What you need to know about the virus in China "2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV)"

[gikigill]

He was only able to do that because the price is not adjusted. By the way I prefer to have someone like him selling the product at 10 times the price rather than a shortage of the product. He is filling the gap. The market is not correcting for the increase in demand. So rather than passively waiting that all supplies are gone, he is making sure that everyone will have some.

By creating an artificial shortage in the first place when there was no shortage to begin with.
It's called profiteering and is illegal practically everywhere.

If there was a genuine shortage, he could justify his argument but he created a shortage instead.

 

[gikigill]

BTW USA pushing stimulus through the roof.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/mnuchin-to-seek-850-billion-in-coronavirus-stimulus-report

 

[Soundstage]

By creating an artificial shortage in the first place when there was no shortage to begin with.
It's called profiteering and is illegal practically everywhere.

If there was a genuine shortage, he could justify his argument but he created a shortage instead.

No, he anticipated the forthcoming shortage that happened everywhere due to the lack of adjustement of price.

 

[gikigill]

Prices cannot be adjusted by sellers on such a short scale and especially during an emergency or a crisis.

There are laws against that too and even supermarkets and retailers cannot charge more than 10 or similar percentage during a period of emergency. If he was selling for 10% more, he could be clear of profiteering laws but not at a ridiculous margin of 10x. These laws were formed during the World Wars and natural calamities.

Florida has a law where you have to prove your costs if you are charging more while other states have a flat rate of usually 10 or so percent that can be charged. Unless it cost him $20 to cover his costs for a bottle of sanitiser, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

The Tennessee authorities have paid him a visit for exactly that. He might have to pay lawyers more than what he made in profit.

 

[Soundstage]

Prices cannot be adjusted by sellers on such a short scale and especially during an emergency or a crisis.

There are laws against that too and even supermarkets and retailers cannot charge more than 10 or similar percentage during a period of emergency. If he was selling for 10% more, he could be clear of profiteering laws but not at a ridiculous margin of 10x. These laws were formed during the World Wars and natural calamities.

Florida has a law where you have to prove your costs if you are charging more while other states have a flat rate of usually 10 or so percent that can be charged. Unless it cost him $20 to cover his costs for a bottle of sanitiser, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

The Tennessee authorities have paid him a visit for exactly that. He might have to pay lawyers more than what he made in profit.

If you don't adjust the price, then just set a maximum of products sold to a client. As simple as that. Because people are panicking, and buy much more than what they need anyway.
Either you go for the strict limit, or you let the price floating. The authorities are just plain stupid, blaming someone for an issue they created themselves.

 

[gikigill]

Yup, I'll take your stellar judgement over profiteering laws fine tuned over decades by folks worldwide to ensure everyone gets the basics in case of an emergency.

You can go on and on about perfect markets and fully informed customers from Econ 101 but in the words of Muhammad Ali, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Someone like you would have probably cheered hoarding and profiteering on during the Irish famine of the 1840s and the famine of Bengal in the 1940s while millions were dying.

 

[Soundstage]

It is very common these days to blame the obscure forces of the market and the cash avidity of some individual rather than the regulation.
Mod edit

 

[gikigill]

Nope, just a profiteer who will gladly starve anyone for an extra dollar while claiming to "help" since it satisfies some imaginary perfect market and some babble about perfectly informed customers.

Read again about the Irish and Bengal famines to get some perspective.

I was born in Calcutta, West Bengal and my grandparents lived through it.

Mod edit

 

[Soniclife]

Just heard from a friend of mine who is a software developer that their backlogs which is 3 weeks of work was reduced in only 5 day's to almost zero because they worked from home I'm talking about a major company here in Holland. So working from home will create a situation that for instance (by his reasoning) you don't have endless coffee breaks or bullshit talks which hold up work a lot. If this data is seen by the business owner he will probably embrace working from home an can cut jobs considerably or work at least far more efficient.

