Coronavirus has created a mad rush for sanitation supplies like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, face masks, and antibacterial wipes, and some, like Colvin brothers, have taken advantage of it. They talked about going around to out of the way stores to buy these products cheap and then marking them up in a massive way on online sites like Amazon and eBay, earning them large profits.
The reason they can get away with marking up a "pandemic pack" they bought for $3.50 to charging $40-50 and still having the products sell out almost immediately is that this pandemic has gotten people so panicked that these good have become inelastic.
To try to combat this price gouging, online sellers like Amazon and eBay have restricted the sales of coronavirus from certain sellers. However, these sellers, like Mr. Colvin, feel they aren't price gouging and shouldn't be restricted because while the bottle of Purell may have only cost him $1 in the store, he feels that the $20 price tag he puts on the bottle is not unreasonable due to the costs of shipping, his labor, and Amazon's fees. He also feels he has done nothing morally wrong because he is simply trying to fix market place inefficiencies by moving the supply towards the demand.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/technology/coronavirus-purell-wipes-amazon-sellers.html
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I like how you connected the price gauging issue to a concept we learned in class. It reminds me of the idea of monopolists in a capitalist economy, vying for the highest price at a given quantity.
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