Two days ago, libertarian-leaning Forbes blogger Tim Worstall published a post titled “Hurricane Harvey Is When We Need Price Gouging, Not Laws Against It.” I would link to the story, but Forbes seems to have pulled it after the post received tremendous blowback from people who were outraged by Worstall’s pro-price-gauging post. Luckily, because mistakes live forever on the internet, you can read a cache of the article. Worstall explains why he thinks businesses should be able to raise prices on goods and services when disaster strikes. He suggests that when prices go up during a disaster, the people who need the goods and services the most will get them because they’ll be most willing to pay the inflated prices. And the high prices will encourage others to deliver goods and services to the region in the most efficient manner possible, so they can get a cut of those giant profits. He writes: So these images of a Houston Best Buy selling water for exorbitant sums of money is the kind of “efficient” solution Worstall believes the market provides during a disaster: So a @BestBuy in Houston is price gouging water during this rescue. Holy crap, BB, what is WRONG with you? pic.twitter.com/R0spS04wFw What Worstall doesn’t address, though, is what happens when someone simply can’t afford that high price of bottled water? An economics wonk who blogs at the Big Picture under the name Invictus asked Worstall just that question on Twitter: An infant’s life is at risk due to gouging on what is usually affordable formula and/or medicine. Should the infant die, Tim? Yes or no. https://t.co/jYa86qmuye Invictus repeatedly asked Worstall the question, and Worstall struggled mightily to parse his way out of it. At one point, he claimed that “We’re not arguing about whether supplies should be provided. We’re arguing about how.” Finally, the Forbes blogger refused to respond: I’m old enough to recognise questions of the have you stopped beating your wife kind. Not playing. In other words, Worstall prefers his arguments to remain academic. This is how libertarians and trickle-downers like their economics: without any real-world consequences. If they keep the situation broadly rhetorical and they refuse to address the real-world consequences of their policies, they can continue to ‘win’ arguments using trickery and pedantry. But here’s the thing: People on the ground in Houston are right now living in the academic thought experiment that Worstall and others are bloviating on about. Prices are being gouged on food and water and gas and hotels. And not everyone can afford those prices. What would Worstall have hungry and thirsty poor people do? He refuses to say. So let’s consider the real-world options that people are left with in Houston right now: These are the options. This is a life-or-death situation, and the free market simply can’t provide solutions for everyone. (As I’ve argued in the past, the free market doesn’t care if you live or die.) But trickle-down pundits like Tim Worstall have devoted their lives to arguing that the free market is a godlike, omniscient force that always provides the best outcomes. So rather than revise their arguments, or acknowledge that sometimes the free market fails, they simply plug their fingers in their ears and ignore the suffering of their fellow human beings. Even in cases like this — when tens of thousands of Americans are rising to the occasion and helping their fellow citizens because they know it is the right thing to do — zealots like Worstall simply can’t refute the profit motive. And yet they also refuse to accept the inhumanity of their own arguments. So they have to do what hundreds of thousands of Texans are doing right now: they hunker down in the dark and wait for the storm to pass. (If you can, please donate to the victims of Hurricane Harvey.)