That fits the research about homeworking, but in my experience it's a relatively short term effect. Longer term people find ways to adjust for the social interaction they need, and things go back to close to where they were before. I've been homeworking in IT regularly since the dial up days, some tasks are better in the office, some at home, deep focus tasks are massively better at home, especially if you sign out of the work IM system, there are things you can do at home in an afternoon you would fail to get done in the office for a week.
We've been speculating that this event might make management look at the costs of the London office and decide a much small one is all that's required.

 

[raistlin65]

No, he anticipated the forthcoming shortage that happened everywhere due to the lack of adjustement of price.

And he and his brother devastated the supply in small markets (small towns) throughout Kentucky and Tennessee.

So instead of letting the supplies be more evenly distributed in poorer communities, the brothers' intention was to put it in the hands of those with more money using the Internet. This is often the social cost of profiteering. The poor either get a disproportionate share of the scarce goods, or a lucky few of the poor end up way overpaying when they can least afford to do so, creating additional financial hardship, all so someone else can gain wealth.

This was an example of excessive greed, and there's no amount of economic rationalization that can justify such a morally bankrupt action. I lived in South Florida during Hurricane Andrew. Fortunately, I was 60 miles away from where it hit, so I was fine. The local news stories were full of people who didn't come together with their community and share what they had to recoup their costs, but rather price gouged others in Homestead, FL, (the hardest hit area) for much-needed water and ice. That was despicable, but what these brothers did was much worse because they raped many other communities of their resources. Their actions are indefensible.

 

[Jess]

[QUOTE = "maty, publicación: 352305, miembro: 637"] [español] https://www.lavanguardia.com/vida/20200317/474218839842/coronavirus-cuantos-casos-hay-espana.html


Nadie sabe exactamente cuántos portadores del coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 se encuentran actualmente en España. El número real puede ser superior a 100,000 , según una versión realizada por La Vanguardia a partir de los datos epidemiológicos conocidos hasta ahora. Si no se hubieran adoptado las medidas de confinamiento aprobadas en los últimos tres días, la cifra podría haber sufrido los 300,000 casos el próximo fin de semana.

Los 9.921 pacientes diagnosticados hasta ayer son la punta del iceberg. Debajo de la superficie están los muchos otros casos que han contraído el virus y tienen síntomas de Covid-19 pero no se han identificado ... [/ QUOTE]

La Vanguardia, un prestigioso centro de investigación. Lo siento, un periódico. También dicen que estos números tienen un alto margen de imprecisión.

 

[maty]

You are right. When there were 137 positives in Catalonia, Oriol Mitjà estimated that the real number was at least 700 if I remember right. Then the multiple must be x5, at least here.

https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriol_Mitjà_i_Villar
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriol_Mitjà_Villar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriol_Mitjà

Update: other times, the number of infected detected is only 20%

 

[Snarfie]

That fits the research about homeworking, but in my experience it's a relatively short term effect. Longer term people find ways to adjust for the social interaction they need, and things go back to close to where they were before. I've been homeworking in IT regularly since the dial up days, some tasks are better in the office, some at home, deep focus tasks are massively better at home, especially if you sign out of the work IM system, there are things you can do at home in an afternoon you would fail to get done in the office for a week.
We've been speculating that this event might make management look at the costs of the London office and decide a much small one is all that's required.

What happened a lot i see for many years in software development is when a software change has to be made a meeting between developers & management or a so called scrum manager is organized. The developer is asked in how many day's the change can be done. So because changing (specific) source code is highly specialized work the scrum manager who is mostly NOT a developer can't judge what the developer tells him. So basically in the land of blinds the developer is king. So instead of 3 days the developer says 1 week. The waist of time an recourses is enormous they did some years ago an survey on this issiue. It was in the billions what this companies cost. Thats why management who are aware of this try to introduce agile management. They try to promote some skilled developers to scrum managers but those skilled developers don't find the specific work, extra pay an corresponding long hours not interesting an decline (massively) this job. Second step by managmant is to force more or less the developer in question to take the job or make his life miserble by ordering him to do for instance a whortless course like developing Gui's. If he declines this course they can fire him an so on and so on.

 

[jasonhanjk]

Hello from Malaysia. In another 90 minutes, my country will be lock down.
Citizens unable to leave and foreigner unable to enter.

