Robert Sturgeon wrote:
On 4 Sep 2005 05:52:06 -0700, "Stagger Leechildraper"
wrote:

There was a gas station owner interviewed on a national tv news
broadcast ( he was an obvious foreigner, India, or someplace like that)
and admitted he increased the price to keep people from buying
gasoline. And get this, he said he might increase it more (it was
already over $3 a gallon!)! So yeah, they are gouging us for gasoline.

Pricing anything, including gasoline, according to the Law
of Supply and Demand is not "gouging." If that station
owner had priced his (and that is the operative word -
"his") gasoline too high, he wouldn't have sold any.

It sure was convenient that that hurricane hit, otherwise they wouldn't
have a legitimate excuse to gouge. He priced it high on purpose so he
wouldn't sell any. That is what he said. And he was going to raise it
higher. Some stations around where I live have fluctuated the prices on
a daily basis. None have gone to unreasonable lengths to gouge.....
Yet.

And if he didn't want to sell all of his (there's that word again)
gasoline at something more than his replacement cost, why
should he have to?

Rationalizing his inappropriate business practices still doesn't make
what he did right.

When YOU have something for sale that is suddenly much more
in demand, and there is much less of a supply of it, you
will sell it at a much higher price too - your labor, for
example, or your real estate, or your wheat crop, or your
rare Rembrandt painting, or your ... gasoline.

No, he was doing it to keep people from buying it. He was doing it to
make all the profits he can on somebody else's shortfall.