It seems to me adding price allocation would make the problem much worse rather than better. We don’t have real scarcity; we have induced scarcity because the government is hoarding. A price mechanism at this point just means the rewards for hoarding are much greater, which seems like it would incentivize more hoarding. If memory serves, that is exactly how famines work.
An unrelated thought occurred to me about the counterfactual case where market distribution was chosen upfront: why don’t we consider price setting/discovery a time penalty in the same we consider identity verification a time penalty? One click buying from Amazon is faster than showing my ID, but EBay auctions are quite a bit slower.
In the general case, sure—but in the post it was in the context of appointments for getting vaccines under the current paradigm. Unless I have completely misunderstood, in which case I am wrong and my comment is meaningless.
Though I still like the causes of famine as an analogy for the vaccine problem.
Speculation on the vaccine price in a liberalized market is an interesting question. In general I would expect the vaccine price to decline as more and more people become immune around you. But given the existing cyclical structure a speculator might foresee an infection peak and horde for it. I’m sure there are historical examples to resolve the question, but I’m lazy.
It seems to me adding price allocation would make the problem much worse rather than better. We don’t have real scarcity; we have induced scarcity because the government is hoarding. A price mechanism at this point just means the rewards for hoarding are much greater, which seems like it would incentivize more hoarding. If memory serves, that is exactly how famines work.
An unrelated thought occurred to me about the counterfactual case where market distribution was chosen upfront: why don’t we consider price setting/discovery a time penalty in the same we consider identity verification a time penalty? One click buying from Amazon is faster than showing my ID, but EBay auctions are quite a bit slower.
The assumption of pricing policies is that people would buy vaccines from the companies, rather than the government hoarding intermediary.
In the general case, sure—but in the post it was in the context of appointments for getting vaccines under the current paradigm. Unless I have completely misunderstood, in which case I am wrong and my comment is meaningless.
Though I still like the causes of famine as an analogy for the vaccine problem.
Speculation on the vaccine price in a liberalized market is an interesting question. In general I would expect the vaccine price to decline as more and more people become immune around you. But given the existing cyclical structure a speculator might foresee an infection peak and horde for it. I’m sure there are historical examples to resolve the question, but I’m lazy.