Acoals
Senior Member
In Washington State a manufacturer from out of state cannot sell directly in to the state. The manufacturer's only recourse is to limit the number of units that are available to a dealer in the state. MSRP means nothing in a free market society as the only checks on price are the demand for the item. It's why we are seeing prices on things like groceries, consumer goods and energy inflating. The idea of raising interest rates is to choke out the available money in which to expand business and society and is counter to a free market society. It costs more to put items in the supply chain which limits the numbers of items, which increases demand which allows the increase in prices and we now have the snake eating its own tail.
Price gouging is a loser's term because it means that someone can't have something because they can no longer afford it. To someone selling an in demand item, getting anything less than the most they can is bad business. That idea is OK for nice to have assets. It is pretty low when considering it in terms of have to have items like food, housing and energy.
Also counter to free market society is printing large amounts of play money and handing it out because certain portions of said society were ordered to close for two weeks. This hypothetical scenario could cause transitory inflation.