 

[Soniclife]

@Snarfie IT estimates are rather off topic for this thread, so I'll skip a detailed response. The more relevant aspects for this thread are people are not machines, they need social interaction, and the correct amount can improve productivity. Historically too much of man management has been focused on how many hours people put in, not judging their output, that's going to be a real challenge.

 

[Mashcky]

Yup, I'll take your stellar judgement over profiteering laws fine tuned over decades by folks worldwide to ensure everyone gets the basics in case of an emergency.

You can go on and on about perfect markets and fully informed customers from Econ 101 but in the words of Muhammad Ali, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face [...]

I think it's safe to say that neither price gouging nor hoarding are optimal economic or policy outcomes in a disaster.

If I had to bet, I would prefer consumers to allocate resources themselves and risk many of them hoarding supplies they don't need than allow price gouging that may only put those supplies in the hands of rich hoarders. But I cannot prove this. The argument against my assumption is that those who need the supplies most will buy them at a higher price but I am skeptical of this. I would not assume that a rich consumer would be any better at deciding how many bottles of hand-sanitizer they truly need. While highly trafficked commercial businesses and hospitals probably need hand sanitizer most (when consumers are at home they can use soap and water) many businesses still may choose not to afford it at a 10x price, leading to a sum-optimal supply in such places.

While my analysis includes a number of assumptions, I would cautiously conclude that rationing is likely the best outcome. A quota on hand-sanitizer bottles at both consumer stores and from distributors to businesses would at least lengthen the time is takes for store shelves and warehouses to clear out their supply, allowing a greater chance for all consumers and business to get some of the limited items.

I'm not a professional on these topics, just an economics BA and law student giving my 2 cents.

 

[pavuol]

 

[digicidal]

So many of the responses to this are completely antithetical to the perceived benefits compelling them. Our local grocery stores (well, thankfully only one chain so far) has enacted a set of new policies "to protect the safety of our customers and staff" - direct quote from the sign on the door. So were the measures wiping down the registers more regularly? Nope. Limiting quantities of supplies? Nope. They reduced their operating hours from 6am-1am to 8am-10pm, and added a restriction to no more than 25 customers at a time in the store.

So now, rather than allowing individual separation - there's a huge crowd bunched up at the doors waiting to get in... and once they do get in - they naturally pile up way more than they need for 2 weeks. Of course, I probably would too if I hadn't scrubbed the whole mission once I saw the crowd - especially if I believed I'd have to go through the same thing in 2 more weeks when everything is much worse!

It reminded me of what Governor Cuomo's ridiculous announcement and guidelines were.

Although not expressed in the printed version I linked, in two separate press conferences yesterday he stated that people "should avoid travel between the times of 8pm and 5am". WTF? You want to keep everyone from gathering in groups of 50 (his guidelines) or worse 10 (Trump's yesterday revision) but you simultaneously want all activities to be restricted by 9 hours... as well as restricting bars and restaurants to delivery only. Well, the reality is that many here have just closed entirely - even for delivery/take-out - so again higher densities in smaller time windows.

Here's an idea... how about we hire some of those people that are laid off already (there's thousands here, all the casinos just fired everyone immediately for the most part) and run the grocery stores and any delivery-capable restaurants 24 hours per day. That way those looking for a "lower-risk-time" could go shopping at midnight if they choose (which is when I've always gone to the store that now has the new rules - and now can't go there at all unless I want to stand in a crowd for an hour).

 

[ta240]

"A Delta Air Lines flight bound for Seattle was grounded at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport for hours Monday night after a passenger informed a flight attendant they may have been exposed to the coronavirus. "

Um, here's an idea: Notify the airline before you get on the plane.

 

[digicidal]

"A Delta Air Lines flight bound for Seattle was grounded at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport for hours Monday night after a passenger informed a flight attendant they may have been exposed to the coronavirus. "

Um, here's an idea: Notify the airline before you get on the plane.

Yep... only reason I can see for that is if they got a text while awaiting takeoff. Although I certainly can't speak for anyone else, I would have to be flying to receive a critical organ transplant to get on a public flight right now.