Fed rate increase = lower hifi prices?

@noske 

I believe in free markets so I am equally opposed to price ceilings and/or price subsidies.

It was intended to provoke thought. Its unfair to limit someones profit potential if you are unwilling to limit their losses. I don't support this way of thinking, Its why I am opposed to price caps or floors.  Its a problem I have with releasing the strategic oil reserves so car trips to Wallyworld remain affordable.

I hear it frequently said that the price of oil/gasoline is too high at a given point in time and that the industry is "gouging". No one whines when prices are so low that it actually stimulates other industries. We hear it frequently from industries who have no pricing power or who are experiencing a demand/supply imbalance, especially if they believe their product deserves subsidies.

Once again, understanding human nature helps us all place these data points in proper perspective. Lets take western states and water for example. There are numerous examples of communities that were/are subsidized with cheap water and the inherent waste of that precious resource is quite visible. Vegas? Palm Springs? LA?  Water has been too cheap as evidenced by its waste. Food and water are the only commodities which cant be substituted. There are subsets of food which can be substituted for other subsets so the free market can work, sortof(regional, climate induced scarcity occurs all the time). Water on the other hand is interesting...you have good/safe water or you don't.  Of course, we live in a world where we take perfectly average tap water from one region, run it through a filter, slap a label on it and then ship it around the globe in a plastic bottle with an exorbinant markup. Doesnt matter to me...as long I have access to safe water to substitute. If the cost of hifi gear became prohibitive, maybe people substitute it for a cooperatively funded live performance? Who knows...

The good news is not only are we not burdened with solving these problems of demand/supply imbalance, they inevitably take care of themselves if humans keep being humans. 

@ghasley When Covid first hit, I saw a report of a young lad who decided he was going to buy up huge supplies of hand sanitizer. Apparently, he did succeed in this and was able to temporarily impact the supply of hand sanitizer. This bad actor then released on a limited basis these hand sanitizing bottles at prices that were 10-20 times what the typical cost had been before the onset. This was found to be price gouging and the Feds shut this fellow down. I guess you have never been the target or the subject of price gouging, otherwise you may not be justifying those actions...no??

@ghasley good to see some micro economic principles discussed, and usually people can agree on the logic as hand-waving and speculation is kept to a minimum.

The politics of water are pretty ordinary - sensible economists have left the building..  In my country it is bureaucrats who administer the politics.  The Nth Koreans could probably plan better.

@daveyf nobody is condoning anything that is illegal. That would have been contrary to any emergency regulations that were swiftly put in place. Perhaps not by the letter, but at least in spirit. Judges are not amused by those antics.

What I’m seeking is some non-emergency examples of pricing irregularities in hifi that cannot be explained logically. Coz people just say stuff and say, oh, price gouging, huge profits.

I understand that respected tube sellers rationed recently, and kept prices not too far away from normal. Because reputation and credibility. Think.

@noske,

I studied, a loose term I'll admit, economics for 3 years as part of my degree and whilst macro economics may have made a little sense, micro made no sense at all.

In fact it was mindnumbingly dull. I remember discussing it with a postgrad student who admitted that it was only the sight of the Swedish lecturer's legs in her knee length skirts that kept him awake during those periods.

Let's not kid ourselves, economics is an extremely complex and largely unpredictable social science. The Keynesian v monetarist debates made the analogue v digital ones look like small potatoes.

I had a lot of time for Keynes, I particularly liked his suggestion of burying bottles full of pound notes and letting folks dig them back out as a way of easing mass unemployment.

However, with Keynes, as everyone else, a lot depends upon sustainable growth.

Given this need for constant growth, perhaps it would not be too far fetched to imagine that this little trouble in Ukraine is related to the search for growth, would it?

@retiredfarmer 

"Nazi Germany printed money to pay the war  reparations"

Isn't that one of the reasons why WW2 is often called a  Bankers War?

"Within the first two months of the pandemic I knew what the outcome as far as money value was going to be and brought hard assets real estate gold and silver. I didn't want any amount of cash on hand as I was sure this was on its way."

Now that's an impressive display of keeping a clear head and pragmatic thinking.

Some of us sort of went into mild shock watching that footage from Wuhan.

On the other hand it now seems some of us were already getting ready to roll out their experimental jabs.

Some others were already planning to drive governments into increasingly more dangerous amounts of debt.

As they sometimes say, follow the money, and if we do that we can see that big pharma and big banks have certainly done very very well from the Plandemic.

Without growth the rest of us will have to increasingly suffer one of the 2 great certainties of life - taxes.

Someone is going to have to pay, and it's not going to be them.