But that doesn't mean I want the government to "fix" anything!

Rand Simberg does a fine job of explaining in lay terms why government attempts at price fixing do more harm than good:

Consider -- if a gas station owner has gas, someone has to decide who gets it. If the price remains at pre-hurricane levels, many will fill their tanks, because they can afford to do so, against the chance (and even likelihood) that gas will later become completely unavailable (a self-fulfilling prophecy if the price is not allowed to rise). Many will do so even if they have no immediate need for it. But after the first few people do this, the gas will be gone, and none will be available for those who come after, because it's now tied up in the gas tanks of those who didn't really need it. Those who didn't get any may include emergency workers, or truck drivers who need it to go out and find other goods to bring in. It is likely worth more to them, but they didn't get it, because the price was artificially fixed. Moreover, had the price been allowed to rise, they would have been able to afford it, because they would have been able to demand more resources with which to pay for it -- the emergency worker might have had aid from local agencies to pay for it, or the truck driver might have been willing to make the investment in order to recover it by bringing in necessary goods (assuming, of course, that prices on those weren't capped).

Similarly, if ice prices rise to the market, the man who needs to keep his insulin cold for his diabetes treatment will place a higher value on it than the man who wants to keep his beer cold, and will have a better chance of getting it. The man who might rent two hotel rooms for his family for additional comfort might, in the face of appropriately higher prices, inconvenience himself and only get one, releasing one for another whole family.

This works for the supply side as well. Making and transporting ice costs money. When the local ice plant is out of commission, it has to be brought in from other locations, in refrigerated trucks, at higher gasoline costs. Who would bother to take the trouble, expense and risk to deliver it at a loss when they can only get the same price for it as before the hurricane?

Of course, I filled my tank on Tuesday morning, and I'm glad I did, as the price was up thirty cents a gallon the next day (and I'm sure it's higher now). Eventually, the fill-up-now hysteria will stabilize, and the true price gougers will be stopped naturally.

There's still a lot of oil out there, and a lot of people unwilling to buy as much as they did before the current mess flared up. What that means is that the high prices have to come down sooner or later.

Which raises another interesting issue. There is a split in thinking among those who want government to regulate the price of gasoline. The populist type of approach (pass laws capping fuel prices) is appealing to those who claim to champion the cause of the poor (usually for their own political self-aggrandizement). On the other hand, there are people who favor an elitist approach which entails raising fuel prices (usually by higher gasoline taxes).

Ironically, both of these groups are generally on the political left, yet they seek opposite results. The elitists are driven by a moralistic vision that gasoline is bad (if not evil), and that we should be using as little as possible. It's a quasi-prohibitionist mindset which reminds me of the movement to raise cigarette taxes to a level at which buying them becomes extravagant.

I can't stand either regulatory mindset, and I'm glad we're not forced to choose between them.

Maybe -- just maybe -- they'll get together and cancel each other out, and market forces will simply allow the price to rise -- and then fall.

We should be so lucky. But they could also get together and agree to "fix" the prices when they're high, to "save the environment"!

Yuck!

The more I think about the regulatory vultures (on both "sides" of the other "side"), the better the greedy, price-gouging merchants look.