Co-lead (Near-Term Detection) at the Nucleic Acid Observatory in Boston. Speaking for myself unless I say otherwise.
jefftk
Karma: 21,184
Why?
Fixed! I was missing a comma.
Interesting! That Boston Public Schools switched from this mechanism to Gale-Shapley seems like it might be useful in convincing our school board (which is separate from the BPS school board, since schools are municipality-level here) to switch.
Their definition of “Price gouging occurs in a competitive market when lowering the price from the market-clearing level would increase total Utilitarian welfare” is a bit sneaky: it means that any time I say “here’s an example of where price gouging helps improve disaster response” they can just say “but that’s not real price gouging, since a lower price wouldn’t increase welfare”.
It also doesn’t look to me like the paper’s approach gives a good framework for thinking about long-term investment incentives and preparation for future disasters, or people selling/renting possessions they wouldn’t normally put on the market sell (air purifiers, renting spare rooms).
The paper’s division of circumstances into price gouging vs not isn’t a good match for the real world, and leads them to support policies like the current ones that normally don’t do anything and then suddenly make large impacts in a disaster. Instead I’d like to see recognition that it’s hard to determine welfare-maximizing pricing in real time and that price signals can reach very far, and instead use a mechanism that allows price increases to occur but redistributes some of the profits.
I think you might find the pushback in the FB comments even more illustrative. Including one where a commenter doesn’t want the new construction because it could lure NIMBYs to move in.
Other side of the room, about ten feet from the stove. Same place each time, yes.
I had seen ideas along these lines, and I wish I had remembered this before shaving my beard off!
I’d be happy to give you good odds on, conditional on this policy being enacted, it not expanding to comprise more than 0.1% of total US taxation.
I don’t trust my measurements as much in the stubble case, because of the risk of particles leaking into the bag through its exit. So presenting the other cases as relative to stubble risks compounding error.
If the relevant counterfactual is not masking, then I think I’m giving these reductions the right way around?
This was one of the places where I really disliked her campaigning was doing (even though I preferred her overall). The basic proposal (though they were vague) was to make a federal law that would act similarly to the various existing state laws, but then she campaigned as if it would do something about current grocery prices. Which doesn’t make sense: the grocery price changes really don’t look like they’re covered by any of the state laws, and a law that did cover them would be a huge (and quite bad) change.
Is your model that what’s covered by “price gouging” would end up expanding if a proposal like mine were implemented?
Hmm. The change here is from “illegal” to “legal but taxed”. So it seems to me that people should only ever be exposed to this additional tax complexity of they “opt in” by doing something they previously couldn’t?
The thing that I think would be overall better (no price controls) is politically unpopular, strongly socially discouraged, and often illegal. This is a proposal that tries to move us in a direction I think is better, while addressing some of what price gouging opponents dislike.
one of the things the public hates more than price increases during a shortage is higher taxes any time
Maybe? Though in this case what we’re taxing is the disliked activity—price increases during a shortage. So possibly this would be popular, like taxes on alcohol, tobacco, or gambling?
make emergencies a tax holiday
The main good bit of market pricing this would miss is the demand reduction and reallocation caused by the higher prices. I might be willing to buy 100lb of ice at $1/lb but only 10lb of ice at $5/lb: it’s easier for me to just dump a bunch of ice into my fridge, but if I prioritize and put the important stuff into a cooler I can make do with much less. If the government is subsidizing suppliers to keep the price at the pre-disaster rate I don’t have this incentive to ice more efficiently.
A new air purifier is $150, but mine have been hanging around my house collecting dust and viruses; I don’t think a used air purifier would have gone for $150 pre-emergency. Let’s say the used value was $75. To get the same benefit as selling for $300 with no surcharge I’d need to charge $525: 2x my $300, less the $75 used value.
But I agree: the air purifiers situation is still improved when moving from the status quo (illegal) to the proposal (taxed). My point with that footnote is that the proposal still does some to discourage supply increases relative to a world without this regulation.
Pretty sure the salary transparency law doesn’t apply to us, because you need 25+ MA employees. Even if it did, though, I think it would mostly mean giving moderately wider salary ranges? Which I expect would be fine; our two current open positions [1][2] have ranges of 23% and 30%.
[1] https://securebio.org/careers/2024-lab-tech/
[2] https://securebio.org/careers/2024-director-operations/
You’re more likely to gain some reputation or a job or a spouse if the reader goes to your website and sees your name there at the top.
Right! I agree there are advantages to getting people onto your site beyond the opportunity to show them ads or convince them to buy a subscription. The post, though, is about the consequences of being in the fortunate position of not needing to do this.
It’s open; no door.
Sorry for assuming you were also in the US!
since the scale of damages in the upper tail exceeds almost everyone’s accessible wealth
Car insurance is [edit: in the US] bounded: a standard policy will cover you up to some cap (ex: $50k). I think maybe your comment is a better argument for umbrella insurance, though that is also not infinite.
I like this idea a lot, but I’m nervous about setting the right CPU threshold. Too low and it never shuts off, too high and it shuts down in the middle of something when waiting for a slow download. But possibly if I looked at load logs I’d see it’s so clearly either ~zero or >>zero that it’s not fussy?