[Newfie]

Hoarding works for the individual, not for the larger community.

It's when governments board, or encourage large scale hoarding that it's a big problem. Price controls discourage production, folks would rather see their neighbor starve than be cheated of their product.

[kublikhan]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'T')hink Lowe's and Home Depot aren't going to increase the price of drywall and plywood shortly?

[asg70]

The depressing thing about that story is how private industry is increasingly stepping in to fill the void caused by a lack of government action. I'm glad that some companies are civic-minded, but it really shouldn't have gotten to this point

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'A')nti-gouging laws are perhaps one the worst thing ever passed into law by politicians. Causes shortages every time. The market knows what the price needs to be. Didn't prepare for an event? Sucks to be you. Go be poor somewhere else.

I'm told all the time on this very forum that the price of gasoline is too low and we should punish the consumer with high taxes on gas to reduce consumption. Well here is the chance to reduce consumption by letting the market set the price. Think Lowe's and Home Depot aren't going to increase the price of drywall and plywood shortly?

[GHung]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')TOH, they should not, IMO, be allowed to suddenly charge 400% markups for a chainsaw.

[Subjectivist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Cog', 'A')nti-gouging laws are perhaps one the worst thing ever passed into law by politicians. Causes shortages every time. The market knows what the price needs to be. Didn't prepare for an event? Sucks to be you. Go be poor somewhere else.

I'm told all the time on this very forum that the price of gasoline is too low and we should punish the consumer with high taxes on gas to reduce consumption. Well here is the chance to reduce consumption by letting the market set the price. Think Lowe's and Home Depot aren't going to increase the price of drywall and plywood shortly?

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Subjectivist', ' ')An unscrupulous jerk could go in and buy up all the chainsaws at their cheap government controlled price, then sell them out the back of a pickup to desperate people at a massive markup. The same thing happens when popular concerts or sporting event tickets go on sale, scalpers will buy asmuch as they can get away with and resell closer to to deadline for use.

[ROCKMAN]

"the entire Eastern Seaboard––from Maine to Florida––consumes only 5.0 million barrels per day, about 3.2 million barrels per day of which is finished gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Colonial’s volume is about half of those numbers."

I wished I had researched this back when. A correction to the implication that the Colonial Pipeline supplies FL. As I just posted under the Irma thread it does not. Nor does any other pipeline: nearly all of FL gasoline is supplied thru it's ports by ships and barges.

[Cog]

As I recall some of the Texas and Louisiana refineries were still shipping gasoline to Florida as soon as they cleared their port areas of debris. Those refineries that had shutdown production still had a considerable amount of stored gasoline and diesel ready to go.

[ROCKMAN]

Cog - As I pointed out on Wednesday just after Harvey left Houston one of our big local fuel terminals had 700 tankers delivering 3 million gallons of fuel per day to local stations. But there's another reality the depots don't care to advertise: they tend to hold back deliveries when a hurricane is coming: tanks are less likely to be damaged if they are full.

And there was an additional problem moving fuel from Texas even after our ports clear as well as Louisiana ports that weren't shut down: the Jones Act, something the lobbyists for the domestic shippers don't like to advertise. From 6 September :

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... to-florida

"As long as Florida’s ports remain open, deliveries of fuels from so-called Jones Act tankers, or ships with permission to move supplies between two U.S. ports, will be key, James Miller, the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association’s director of communications, said by phone from Tallahassee.

Last week, ships that normally move fuel from the Gulf Coast to Florida headed north to New York and Philadelphia to load from those ports instead. But even those supplies aren’t guaranteed: On Wednesday one of the Florida-bound tankers made a sharp turn to deliver into Virginia instead.

Only Jones Act tankers from refineries in Louisiana and Mississippi were able to make it to Florida after Harvey shut down Texas ports. The ships are a key to keeping Florida supplied and are now busier than ever before. Oil trader Mocoh SA diverted two European gasoline tankers to Florida from their original destination in Africa last week, but one of those has since been redirected to Quebec."

[ROCKMAN]

Irma has not interrupted the Colonial Pipeline deliveries in Georgia or the Carolinas:

"If you head to a gas station to fill up there's a chance you could be out of luck, at least for the next few days. Georgia officials say there are reports of gas shortages throughout the state. But Garrett Townsend, Georgia's spokesperson for AAA, explained: "There is no shortage of gasoline. In the system there's plenty of gas. It's just delayed in getting to its distribution point."

Townsend said the fuel outages are because of Hurricanes Irma. Gas purchases spiked in Florida and some parts of Georgia as people filled up before heading north to get out of the storm’s path. That means some stations are having trouble getting new supplies of fuel as quickly as they usually do. State officials released a warning for people traveling south that there is no guarantee they'll be able to get fuel. “Stations in south Georgia are experiencing power outages and flooding of their tanks, preventing them from reopening,” said Homer Bryson, director of Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency."