« A Lean Budget? | Main | Profits vs. Love» Russell Roberts
September 20, 2005
Pandering isn't free
Russell Roberts
Missouri's Governor Matt Blunt (who has national aspirations) found himself chastised by the Wall Street Journal for acting against "gougers." Here is his twisted attempt (from a letter to the editor (rr)) to maintain his reputation as a free market kind of guy:
Your Sept. 7 editorial "In Praise of Price Gouging" seems to imply that I yielded to "populist furies" by requesting state and federal investigations into alleged price gouging by the petroleum industry in the wake of recent gas price increases. I believe my actions have been both responsible and appropriate.
Some politicians have taken the easy road on gas prices by calling imprudently for the institution of price caps. I am not among this group.
No, he's in a different group—the group that wants to use arbitrary legal measures to implicitly cap prices in unpredictable undefinable ways.
I have consistently opposed such measures, believing that market forces should be allowed to set the price.
Except for those times when he doesn't believe market forces should set the price and instead, the state of Missouri should try and make it something else.
While I have directed the attorney general to enforce Missouri's price gouging law in the event that illegal behavior is substantiated, it should be noted that our law is less restrictive than the one defined in your editorial in that it does not authorize a price control.
On rare occasions, inquiries into the propriety of corporate behavior are necessary and, in my judgment, the current circumstances in our state merit additional scrutiny.
What a great sentence that is. Scrutiny is all he's asking for, even in extraordinary times like these. What's wrong with scrutiny?
Missouri, for example, is one of only three states in the country not located on the East Coast to realize price increases of 50 cents or more since Aug. 30. In addition, our state realized price increases of as much as 40 cents in only 48 hours time. But even if no wrongdoing has occurred, Missourians deserve a full, fair, and official accounting by their government of this anomaly in gas price increases.
Anomaly? I wonder how much time the staff spent in carefully choosing that word.
If wrongdoing has occurred, however, those responsible should be punished under the law. Neither of these ideas is contrary to the tenets of free market capitalism, which I would argue cannot exist in a healthy and robust state over the long-term without limited government oversight.
True. Good thing it's only limited. Here comes the best part:
I support profiting, deplore profiteering, and believe that the job of sorting out the difference falls to government in certain limited circumstances, of which this may be one.
Well sure, profiteering is totally different from profiting! Profiteering sounds like some sort of piracy. Profiting is just part of any old free market system. But sorting out the differences has to be done in limited circumstances, of course, maybe. Or probably. Or could be. I'm sure this letter will win the Journal's editorial board over and make them realize that Blunt is indeed a good guy who would stand tall in defense of free markets. I think he would have been better off leaving the letter unwritten.
Posted by Russell Roberts in Prices | Permalink
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