond of trying to remind lefties, are not interchangeable automatons with preset reactions. What you get is very often partly determined by what you give, and that works both ways.
Fraser, I have read similar accounts of what happened to the help people were trying to bring into New Orleans after Katrina.
Animal care is cheaper than human care for a number of reasons – one of which is that failure is cheaper. If a vet screws up and the animal dies, what is the hit? Unless it’s a prize bull or race horse, a few thousand dollars – or even nothing. But the cost for failure with a human can be in the millions in malpractice penalties or cost of lifetime care.
Very true, Rich, and a good point. Although I still might take a chance and go to llamas’ vet. ;>)
They do say that the cost of purely elective medical procedures, namely plastic surgery, hasn’t risen as have the costs in the rest of the field. Some people seem to think that this has something to do with governmental non-interference.
@Rich Rostrom
> one of which is that failure is cheaper.
Yes, but part of the problem is that people are not allowed any options to choose what failure risk aversion they have, nor how to insure against that failure risk.
I really think the biggest cause of price gouging in the medical industry (in the USA) is the extremely indirect way people pay for it. I remember for example, one time I was in a hospital for some tests and I got chatting to one of the nurses. I showed me this piece of plastic tubing, 18 inches, that was used to train from a catheter into a bag for urine (thankfully I was not the victim of this device.) It was just a regular tube, non sterile. He told me the hospital billed the patient $30 for this piece of tubing that I could have bought at Home Depot for about ten cents. But if you don’t pay for it and never see the bill nobody complains.
Imagine if during the hurricane the guys with the truck had been selling plastic tube for $30 a yard. They’d string em up from the lamppost.
Indeed, Fraser. When I had a c-section many years ago, after the surgery the nurses kept popping their heads into my room, offering painkillers. It struck me as strange, as it was almost as if they were selling candy or something. A while after we all went back home, we got a copy of the bill the hospital sent to our insurance co. It turned out they charged something like $4 for each 400mg ibuprofen pill.
Here in the States, at least in certain states, if your price is too high, you’re gouging, if your price is too low, you’re preditorially undercutting, and if your price is too similar, you’re monopolizing.
The fun and games of trying to engage in commerce.
Charles Crawford:
I submitted my comment to your piece on A.S. twice, and both times got a yellow box saying it had been received and was awaiting moderation, fine.
But checking back a day or two later, the comment is in the original submission box, waiting for me to click “Submit.” ??? Thought you should know, if you’re following the discussion.
Darin:
On the contrary, this example shows that people are quite keen on maximizing their profit. That’s why some in the crowd were angry. They wanted to use state power to increase their profit (in the form of artificially low ice prices). The lesson here is that not only are people profit maximizers, but also that they will use state power to maximize their profit (to the detriment of others) if we let them.
Just because people behave as market theory predicts they will doesn’t mean they understand what they’re doing. It’s the market that’s rational, not the people.
It occurs to me that there must be an evolutionary explanation for this kind of irrationality. Perhaps our brains — or some of our brains — are still operating in a way that made more sense in pre-agricultural society. To such a person, the ice is just there, like the lucky find of a recently-dead large animal, and the guys in the truck are cashing in on the lucky find. It may be that some people have a hard time seeing past that superficial impression.
Fraser: That cost comparison might be good for an infographic.
Tedd, I like the way you’re thinking. But I think you’ve gone down the wrong tangent.
To me, it seems when you’re operating as a small tribe, you are operating cooperatively (there’s not much other way to survive) and so someone who “cheats” by taking their more than their fair share (one guy might actually kill the animal but others were also chasing, making spearheads etc. I’d imagine the successful hunter gets a bonus though). Suddenly we’re in a bigger society where the tribal structure doesn’t apply in the same way and not over the larger scale for sure (I bet the ice truck guys were working for pretty equal shares for example).
Sorry, missed completing the sentence. by taking more than their fair share would encounter the wrath of the rest of the tribe.
Richard:
I agree. The free market is a way of institutionalizing the basic human sense of fairness so that it will work in a context larger and more complex than a hunter-gatherer tribe. But understanding that requires an abstraction that some people have difficulty with.
I’ve made the assumption that the difficulty some people have understanding the free market has to do with brain function, but I’m sure there’s a strong element of social conditioning at work, too.