On gas prices
Originally published at VolkStudio Blog. You can comment here or there.
Typically, price of gas reflects the expected restocking costs. If a station sells gas for 2.20 but has to re-stock at 2.40, they lose money. Moreover, rising prices are generally a problem for gas stations, not a boon. Gasoline is a break-even item, as it’s a perfectly generic product, so most stations cannot charge significantly more for it than the competitors. The money maker for them is the attached convenience store. So rising prices that discourage people from refueling as soon reduce the income from coffee and sandwiches. “Price gouging” is merely raising the prices enough to be able to restock the next week and to avoid running out of product completely, so that people would still come in and buy something at the store part of the station.